title: Non-ASCII characters in Matplotlib
body: <p>I have a problem displaying non-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII" rel="noreferrer">ASCII</a> characters in Matplotlib, these characters are rendered as small boxes instead of a proper font, it looks like (I filled these boxes with red paint to hightlight them): </p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/HSN1f.png" alt="Here is the image showing the problem"></p>
  
  <p>How do I fix it? </p>
  
  <p>A related question is <em><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2406700">Accented characters in Matplotlib</a></em>.</p>