The database and tables of Translate5 must be configured with the charset utf8mb4 and the collation utf8mb4_unicode_ci.
If this is not the case the following steps can be done to fix it.
First of all create a DB backup!
-- make an overview which tables are not in utf8. If there are any translate5 related tables not in utf8 see the below steps to convert. SELECT SCHEMA_NAME, DEFAULT_CHARACTER_SET_NAME, DEFAULT_COLLATION_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA; SELECT TABLE_CATALOG,TABLE_SCHEMA,TABLE_NAME,COLUMN_NAME,COLLATION_NAME,CHARACTER_SET_NAME from information_schema.columns where CHARACTER_SET_NAME != 'utf8mb4'; -- convert the default DB charset: ALTER DATABASE YOUR_DB_NAME CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; -- convert the tables which are not in the right charset: ALTER TABLE YOUR_TABLE_NAME_HERE CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;