diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 331f342e0..eea87b8ac 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -160,6 +160,8 @@ Bugs fixed
   width, table layout width and text wrap width.
 * Fix leading space in LaTeX table header cells.
 * #1132: Fix LaTeX table output for multi-row cells in the first column.
+* #1128: Fix Unicode errors when trying to format time strings with a
+  non-standard locale.
 * #1127: Fix traceback when autodoc tries to tokenize a non-Python file.
 * #1126: Fix double-hyphen to en-dash conversion in wrong places such as
   command-line option names in LaTeX.
diff --git a/sphinx/util/osutil.py b/sphinx/util/osutil.py
index 7322289ef..6cb310eb0 100644
--- a/sphinx/util/osutil.py
+++ b/sphinx/util/osutil.py
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ import re
 import sys
 import time
 import errno
+import locale
 import shutil
 from os import path
 
@@ -135,10 +136,12 @@ def make_filename(string):
     return no_fn_re.sub('', string)
 
 if sys.version_info < (3, 0):
+    # strftime for unicode strings
     def ustrftime(format, *args):
-        # strftime for unicode strings
-        return time.strftime(unicode(format).encode('utf-8'), *args) \
-                .decode('utf-8')
+        # if a locale is set, the time strings are encoded in the encoding
+        # given by LC_TIME; if that is available, use it
+        enc = locale.getlocale(locale.LC_TIME)[1] or 'utf-8'
+        return time.strftime(unicode(format).encode(enc), *args).decode(enc)
 else:
     ustrftime = time.strftime
 
@@ -159,4 +162,3 @@ def find_catalog(docname, compaction):
     return ret
 
 fs_encoding = sys.getfilesystemencoding() or sys.getdefaultencoding()
-