Comment 3 for bug 220817

I think this is an apt bug. I debootstrapped a clean hardy chroot and installed some of the non-OOo dependencies of language-support-translations-en to reduce noise. Then:

root@sarantium:/# apt-get install language-support-translations-en
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libcurl3 libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 libgstreamer0.10-0 libicu38 libneon27 libxaw7 libxslt1.1 libxtst6 openoffice.org-common openoffice.org-core openoffice.org-help-en-gb openoffice.org-help-en-us
  openoffice.org-l10n-common openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb openoffice.org-l10n-en-za openoffice.org-style-human ttf-opensymbol
Suggested packages:
  gnome-app-install libvisual-0.4-plugins gstreamer0.10-plugins gstreamer0.10-tools openoffice.org-style-hicontrast openoffice.org-style-industrial hunspell-dictionary-en-gb myspell-dictionary-en-gb
  openoffice.org-hyphenation-en-gb openoffice.org2-thesaurus-en-gb hunspell-dictionary-en-za myspell-dictionary-en-za openoffice.org-help-en-za openoffice.org-hyphenation-en-za openoffice.org2-thesaurus-en-za
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  language-support-translations-en libcurl3 libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 libgstreamer0.10-0 libicu38 libneon27 libxaw7 libxslt1.1 libxtst6 openoffice.org-common openoffice.org-core
  openoffice.org-help-en-gb openoffice.org-help-en-us openoffice.org-l10n-common openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb openoffice.org-l10n-en-za openoffice.org-style-human ttf-opensymbol
0 upgraded, 18 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 65.8MB of archives.
After this operation, 245MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.
root@sarantium:/# apt-cache show language-support-translations-en | egrep 'Depends|Recommends'
Depends: gimp-help-en, openoffice.org-help-en-gb, openoffice.org-help-en-us, openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb, openoffice.org-l10n-en-za, thunderbird-locale-en-gb
root@sarantium:/# for x in openoffice.org-help-en-gb openoffice.org-help-en-us openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb openoffice.org-l10n-en-za; do apt-cache show "$x" | egrep 'Package|Depends|Recommends'; echo; done
Package: openoffice.org-help-en-gb
Depends: openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb, openoffice.org-writer | language-support-translations-en
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.14.12ubuntu3)
Recommends: openoffice.org-core (>> 1:2.4.0) | language-support-translations-en

Package: openoffice.org-help-en-us
Depends: openoffice.org-l10n-en-us, openoffice.org-writer | language-support-translations-en
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.14.12ubuntu3)
Recommends: openoffice.org-core (>> 1:2.4.0) | language-support-translations-en

Package: openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb
Depends: openoffice.org-common (>= 1:2.4.0) | language-support-translations-en, openoffice.org-common (<< 1:2.4.0.1) | language-support-translations-en, openoffice.org-l10n-common (>= 1:2.4.0)
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.14.12ubuntu3)
Recommends: openoffice.org-core (>> 1:2.4.0) | language-support-translations-en

Package: openoffice.org-l10n-en-za
Depends: openoffice.org-common (>= 1:2.4.0) | language-support-translations-en, openoffice.org-common (<< 1:2.4.0.1) | language-support-translations-en, openoffice.org-l10n-common (>= 1:2.4.0)
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.14.12ubuntu3)
Recommends: openoffice.org-core (>> 1:2.4.0) | language-support-translations-en

root@sarantium:/# apt-cache show openoffice.org-l10n-common | egrep 'Depends|Recommends'
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.14.12ubuntu3)

I can see no reason why openoffice.org-common/core should be being pulled in here, given that language-support-translations-en has been marked for installation.