Convert UCS-2 encoded text with 16-bit characters into 8-bit characters of the current Ansi codepage of your Windows system, on the command line with the free Open Source tool Swiss File Knife.

- download the free Swiss File Knife Base from Sourceforge.
- open the Windows CMD command line, Mac OS X Terminal or Linux shell.
- OS X : type mv sfk-mac-64.exe sfk and chmod +x sfk then ./sfk
- Linux: type mv sfk-linux-64.exe sfk    and chmod +x sfk then ./sfk
  OS X and Linux syntax may differ, check the help within the tool.

sfk wtoa in.txt
sfk iwtoa

convert UCS-2 encoded text with 16-bit characters
into 8-bit characters of the current Ansi codepage
of your Windows system.

options
  -nostop      if some chars cannot be converted
               then do not stop, show no warning,
               set return code 1 instead of 9.
  -tofile x    write output to file x
  -codes       print character codes
  -be          big endian input
  -le          little endian input
  -codepage=n  change codepage. for details
               type: sfk listcodes

command chaining support
  iwtoa accepts binary input from
  previous commands like xed.

aliases
  sfk ucstoansi    same as wtoa
  sfk iucstoansi   same as iwtoa

return code
   0 = ok, all characters converted.
   if conversion is incomplete:
   default: rc 9, chaining stops.
   -nostop: rc 1.

see also
  sfk sysinfo   tell active codepages
  sfk atow      Ansi to wide chars
  sfk wtou      convert to UTF-8
  sfk utow      UTF-8 to wide chars

examples
  sfk wtoa in.txt
    if in.txt contains wide character data
    print this as Ansi text to terminal.
    because characters must be converted to
    a DOS codepage for terminal output
    it is not sure that every accent or umlaut
    character is printed as expected.
  sfk wtoa in.txt -tofile out.txt
    write output to out.txt, keeping the Ansi
    encoding as is. text can then be viewed
    and edited by a text editor like Notepad++.
  sfk load in.txt +iwtoa +filter -+foo
    get all lines containing "foo".

read more about all sfk functions here.