diff --git a/Modules/main.c b/Modules/main.c
index 4899378..d8c5172 100644
--- a/Modules/main.c
+++ b/Modules/main.c
@@ -495,7 +495,7 @@
             /* Use utf-8 on Mac OS X */
             unicode = PyUnicode_FromString(p);
 #else
-            unicode = PyUnicode_DecodeLocale(p, 1);
+            unicode = PyUnicode_DecodeLocale(p, "surrogateescape");
 #endif
             if (unicode == NULL) {
                 /* ignore errors */