diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
index c9bb0b888..2767fd450 100644
--- a/INSTALL
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ configuring the GRUB.
 * Flex 2.5.35 or later
 * pkg-config
 * GNU patch
+* wget (for downloading updated translations)
 * Other standard GNU/Unix tools
 * a libc with large file support (e.g. glibc 2.1 or later)
 
diff --git a/bootstrap.conf b/bootstrap.conf
index 79d4248c8..40e0b0cf4 100644
--- a/bootstrap.conf
+++ b/bootstrap.conf
@@ -113,17 +113,16 @@ bootstrap_epilogue () {
     # languages.
     autogenerated="en@quot en@hebrew de@hebrew en@cyrillic en@greek en@arabic en@piglatin de_CH"
 
-    for x in $autogenerated; do
-      rm -f "po/$x.po";
-    done
-
-    (
-      (
-        cd po && ls *.po| cut -d. -f1
-        for x in $autogenerated; do
-            echo "$x";
-        done
-      ) | sort | uniq | xargs
-    ) >po/LINGUAS
+    {
+      # NOTE: xargs has no POSIX compliant way to avoid running the program
+      # given as an argument when there are no input lines. So ensure that
+      # basename is always run with at least one argument, the empty string,
+      # and ignore the first line of output.
+      ls po/*.po | xargs -L 100 basename -s .po -a "" | tail -n +2
+      for x in $autogenerated; do
+        rm -f "po/$x.po"
+        echo "$x"
+      done
+    } | sort | uniq | xargs >po/LINGUAS
   fi
 }