foreign characters

[prad]

sometimes people send me stuff with characters in different languages
which show up like \351 (acute e), from evil windoze systems.

when i save the file, emacs says that these items are not encodable
with message like this:

====
These default coding systems were tried to encode text
in the buffer `tmp.html':
  (utf-8-unix (3464 . 4194181) (6020 . 4194281) (14957 . 4194181)
  (15010 . 4194181) (16070 . 4194181) (16310 . 4194181) (16363
  . 4194181) (16659 . 4194181) (18246 . 4194181) (18988 . 4194181)
  (19990 . 4194193))
However, each of them encountered characters it couldn't encode:
  utf-8-unix cannot encode these: … é … … … … … … … … ...

Click on a character (or switch to this window by `M-x other-window'
and select the characters by RET) to jump to the place it appears,
where `C-u C-x =' will give information about it.

Select one of the safe coding systems listed below,
or cancel the writing with C-g and edit the buffer
====

so if i push tab a whole list of different languages coding systems come
up. i tried picking mule-unix one, but the character still stays as \351
or \205 or whatever (though the file saves).

what can i do to have emacs substitute the correct letter representation
instead of looking at \351?

-- 
in friendship,
prad