Originally Posted by reinob

(as root)
# apt-get install locales

then create /etc/locale.gen, the contents of the file should look something like:
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

then run:
# locale-gen

you /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive should be much smaller than before.

if that's OK, you can stop there. If you want more, you can remove lots of things from /usr/share/locale, *BUT BE CAREFUL* some languages "depend" on others, so leave it for now until this is well documented.

(e.g.
en_US requires iso14651_t1 and en_GB)
de_DE requires i18n, iso14651_t1

also translit_cjk_compat for some reason)