[thelist] easy way to convert character encoding?

[tom jaimz]

hi thelist crew,

i have a database with quite a lot of information encoded in shift_jis, and
we've decided because we are going to eventually have to use multiple
languages on one page, it's logical to convert over to utf-8 encoding.  does
anyone know of any easy methods - perhaps just a couple of well-constructed
vbscript functions - to convert the data from shift_jis to utf-8?

thanks!
tom.