diff --git a/src/build/GhosttyI18n.zig b/src/build/GhosttyI18n.zig
index 324cc94c2..b99e60426 100644
--- a/src/build/GhosttyI18n.zig
+++ b/src/build/GhosttyI18n.zig
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ const std = @import("std");
 const builtin = @import("builtin");
 const Config = @import("Config.zig");
 const gresource = @import("../apprt/gtk/build/gresource.zig");
-const internal_os = @import("../os/main.zig");
+const locales = @import("../os/i18n_locales.zig").locales;
 
 const domain = "com.mitchellh.ghostty";
 
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ pub fn init(b: *std.Build, cfg: *const Config) !GhosttyI18n {
     var steps = std.ArrayList(*std.Build.Step).init(b.allocator);
     defer steps.deinit();
 
-    inline for (internal_os.i18n.locales) |locale| {
+    inline for (locales) |locale| {
         // There is no encoding suffix in the LC_MESSAGES path on FreeBSD,
         // so we need to remove it from `locale` to have a correct destination string.
         // (/usr/local/share/locale/en_AU/LC_MESSAGES)
@@ -155,7 +155,7 @@ fn createUpdateStep(b: *std.Build) !*std.Build.Step {
         "po/" ++ domain ++ ".pot",
     );
 
-    inline for (internal_os.i18n.locales) |locale| {
+    inline for (locales) |locale| {
         const msgmerge = b.addSystemCommand(&.{ "msgmerge", "--quiet", "--no-fuzzy-matching" });
         msgmerge.addFileArg(b.path("po/" ++ locale ++ ".po"));
         msgmerge.addFileArg(xgettext.captureStdOut());
diff --git a/src/os/i18n.zig b/src/os/i18n.zig
index 917c34b4a..0f7790faa 100644
--- a/src/os/i18n.zig
+++ b/src/os/i18n.zig
@@ -1,59 +1,10 @@
 const std = @import("std");
 const builtin = @import("builtin");
 const build_config = @import("../build_config.zig");
+const locales = @import("i18n_locales.zig");
 
 const log = std.log.scoped(.i18n);
 
-/// Supported locales for the application. This must be kept up to date
-/// with the translations available in the `po/` directory; this is used
-/// by our build process as well runtime libghostty APIs.
-///
-/// The order also matters. For incomplete locale information (i.e. only
-/// a language code available), the first match is used. For example, if
-/// we know the user requested `zh` but has no script code, then we'd pick
-/// the first locale that matches `zh`.
-///
-/// For ordering, we prefer:
-///
-///   1. The most common locales first, since there are places in the code
-///      where we do linear searches for a locale and we want to minimize
-///      the number of iterations for the common case.
-///
-///   2. Alphabetical for otherwise equally common locales.
-///
-///   3. Most preferred locale for a language without a country code.
-///
-/// Note for "most common" locales, this is subjective and based on
-/// the perceived userbase of Ghostty, which may not be representative
-/// of general populations or global language distribution. Also note
-/// that ordering may be weird when we first merge a new locale since
-/// we don't have a good way to determine this. We can always reorder
-/// with some data.
-pub const locales = [_][:0]const u8{
-    "zh_CN.UTF-8",
-    "de_DE.UTF-8",
-    "fr_FR.UTF-8",
-    "ja_JP.UTF-8",
-    "nl_NL.UTF-8",
-    "nb_NO.UTF-8",
-    "ru_RU.UTF-8",
-    "uk_UA.UTF-8",
-    "pl_PL.UTF-8",
-    "ko_KR.UTF-8",
-    "mk_MK.UTF-8",
-    "tr_TR.UTF-8",
-    "id_ID.UTF-8",
-    "es_BO.UTF-8",
-    "es_AR.UTF-8",
-    "pt_BR.UTF-8",
-    "ca_ES.UTF-8",
-    "it_IT.UTF-8",
-    "bg_BG.UTF-8",
-    "ga_IE.UTF-8",
-    "hu_HU.UTF-8",
-    "he_IL.UTF-8",
-};
-
 /// Set for faster membership lookup of locales.
 pub const locales_map = map: {
     var kvs: [locales.len]struct { []const u8 } = undefined;
diff --git a/src/os/i18n_locales.zig b/src/os/i18n_locales.zig
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..199a24526
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/os/i18n_locales.zig
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+// NOTE: This is in a separate file because our build depends on it and
+// we want to minimize the transitive dependencies of the build binary
+// itself.
+
+/// Supported locales for the application. This must be kept up to date
+/// with the translations available in the `po/` directory; this is used
+/// by our build process as well runtime libghostty APIs.
+///
+/// The order also matters. For incomplete locale information (i.e. only
+/// a language code available), the first match is used. For example, if
+/// we know the user requested `zh` but has no script code, then we'd pick
+/// the first locale that matches `zh`.
+///
+/// For ordering, we prefer:
+///
+///   1. The most common locales first, since there are places in the code
+///      where we do linear searches for a locale and we want to minimize
+///      the number of iterations for the common case.
+///
+///   2. Alphabetical for otherwise equally common locales.
+///
+///   3. Most preferred locale for a language without a country code.
+///
+/// Note for "most common" locales, this is subjective and based on
+/// the perceived userbase of Ghostty, which may not be representative
+/// of general populations or global language distribution. Also note
+/// that ordering may be weird when we first merge a new locale since
+/// we don't have a good way to determine this. We can always reorder
+/// with some data.
+pub const locales = [_][:0]const u8{
+    "zh_CN.UTF-8",
+    "de_DE.UTF-8",
+    "fr_FR.UTF-8",
+    "ja_JP.UTF-8",
+    "nl_NL.UTF-8",
+    "nb_NO.UTF-8",
+    "ru_RU.UTF-8",
+    "uk_UA.UTF-8",
+    "pl_PL.UTF-8",
+    "ko_KR.UTF-8",
+    "mk_MK.UTF-8",
+    "tr_TR.UTF-8",
+    "id_ID.UTF-8",
+    "es_BO.UTF-8",
+    "es_AR.UTF-8",
+    "pt_BR.UTF-8",
+    "ca_ES.UTF-8",
+    "it_IT.UTF-8",
+    "bg_BG.UTF-8",
+    "ga_IE.UTF-8",
+    "hu_HU.UTF-8",
+    "he_IL.UTF-8",
+};