Encoding problem with node.tpl.php
If the file is correctly saved as UTF-8, it should correctly handle Unicode characters. So far, I have had a problem with the saved file just because the editor I was using added the BOM ("Byte Order Mark") used to identify the encoding of the file, but the error was a different one.

Generally speaking, the Drupal way to have a translatable site is to use t() in your code, which requires the English string that will then be translated to the language set as default, basing on the translation provided to the Language module.

The code should be rather be similar to the following one:

&lt;?php if ($display_submitted): ?&gt;
  &lt;footer class="submitted"&gt;&lt;?php t('Submitted by !username on !datetime', array('!username' =&gt; $name, '!datetime' =&gt; $date)););&lt;/footer&gt;
&lt;?php endif; ?&gt;


The alternative is implementing hook_preprocess_node(&amp;$variables) (template_preprocess_page() in a theme), and initialize the variable $variables['submitted'] to the string you want to appear ("Submitted by !username on !datetime" in the code I shown before).