Using C can be tricky. At least when you start with LANG=C, python behaves like it's the 1980 again and sys.stdout.encoding is ASCII. That break everything, including us trying to print the input line (say I mistype ł a non-ASCII) character. For all intents and purposes I would not do that.

I think it's worth separating translation support, which depends on lots of stuff working right from just not crashing on weird settings and random garbage as input. We should strive not to crash above all. Getting translation support should be a cherry on top that we do when everything else is working.