diff --git a/pkg/reporting/pdf.go b/pkg/reporting/pdf.go
index c2e493875..7cd6e30fb 100644
--- a/pkg/reporting/pdf.go
+++ b/pkg/reporting/pdf.go
@@ -156,6 +156,14 @@ func (g *PDFGenerator) Generate(data *ReportData) ([]byte, error) {
 	pdf.SetMargins(20, 20, 20)
 	pdf.SetAutoPageBreak(true, 25)
 
+	// Core fonts are cp1252: translate the UTF-8 report strings (AI
+	// narrative prose, resource names, alert messages) once up front so
+	// em dashes and curly quotes render as glyphs instead of mojibake.
+	// The translator is built per call because fpdf's closure reuses an
+	// internal buffer and this generator is shared across concurrent
+	// requests; see pdf_codepage.go.
+	translateReportStrings(data, pdf.UnicodeTranslatorFromDescriptor(""))
+
 	// Cover page
 	g.writeCoverPage(pdf, data)
 
@@ -1677,6 +1685,10 @@ func (g *PDFGenerator) GenerateMulti(data *MultiReportData) ([]byte, error) {
 	pdf.SetMargins(20, 20, 20)
 	pdf.SetAutoPageBreak(true, 25)
 
+	// Translate UTF-8 strings to the cp1252 space the core fonts expect;
+	// see the matching call in Generate and pdf_codepage.go.
+	translateMultiReportStrings(data, pdf.UnicodeTranslatorFromDescriptor(""))
+
 	// Page 1: Cover page
 	g.writeMultiCoverPage(pdf, data)
 
