I do not have that much control of the remote server to install extensions, php is 5.3.8. But I've noticed that there is possible to split utf-8 string with pcre.
So for example: preg_split('@@u','bücher',-1,PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
gives: Array ( [0] => b, [1] => ├╝, [2] => c, [3] => h, [4] => e, [5] => r )
or for chinese word: 中国/中华 it gives: Array ( [0] => ńŞş, [1] => ňŤŻ, [2] => /, [3] => ńŞş, [4] => ňŹÄ )
(the results are from non-unicode display), but it is clear that it is possible to split an utf-8
string without international extensions and then (I think) it should be possible to get character codes and do calculations with them to create ascii url.