Identifing The Format of Data File

Hello All,
We are receiving UTF-16 formatted file and when i vi the file in Linux OS i am seeing some weird characters, is this because in my .bashrc profile the language variable has been set to LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 and hence the reason i am not able to read the UTF-16 formatted file properly? or is this something else. Also this file has no end of line it seems not sure how the user would have generated this file with no end of line character. Please help.

Excerpt of data file:

ÿþ<^@?^@x^@m^@l^@ ^@v^@e^@r^@s^@i^@o^@n^@=^@"^@1^@.^@0^@"^@ ^@e^@n^@c^@o^@d^@i^@n^@g^@=^@"^@U^@T^@F^@-^@1^@6^@"^@ ^@?^@>^@<^@P^@r^@o^@v^@i^@d^@e^@r^@ ^@x^^@l^@n^@s^@=^@"^@h^@t^@t^@p^@:^@/^@/^@w^@w^@w^@.^@f^@c^@a^@.^@g^@o^@v^@/^@F^@C^@S^@L^@o^@a^@n^@s^@"^@ ^@x^@m^@l^@n^@s^@:^@x^@s^@i^@=^@"^@h^@t^@t^@p^@:^@/^@/^@w^@w^@w^@.^@w^@3^@.^@o^@r^@g^@/^@2^@0^@0^@1^@/^@X^@M^@L^@S^@c^@h^@e^@m^@a^@-^@i^@n^@s^@t^@a^@n^@c^@e^@"^@

2014-03-31_17_V2.5.XML" [readonly][noeol][converted] 2L, 18676154C

Thank you.

Try man chardet ("linux").

Try setting the locale to UTF16. Or use sth like iconv or recode .