i18n hell

[fyleow]

I just spent hours trying to figure out why even after I set my SQL
table attributes to UTF-8 only garbage kept adding into the database.
Apparently you need to execute "SET NAMES 'utf8'" before inserting into
the tables.

Does anyone have experience working with other languages using Django
or Turbogears?  I just need to be able to retrieve and enter text to
the database from my page without it being mangled.  I know these
frameworks employ ORM so you don't need to write SQL and that worries
me because I tried this on Rails and it wouldn't work.

Thanks.