diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index d06e4bf4b05d4db38754b76b1790fbd10f01fe9d..c8a9bab3eb18881395ad96b936e4e2112de2f4de 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -31,8 +31,9 @@ test:
     - mkdir -p "${APT_STATE_LISTS}/partial"
     - mkdir -p "${APT_CACHE_ARCHIVES}/partial"
     - apt update -qy
-    - apt install -y apt-utils curl libgdal-dev make systemd
-    - localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
+    - apt install -y apt-utils curl libgdal-dev make locales
+    - export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
+    - export LC_ALL=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';"