diff --git a/lib/jekyll.rb b/lib/jekyll.rb
index c909c3d13e4..2d9844f51f1 100644
--- a/lib/jekyll.rb
+++ b/lib/jekyll.rb
@@ -35,7 +35,6 @@ def require_all(path)
 require "i18n"
 
 SafeYAML::OPTIONS[:suppress_warnings] = true
-I18n.config.available_locales = :en
 
 module Jekyll
   # internal requires
diff --git a/lib/jekyll/utils.rb b/lib/jekyll/utils.rb
index 1d3cb9c4a72..cb6493916c8 100644
--- a/lib/jekyll/utils.rb
+++ b/lib/jekyll/utils.rb
@@ -203,7 +203,10 @@ def slugify(string, mode: nil, cased: false)
       end
 
       # Drop accent marks from latin characters. Everything else turns to ?
-      string = ::I18n.transliterate(string) if mode == "latin"
+      if mode == "latin"
+        I18n.config.available_locales = :en if I18n.config.available_locales.empty?
+        string = I18n.transliterate(string)
+      end
 
       slug = replace_character_sequence_with_hyphen(string, :mode => mode)