Arabic characters replaced by Question Marks in Advanced Layout Editor

Hello Enfold Support

This is a pretty tricky problem to explain so I really hope the following makes sense.

I’m applying the Enfold theme to an existing multilingual site, where one of the languages is Arabic. I’ve inherited the site and it has WPML installed to add the multilingual capability. I always derive a child theme from Enfold and have done so for this website. I have a staging site up and running which you can look at and links plus and admin login are provided in the private area.

I work purely in English (and I’m wanting to update the content layout on the Arabic pages. When I edit a page, using the Advanced Layout Editor, the arabic characters turn into question marks. When I take a look at the post_content in wp_posts the content looks absolutely fine, and yet at the front end it shows up with question marks and also in the page editor it shows up with question marks.

I finally tracked down the culprit and it appears that the content with question marks is being stored in wp_postmeta. Wish I’d noticed this yesterday as it would have saved a lot of head-scratching.

Anyway, in wp_postmeta there is an entry with meta_key = _aviaLayoutBuilderCleanData that must be supplying the content for the page since it has question marks all over it, instead of arabic characters.

As I mentioned, I’m working in English so no special arabic set up on my computer. I don’t want to edit the text of the pages, but I’d like to be able to use the advanced layout editor to add some interest (banners, images, columns etc).

I have the latest version of the WMPL plugin on the staging website but I have not activated the other plugins it recommends as they seem to interfere with the already-translated pages. My client is an Association and its members translate pages as necessary. Not all pages are translated into all languages, but they are fine with that.

If you are able to take a look at the arabic home page on the staging site you’ll see that it has question marks. It is the only page I’ve edited thus far, so the other pages may look correct.

I’m not sure how to begin to fix this and really hope you can help. I shall give you access to the site and I’m counting the minutes until I hear back :)).

If you need access to phpmyadmin I can help with that too.

Regards
Diana