diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index a0172f18c72d1dc8fab81325bb04cb055e3b65de..2da061da608483a84a83101f0e91545a5de1c2af 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ variables:
   APT_STATE_LISTS: "$CI_PROJECT_DIR/.apt/lists"
   APT_CACHE_ARCHIVES: "$CI_PROJECT_DIR/.apt/archives"
 
+
 cache:
   - key:
       files:
@@ -21,6 +22,8 @@ cache:
     - .apt/
 
 test:
+  env:
+    LANG: "en_US.UTF-8"
   stage: test
   image: postgis/postgis:17-3.5
   services: 
@@ -32,11 +35,8 @@ test:
     - mkdir -p "${APT_CACHE_ARCHIVES}/partial"
     - apt update -qy
     - apt install -y apt-utils curl libgdal-dev make locales
-    - export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
-    - export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
-    - locale-gen en_US
     - locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
-    - update-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
+    - update-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
     - export PGPASSWORD=$POSTGRES_PASSWORD
     - psql --username $POSTGRES_USER --host postgres -d $POSTGRES_DB -c "ALTER ROLE anthology_django SET client_encoding TO 'utf8';"
     - psql --username $POSTGRES_USER --host postgres -d $POSTGRES_DB -c "ALTER ROLE anthology_django SET default_transaction_isolation TO 'read committed';"