-# gettext (this will be populated on demand with gettext.Translations)
-thread_scope.translations = None
+# gettext (this needs to default to English so it doesn't break
+# in case we're running a script without the app like
+# ./bin/gmg theme assetlink)
+thread_scope.translations = gettext.translation(
+ 'mediagoblin',
+ pkg_resources.resource_filename(
+ 'mediagoblin', 'i18n'), ['en'], fallback=True)