We have an interesting dilemna at Boiron. Our original web developers, for reasons unknown to the universe, encoded most of our databases in Latin-Swedish 1. This leaves behind some really crazy symbols when you upgrade Wordpress or even make minor changes to the websites.
I discovered you could essentially "trick" the databases into being read properly by making a minor alteration to the wp-config.php file
First of all, never begin by encoding in Latin 1 or I will make fun of you forever
Second, change: define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8'); to define('DB_CHARSET', 'latin1');
Remember to always make fun of people who encode in Latin 1 because they don't know what they're doing.
Some resources:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Converting_Database_Character_Sets