--- lesspipe-2.09/lesspipe.sh
+++ lesspipe-2.09.mod/lesspipe.sh
@@ -793,7 +793,7 @@
 setopt sh_word_split 2>/dev/null
 PATH=$PATH:${0%%/lesspipe.sh}
 # the current locale in lowercase (or generic utf-8)
-locale=$(locale|grep LC_CTYPE|tr -d '"') || locale=utf-8
+locale=en_US.UTF-8
 lclocale=$(echo "${locale##*.}"|tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
 
 sep=:					# file name separator