diff --git a/src/3rdparty/win32_src/pdcurses/wingui/pdcscrn.c b/src/3rdparty/win32_src/pdcurses/wingui/pdcscrn.c
index 7d12bc904..ff477f2a0 100644
--- a/src/3rdparty/win32_src/pdcurses/wingui/pdcscrn.c
+++ b/src/3rdparty/win32_src/pdcurses/wingui/pdcscrn.c
@@ -1921,27 +1921,7 @@ static LRESULT ALIGN_STACK CALLBACK WndProc (const HWND hwnd,
             exit( 0);
         if( wParam != 9 || !(GetKeyState( VK_SHIFT) & 0x8000))
             if (!key_already_handled || last_key_handled != (int)wParam) {
-#if _UNICODE
-                /* if we are building against the unicode runtime, key messages
-                received by WM_CHAR will be UTF16 encoded; convert it to a
-                sequence UTF8 bytes and inject them one at a time.
-                see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/inputdev/wm-char */
-                wchar_t utf16[3]; /* may be a surrogate pair */
-                utf16[0] = LOWORD(wParam);
-                utf16[1] = HIWORD(wParam);
-                utf16[2] = 0;
-                unsigned char utf8[4 + 4 + 1];
-                int size = WideCharToMultiByte(CP_UTF8, 0, utf16, -1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
-                if (size > 0 && sizeof(utf8)) {
-                    utf8[0] = 0;
-                    WideCharToMultiByte(CP_UTF8, 0, utf16, -1, utf8, size, 0, 0);
-                    for (int i = 0; i < size - 1; i++) {
-                        add_key_to_queue((int) utf8[i]);
-                    }
-                }
-#else
                 add_key_to_queue((int)wParam);
-#endif
             }
         key_already_handled = FALSE;
         last_key_handled = 0;
diff --git a/src/musikcube/cursespp/Text.cpp b/src/musikcube/cursespp/Text.cpp
index c426d08b1..28daf3cbc 100755
--- a/src/musikcube/cursespp/Text.cpp
+++ b/src/musikcube/cursespp/Text.cpp
@@ -331,13 +331,23 @@ namespace cursespp {
                     kn = std::string("M-") + std::string(keyname((int)next));
                 }
             }
-        #ifdef WIN32
+#ifdef WIN32
             /* transform alt->meta for uniform handling */
             else if (kn.find("ALT_") == 0) {
                 std::transform(kn.begin(), kn.end(), kn.begin(), tolower);
                 kn.replace(0, 4, "M-");
             }
-        #endif
+#endif
+#if defined WIN32 && defined _UNICODE
+            else if (kn.find("KEY_") == std::string::npos &&
+                    kn.find("CTL_") == std::string::npos &&
+                    kn.find("^") != 0)
+            {
+                /* on Windows if _UNICODE is defined then ch will contain a UTF16
+                encoded character; transform it to UTF8. */
+                kn = u16to8(std::wstring(1, (wchar_t) ch));
+            }
+#else
             /* multi-byte UTF8 character */
             else if (ch >= 194 && ch <= 223) {
                 kn = "";
@@ -357,19 +367,10 @@ namespace cursespp {
                 kn += (char) getch();
                 kn += (char) getch();
             }
+#endif
 
             kn = Normalize(kn);
 
-#ifdef WIN32
-            /* seems like on Windows using PDCurses, if a non-English keyboard
-            is selected (like Russian) we receive a UTF16 character, not an
-            encoded UTF8 character. in this case, let's convert it to a UTF8
-            string and return that. */
-            if (kn == "UNKNOWN KEY" && ch > 244) {
-                kn = u16to8(std::wstring(1, (wchar_t)ch));
-            }
-#endif
-
             // std::cerr << "keyname: " << kn << std::endl;
             // std::cerr << "ch: " << ch << std::endl;