diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 3d4e8512af0..dfc5685508e 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+2012-05-19  Glenn Morris  <rgm@gnu.org>
+
+	* Makefile.in (leim): No need to set PARALLEL.
+
 2012-05-18  Glenn Morris  <rgm@gnu.org>
 
 	* Makefile.in (install-arch-indep, install-info, install-man):
diff --git a/Makefile.in b/Makefile.in
index 6af348d1269..a007fa00802 100644
--- a/Makefile.in
+++ b/Makefile.in
@@ -306,11 +306,8 @@ epaths-force: FRC
 	${srcdir}/build-aux/move-if-change epaths.h.$$$$ src/epaths.h
 
 # For parallel make, src should be built before leim.
-# "export PARALLEL=0" is for SGI's Make, to prevent it from
-# running more than 1 process in the leim directory, especially for
-# the $TIT files there.
 leim:   src Makefile FRC
-	cd leim && PARALLEL=0 $(MAKE) all $(MFLAGS)
+	cd leim && $(MAKE) all $(MFLAGS)
 
 lib-src src: lib
 
diff --git a/leim/Makefile.in b/leim/Makefile.in
index 2d9c9b59481..54ed0ad35fe 100644
--- a/leim/Makefile.in
+++ b/leim/Makefile.in
@@ -123,8 +123,15 @@ TIT_SOURCES= \
 ${CHINESE_TIT}: changed.tit
 	@true
 
-## FIXME remove subdirs if poss - time-stamping.
+## FIXME remove subdirs if possible - time-stamping.
 ## Emacs should make the directory if it does not exist.
+
+## The changed.* files act to serialize this part of the build.
+## A single Emacs invocation creates all the CHINESE_TIT files.
+## Otherwise in a parallel build multiple Emacs instances could
+## interfere with each other.  If we used GNU make we could probably
+## parallelize this without the need for an explicit rule for each
+## file.
 changed.tit: ${SUBDIRS} ${TIT_SOURCES}
 	${RUN_EMACS} -l ${buildlisppath}/international/titdic-cnv \
 	  -f batch-titdic-convert -dir quail ${srcdir}/CXTERM-DIC; \