diff --git a/django/utils/encoding.py b/django/utils/encoding.py
index 9388d67f4c..335f1a1551 100644
--- a/django/utils/encoding.py
+++ b/django/utils/encoding.py
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 import types
 import urllib
+import locale
 import datetime
+import codecs
 
 from django.utils.functional import Promise
 
@@ -136,3 +138,12 @@ def iri_to_uri(iri):
         return iri
     return urllib.quote(smart_str(iri), safe='/#%[]=:;$&()+,!?*')
 
+
+# The encoding of the default system locale but falls back to the
+# given fallback encoding if the encoding is unsupported by python or could
+# not be determined.  See tickets #10335 and #5846
+try:
+    DEFAULT_LOCALE_ENCODING = locale.getdefaultlocale()[1] or 'ascii'
+    codecs.lookup(DEFAULT_LOCALE_ENCODING)
+except:
+    DEFAULT_LOCALE_ENCODING = 'ascii'
diff --git a/django/utils/tzinfo.py b/django/utils/tzinfo.py
index 58cfcd5d88..dc583465b2 100644
--- a/django/utils/tzinfo.py
+++ b/django/utils/tzinfo.py
@@ -1,15 +1,8 @@
 "Implementation of tzinfo classes for use with datetime.datetime."
 
-import locale
 import time
 from datetime import timedelta, tzinfo
-from django.utils.encoding import smart_unicode
-
-try:
-    DEFAULT_ENCODING = locale.getdefaultlocale()[1] or 'ascii'
-except:
-    # Any problems at all determining the locale and we fallback. See #5846.
-    DEFAULT_ENCODING = 'ascii'
+from django.utils.encoding import smart_unicode, smart_str, DEFAULT_LOCALE_ENCODING
 
 class FixedOffset(tzinfo):
     "Fixed offset in minutes east from UTC."
@@ -41,7 +34,7 @@ class LocalTimezone(tzinfo):
         self._tzname = self.tzname(dt)
 
     def __repr__(self):
-        return self._tzname
+        return smart_str(self._tzname)
 
     def utcoffset(self, dt):
         if self._isdst(dt):
@@ -57,7 +50,8 @@ class LocalTimezone(tzinfo):
 
     def tzname(self, dt):
         try:
-            return smart_unicode(time.tzname[self._isdst(dt)], DEFAULT_ENCODING)
+            return smart_unicode(time.tzname[self._isdst(dt)],
+                                 DEFAULT_LOCALE_ENCODING)
         except UnicodeDecodeError:
             return None