diff --git a/gettext.c b/gettext.c
index 71e954563d7068500bd41269dd57f01b097f7c3d..8b2da4641f8b20ff3cc70c63636de878eec72470 100644
--- a/gettext.c
+++ b/gettext.c
@@ -29,6 +29,17 @@ int use_gettext_poison(void)
 #endif
 
 #ifndef NO_GETTEXT
+static int test_vsnprintf(const char *fmt, ...)
+{
+	char buf[26];
+	int ret;
+	va_list ap;
+	va_start(ap, fmt);
+	ret = vsnprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), fmt, ap);
+	va_end(ap);
+	return ret;
+}
+
 static const char *charset;
 static void init_gettext_charset(const char *domain)
 {
@@ -99,9 +110,7 @@ static void init_gettext_charset(const char *domain)
 	   $ LANGUAGE= LANG=de_DE.utf8 ./test
 	   test: Kein passendes Ger?t gefunden
 
-	   In the long term we should probably see about getting that
-	   vsnprintf bug in glibc fixed, and audit our code so it won't
-	   fall apart under a non-C locale.
+	   The vsnprintf bug has been fixed since glibc 2.17.
 
 	   Then we could simply set LC_CTYPE from the environment, which would
 	   make things like the external perror(3) messages work.
@@ -115,7 +124,9 @@ static void init_gettext_charset(const char *domain)
 	setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");
 	charset = locale_charset();
 	bind_textdomain_codeset(domain, charset);
-	setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "C");
+	/* the string is taken from v0.99.6~1 */
+	if (test_vsnprintf("%.*s", 13, "David_K\345gedal") < 0)
+		setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "C");
 }
 
 void git_setup_gettext(void)