UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi Guys,

I am working with a system whereby messages are being transferred into a UNIX box (which contain these german characters) and the message needs to be read by a script. But the box doesnt understand these german umlaut characters e.g. Ö , ä. What happens is that they get changed by the unix server (before being passed to the script) to something like ä = %D

My questions is this - how can i get my unix box to understand these characters and allow them to be passed through without being changed?

thanks

Ocelot