From what I can understand from the documentation is that you can change the code page that Win32::OLE is using. From the docs: "The default value is CP_ACP, which is the default ANSI codepage. Other possible values are CP_OEMCP, CP_MACCP, CP_UTF7 and CP_UTF8. These constants are not exported by default."

I am not sure how to do this, but try:

use Win32::OLE qw( CP_UTF8 ) ;
Win32::OLE->Option( CP => CP_UTF8 ) ;
my $word = Win32::OLE->new ('Word.Application', ...
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