diff --git a/bin/osv/fields.py b/bin/osv/fields.py
index a1069f8e386..99b39ed9c65 100644
--- a/bin/osv/fields.py
+++ b/bin/osv/fields.py
@@ -156,7 +156,7 @@ class char(_column):
         # we need to convert the string to a unicode object to be able
         # to evaluate its length (and possibly truncate it) reliably
         if isinstance(symb, str):
-            u_symb = unicode(symb.replace('\xa0', '\xc2\xa0'), 'utf8')
+            u_symb = unicode(symb, 'utf8')
         elif isinstance(symb, unicode):
             u_symb = symb
         else:
diff --git a/bin/tools/translate.py b/bin/tools/translate.py
index 25bd39a4c76..7e1a7ca08a8 100644
--- a/bin/tools/translate.py
+++ b/bin/tools/translate.py
@@ -546,8 +546,8 @@ def trans_load_data(db_name, fileobj, fileformat, lang, strict=False, lang_name=
                 'translatable': 1,
                 'date_format' : str(locale.nl_langinfo(locale.D_FMT).replace('%y', '%Y')),
                 'time_format' : str(locale.nl_langinfo(locale.T_FMT)),
-                'decimal_point' : str(locale.localeconv()['decimal_point']),
-                'thousands_sep' : str(locale.localeconv()['thousands_sep']),
+                'decimal_point' : str(locale.localeconv()['decimal_point']).replace('\xa0', '\xc2\xa0'),
+                'thousands_sep' : str(locale.localeconv()['thousands_sep']).replace('\xa0', '\xc2\xa0'),
             }
             
             try: