XF 2.3 Issue with Arabic Text Import from vBulletin (latin1) to XenForo 2.x

[MesterPerfect]

Hello,

I'm facing a persistent issue when importing databases from vBulletin to XenForo 2.x. This issue specifically affects databases with a character set of latin1 or latin1_swedish_ci and involves Arabic text.

The Problem:​

• When importing, Arabic text either:
  1. Appears as unreadable characters, like this:
     

     ÇáãæÇÖíÚ ÇáÏÚÇÆíÉ æãæÇÖíÚ ÇáÇÚáÇäÇÊ ÊÖÇÝ Ýì ÇáÞÓã ÇáãÎÕÕ á

  2. Shows up as a series of question marks:
     

     ????????????????????

This issue occurs exclusively with XenForo 2.x and does not affect imports involving other languages.

Observations:​

• When using XenForo 1.5 (XF1.5) for the import, the process works perfectly, and Arabic text is imported without issues.
• However, in cases where forums have been upgraded to vBulletin 5.x, it's not possible to use XF1.5 for the import, leaving no workaround.

What I've Tried:​

1. Ensuring the database character set is set to latin1 during the import process.
2. Attempting conversions to utf8 before and after the import.
3. Manually setting SET NAMES to latin1 during the import.

Unfortunately, none of these methods resolve the issue in XenForo 2.x.