diff --git a/package/fetchmail/Config.in b/package/fetchmail/Config.in
index 1e829a0512..7c14176b23 100644
--- a/package/fetchmail/Config.in
+++ b/package/fetchmail/Config.in
@@ -4,7 +4,6 @@ config BR2_PACKAGE_FETCHMAIL
 	select BR2_PACKAGE_CA_CERTIFICATES
 	select BR2_PACKAGE_OPENSSL
 	select BR2_PACKAGE_ZLIB
-	select BR2_PACKAGE_GETTEXT if BR2_NEEDS_GETTEXT_IF_LOCALE
 	help
 	  Fetchmail - the mail-retrieval daemon
 	  Client daemon to move mail from POP and IMAP to your local computer
diff --git a/package/fetchmail/fetchmail.mk b/package/fetchmail/fetchmail.mk
index 2c3786f8e7..49ce0d3a80 100644
--- a/package/fetchmail/fetchmail.mk
+++ b/package/fetchmail/fetchmail.mk
@@ -20,8 +20,12 @@ FETCHMAIL_CONF_OPTS = \
 
 FETCHMAIL_DEPENDENCIES = \
 	ca-certificates \
-	openssl \
-	$(if $(BR2_NEEDS_GETTEXT_IF_LOCALE),gettext)
+	openssl
+
+# libintl is an optional dependency
+ifeq ($(BR2_PACKAGE_GETTEXT),y)
+FETCHMAIL_DEPENDENCIES += gettext
+endif
 
 # fetchmailconf.py script is not (yet) python3-compliant.
 # Prevent the pyc-compilation with python-3 from failing by removing this