Then you have a mismatch of charsets in your data... It can be fixed, but there is some trial and error required.
I strongly suggest starting with a backup copy of your database.This post indicates what is needed - the thread contains the detailed steps in how we arrived there:
http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php/topic,77017.msg373366.html#msg373366Best suggestion I can give:
We know usernames displays properly when retrieved with charset utf8... Need to identify the charset that will properly display the remaining info... I'd suggest trying different values for the 'dbcharset' variable you added to see what works (of course usernames likely won't display properly) I'd start with 'latin1' - and go from there...
A 'SHOW CHARACTER SET' command can be used to give you the valid choices.
The SQL command to
correct EACH column (from the other thread) would be:
UPDATE tablename SET columnname= CONVERT(CAST(CONVERT(columnname USING charset) AS binary) USING utf8);
tablename, columnname, and charset need to be set appropriately...
Breaking that command up - inner CONVERT will read the data using the specified charset (whatever worked to properly display the data) - it then CASTs it as binary data - and then CONVERTs it to UTF8 - and assigns the value back to the original field - for the entire table - all in one statement.
The only rows that will show as updated are those with incorrectly translated data.