Handling weird multibyte encodings and converting them to proper utf-8

uncouple.rb

def uncoupleEncodings text
	text = text.force_encoding 'ASCII-8BIT'
	uncoupledText = text.
			gsub("#{226.chr}#{128.chr}#{152.chr}","'").
			gsub("#{226.chr}#{128.chr}#{153.chr}","'").
			gsub("#{226.chr}#{128.chr}#{156.chr}",'"').
			gsub("#{226.chr}#{128.chr}#{157.chr}",'"').
			gsub("#{226.chr}#{128.chr}#{147.chr}","--").
			gsub("#{226.chr}#{128.chr}#{148.chr}","---").
			gsub("#{226.chr}#{128.chr}#{162.chr}","*").
			gsub("#{226.chr}#{128.chr}#{166.chr}","...").
			gsub("#{194.chr}#{183.chr}","*")
	return uncoupledText.force_encoding 'UTF-8'
end