diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index b3a9657d1c766a523591d4198f1f54da01608657..f48ab4b462fee5dd2e5a353e552a6a920da94036 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -32,7 +32,10 @@ test:
     - mkdir -p "${APT_CACHE_ARCHIVES}/partial"
     - apt update -qy
     - apt install -y apt-utils curl libgdal-dev make locales language-pack-en
-    - sudo locale-gen
+    - export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
+    - export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
+    - sudo locale-gen en_US
+    - sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
     - sudo update-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
     - export PGPASSWORD=$POSTGRES_PASSWORD
     - psql --username $POSTGRES_USER --host postgres -d $POSTGRES_DB -c "ALTER ROLE anthology_django SET client_encoding TO 'utf8';"