Identifying the conductors in a light fixture
Generally, one of the three wires should be ground, one hot, and one neutral. You should be able to tell which is which by measuring the resistance from each to different parts of the chandelier using a voltmeter with a resistance scale. I'll assume that this chandelier uses standard screw-in bulbs.

First, a sanity check: none of the three wires should be connected to any other (i.e. there should be infinite resistance between any two of the wires).

The ground wire should be connected to the metal body of the chandelier. The hot wire should be connected to the button on the bottom of each lamp socket. The neutral wire should be connected to the threaded sleeve at the side of each lamp socket. (Here's an explanation of hot versus neutral in lamp sockets.)

Note: The chandelier may instead be wired with two hots and a neutral, with one hot going to a third of the bulbs and the other hot to the other two-thirds, giving an easy way to adjust brightness with a pair of switches. If you can't find a ground wire, you might check for this.

Having said all that, get the wiring wrong and you'll have a nice, suspended electrocution hazard. So, if you aren't confident you can figure this out correctly, and in particular if your test results don't make sense to you, do not let it slide; binning may be the way to go.