dealing with multiple languages

[n8w]

what is the best way to store data in my database if people might be posting info in multiple languages (English, Spanish, etc)?

 

should my in and out fucntion look something like this?

//in- putting data into the database
function bad_chars($text){
$text = trim($text);
        $text =   utf8_encode ($text)
$text = mysql_real_escape_string($text);
return $text;
}


//out - pulling data out of the database
function converttohtml($text){
$text = stripslashes($text);
        $text =   utf8_decode ($text)
return $text;
}