diff --git a/annotations/annotators.py b/annotations/annotators.py
index e7a85dfe..fb68c5ee 100644
--- a/annotations/annotators.py
+++ b/annotations/annotators.py
@@ -58,6 +58,7 @@ def my_view(request, text_id):
 from annotations.utils import basepath
 from annotations.models import TextCollection, VogonUserDefaultProject
 from urlparse import urlparse
+import chardet
 
 
 class Annotator(object):
@@ -153,11 +154,13 @@ def render_display(self, context={}):
     def get_context(self):
         resource = self.get_resource()
         request = self.context.get('request')
+        content = self.get_content(resource)
+        detect  = chardet.detect(content)
         return {
             'text': self.text,
             'textid': self.text.id,
             'title': 'Annotate Text',
-            'content': self.get_content(resource),
+            'content': content.decode(detect['encoding']).encode('utf-8'), # We are using chardet to guess the encoding becuase giles is returning everyting with a utf-8 header even if it is not utf-8
             'baselocation' : basepath(request),
             'userid': request.user.id,
             'title': self.text.title,
diff --git a/annotations/templates/annotations/vue.html b/annotations/templates/annotations/vue.html
index 3e6dc76d..ea88c7d8 100644
--- a/annotations/templates/annotations/vue.html
+++ b/annotations/templates/annotations/vue.html
@@ -231,7 +231,7 @@
             var USER_NAME = '{{ user.username }}';
             var PROJECT_ID = '{{ project.id }}';
             var PROJECT_NAME = '{{ project.name }}';
-            var TEXT_CONTENT = `{{ content|safe }}`;
+            var TEXT_CONTENT = `{{ content|safe }}`;  // the safe tag suppresses unicode errors
             var BASE_URL = '{{ base_url }}';
 
         // Appellator is the text annotation application. Even though we load
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 5ffd2911..f3cd6e7d 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -39,4 +39,5 @@ Unidecode==0.4.20
 urllib3==1.19.1
 xmltodict==0.10.2
 dicttoxml==1.6.6
-six==1.10.0
\ No newline at end of file
+six==1.10.0
+