Quote:
Is there a proper way to be able to use UTF8 in bash and awk?

Dunno. But if they're single-byte characters, then find their hexcodes and use:
Code:
   String Constants
       String constants in AWK are sequences of characters enclosed between double  quotes  (").   Within
       strings, certain escape sequences are recognized, as in C.  These are:
       \\   A literal backslash.
       \a   The “alert” character; usually the ASCII BEL character.
       \b   backspace.
       \f   form-feed.
       \n   newline.
       \r   carriage return.
       \t   horizontal tab.
       \v   vertical tab.
       \xhex digits
            The  character  represented by the string of hexadecimal digits following the \x.  As in ANSI
            C, all following hexadecimal digits are considered part of the escape sequence.   (This  fea‐
            ture should tell us something about language design by committee.)  E.g., "\x1B" is the ASCII
            ESC (escape) character.
       \ddd The character represented by the 1-, 2-, or 3-digit sequence of octal digits.   E.g.,  "\033"
            is the ASCII ESC (escape) character.
       \c   The literal character c.
       The  escape  sequences may also be used inside constant regular expressions (e.g., /[ \t\f\n\r\v]/
       matches whitespace characters).
       In compatibility mode, the characters represented by octal and hexadecimal  escape  sequences  are
       treated  literally  when  used  in  regular  expression constants.  Thus, /a\52b/ is equivalent to
       /a\*b/.