diff --git a/intl/italian.h b/intl/italian.h
index 4f118e33dc..9d05b36ee8 100755
--- a/intl/italian.h
+++ b/intl/italian.h
@@ -17,6 +17,15 @@
 #ifndef __INTL_ITALIAN_H
 #define __INTL_ITALIAN_H
 
+/* IMPORTANT:
+ * For non-english characters to work without proper unicode support,
+ * we need this file to be encoded in ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), not UTF-8.
+ * If you save this file as UTF-8, you'll break non-english characters
+ * (e.g. German "Umlauts" and Portugese diacritics).
+ */
+/* DO NOT REMOVE THIS. If it causes build failure, it's because you saved the file as UTF-8. Read the above comment. */
+extern const char force_iso_8859_1[sizeof("אטילעש")==6+1 ? 1 : -1];
+
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_B "Tasto B RetroPad"
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_Y "Tasto Y RetroPad"
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_SELECT "Tasto Select RetroPad"