diff --git a/composer.json b/composer.json
index 8e659b9..6ed9aa4 100644
--- a/composer.json
+++ b/composer.json
@@ -12,7 +12,8 @@
     "type": "library",
     "license": "MIT",
     "require": {
-        "php": ">=7.0.0"
+        "php": ">=7.0.0",
+        "ext-mbstring": "*"
     },
    "autoload": {
         "psr-0": {
diff --git a/src/FastXml/Parser.php b/src/FastXml/Parser.php
index 0ceaa38..4dc3649 100644
--- a/src/FastXml/Parser.php
+++ b/src/FastXml/Parser.php
@@ -188,7 +188,7 @@ public function endTag($parser, $name)
      */
     public function convertEntities($content)
     {
-        $table = array_map('utf8_encode', array_flip(
+        $table = array_map(function($str){/*return utf8_encode($str);*/return mb_convert_encoding($str,'UTF-8','ISO-8859-1');}, array_flip(
             array_diff(
                 get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES), 
                 get_html_translation_table(HTML_SPECIALCHARS)