foreign characters

I have a flat file [csv] and have foreign characters[like � , �] in three fields.
Can somebody tell me how to get rid of these special characters?
It's very urgent because without this my process is failing.
Thanks in advance.
Angielina

By 'get rid of' do you mean just plain old delete?
Try something like this:

tr -dc '[:print:]' < filename > newfilename

what do i put in print place Jim. Do i type in the word...or is it part of command.