Get the encoding of the console the script is currently running in (plus a few other lines for debugging)

get-console-encoding.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys, locale;
print(sys.stdout.encoding);
print(locale.getpreferredencoding());

# http://www.macfreek.nl/memory/Encoding_of_Python_stdout#StreamWriter_Wrapper_around_Stdout
if sys.stdout.encoding != 'UTF-8':
    sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter('utf-8')(sys.stdout.buffer, 'strict')
if sys.stderr.encoding != 'UTF-8':
    sys.stderr = codecs.getwriter('utf-8')(sys.stderr.buffer, 'strict')

print(u"\u201C" + "Hello world!" + u"\u201D")
print("\u201CHello world!\u201D")