diff --git a/pkg/reporting/pdf_codepage.go b/pkg/reporting/pdf_codepage.go
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..1ddc7057b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkg/reporting/pdf_codepage.go
@@ -0,0 +1,97 @@
+package reporting
+
+import "reflect"
+
+// The PDF renderer uses fpdf core fonts (Arial), which read text as cp1252
+// bytes. Free-form strings entering ReportData/MultiReportData are UTF-8:
+// AI narrative prose full of em dashes and curly quotes, user-controlled
+// resource names, alert messages, brand display names. Writing them
+// untranslated renders mojibake in the PDF (an em dash becomes "—").
+//
+// translateReportStrings and translateMultiReportStrings rewrite every
+// reachable string field through fpdf's cp1252 translator once, before
+// rendering, so individual write sites never have to think about encoding.
+// Reflection (rather than a hand-maintained field list) keeps newly added
+// narrative, branding, and enrichment fields covered without anyone having
+// to remember this layer exists. Runes cp1252 cannot represent degrade to
+// "." (fpdf's documented behaviour), which is unfortunate but readable;
+// raw UTF-8 bytes are neither.
+//
+// The translator must be created per Generate call: fpdf's translator
+// closure reuses an internal buffer, so it is not safe for concurrent use,
+// and one PDFGenerator is shared across concurrent requests. Translation
+// mutates the data in place; report data is built per request, so no caller
+// observes the rewrite.
+
+// translateReportStrings rewrites every string field reachable from data
+// into the cp1252 byte space the core PDF fonts expect. tr is the output of
+// pdf.UnicodeTranslatorFromDescriptor for the document being generated.
+func translateReportStrings(data *ReportData, tr func(string) string) {
+	if data == nil || tr == nil {
+		return
+	}
+	translateStringFields(reflect.ValueOf(data).Elem(), tr, map[uintptr]bool{})
+}
+
+// translateMultiReportStrings is the fleet-report counterpart of
+// translateReportStrings, covering the fleet narrative and every
+// per-resource ReportData.
+func translateMultiReportStrings(data *MultiReportData, tr func(string) string) {
+	if data == nil || tr == nil {
+		return
+	}
+	translateStringFields(reflect.ValueOf(data).Elem(), tr, map[uintptr]bool{})
+}
+
+// translateStringFields walks v depth-first and rewrites every settable
+// string through tr. visited guards pointer aliasing (e.g. a *ReportBrand
+// shared between MultiReportData and its per-resource ReportData entries):
+// cp1252 translation is not idempotent, because a second pass would read
+// the raw high bytes as invalid UTF-8 and flatten them to ".".
+func translateStringFields(v reflect.Value, tr func(string) string, visited map[uintptr]bool) {
+	switch v.Kind() {
+	case reflect.String:
+		if v.CanSet() {
+			v.SetString(tr(v.String()))
+		}
+	case reflect.Pointer:
+		if v.IsNil() || visited[v.Pointer()] {
+			return
+		}
+		visited[v.Pointer()] = true
+		translateStringFields(v.Elem(), tr, visited)
+	case reflect.Struct:
+		t := v.Type()
+		for i := 0; i < v.NumField(); i++ {
+			// Unexported fields (time.Time internals) are read-only
+			// through reflection and hold nothing user-visible.
+			if !t.Field(i).IsExported() {
+				continue
+			}
+			translateStringFields(v.Field(i), tr, visited)
+		}
+	case reflect.Slice, reflect.Array:
+		for i := 0; i < v.Len(); i++ {
+			translateStringFields(v.Index(i), tr, visited)
+		}
+	case reflect.Map:
+		// Keys stay untouched: they are lookup identifiers (metric
+		// names), and translating them would break renderer lookups.
+		for _, k := range v.MapKeys() {
+			mv := v.MapIndex(k)
+			switch mv.Kind() {
+			case reflect.String:
+				v.SetMapIndex(k, reflect.ValueOf(tr(mv.String())).Convert(mv.Type()))
+			case reflect.Struct:
+				// Map values are not addressable; translate a
+				// copy and store it back.
+				cp := reflect.New(mv.Type()).Elem()
+				cp.Set(mv)
+				translateStringFields(cp, tr, visited)
+				v.SetMapIndex(k, cp)
+			case reflect.Pointer, reflect.Slice, reflect.Map:
+				translateStringFields(mv, tr, visited)
+			}
+		}
+	}
+}
diff --git a/pkg/reporting/pdf_codepage_test.go b/pkg/reporting/pdf_codepage_test.go
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..5055a40e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkg/reporting/pdf_codepage_test.go
@@ -0,0 +1,126 @@
+package reporting
+
+import (
+	"strings"
+	"testing"
+	"time"
+)
+
+// Free-form report strings arrive as UTF-8 but fpdf core fonts read cp1252
+// bytes. These tests render narratives full of typographic punctuation (the
+// exact characters AI narrators emit) plus a non-ASCII resource name, then
+// assert the content streams carry cp1252 encodings rather than raw UTF-8
+// byte sequences, which a PDF viewer displays as mojibake (an em dash
+// becomes "—", an é becomes "é").
+
+func TestGenerate_NarrativeUTF8RendersWithoutMojibake(t *testing.T) {
+	now := time.Now()
+	data := &ReportData{
+		Title:        "Monthly Review — “Production”",
+		ResourceType: "vm",
+		ResourceID:   "vm-7f8b2b6cd98c2089",
+		Resource:     &ResourceInfo{Name: "café-web-01", Status: "running"},
+		Start:        now.Add(-time.Hour),
+		End:          now,
+		GeneratedAt:  now,
+		Metrics:      map[string][]MetricDataPoint{},
+		Summary: MetricSummary{ByMetric: map[string]MetricStats{
+			"cpu": {Avg: 10, Max: 20, Count: 60},
+		}},
+		TotalPoints: 60,
+		Narrative: &Narrative{
+			Source:           NarrativeSourceAI,
+			HealthStatus:     "HEALTHY",
+			HealthMessage:    "Quiet period — no incidents recorded",
+			ExecutiveSummary: "Utilisation stayed “well within” limits — the host’s capacity is sufficient.",
+			Observations:     []NarrativeBullet{{Text: "CPU averaged 10% — flat across the window", Severity: NarrativeSeverityOK}},
+			Recommendations:  []string{"Keep monitoring — no changes required"},
+			Disclaimer:       "Narrative generated by Pulse Assistant.",
+		},
+		Alerts: []AlertInfo{{
+			Type:      "cpu",
+			Level:     "warning",
+			Message:   "CPU high — sustained above threshold",
+			StartTime: now.Add(-30 * time.Minute),
+		}},
+	}
+	assertNoMojibake(t, renderExecutiveSummaryText(t, data),
+		[]string{"—", "“", "”", "’", "café-web-01"})
+}
+
+func TestGenerateMulti_FleetNarrativeUTF8RendersWithoutMojibake(t *testing.T) {
+	now := time.Now()
+	multi := &MultiReportData{
+		Title:       "Fleet Review — “June”",
+		Start:       now.Add(-time.Hour),
+		End:         now,
+		GeneratedAt: now,
+		Resources: []*ReportData{{
+			ResourceID:   "vm-a",
+			ResourceType: "vm",
+			Resource:     &ResourceInfo{Name: "café-web-01", Status: "running"},
+			Summary:      MetricSummary{ByMetric: map[string]MetricStats{"cpu": {Avg: 10, Max: 15, Count: 60}}},
+			TotalPoints:  60,
+		}},
+		FleetNarrative: &FleetNarrative{
+			Source:        NarrativeSourceAI,
+			HealthStatus:  "HEALTHY",
+			HealthMessage: "Fleet stable — “no outliers” this period",
+			Outliers: []FleetOutlier{{
+				ResourceID:   "vm-a",
+				ResourceName: "café-web-01",
+				Reason:       "Memory averaging 91.2% — sustained pressure",
+				Severity:     NarrativeSeverityWarning,
+			}},
+			Disclaimer: "Narrative generated by Pulse Assistant.",
+		},
+	}
+	assertNoMojibake(t, renderFleetSummaryText(t, multi),
+		[]string{"—", "“", "”", "café-web-01"})
+}
+
+// assertNoMojibake decodes the raw content-stream bytes the way a PDF
+// viewer decodes core-font text (cp1252/WinAnsi) and asserts the
+// typographic characters survived translation. Untranslated UTF-8 decodes
+// to fragments led by "â€" (punctuation range) or "Ã" (latin-1 range).
+func assertNoMojibake(t *testing.T, raw string, want []string) {
+	t.Helper()
+	rendered := decodeWinAnsi(raw)
+	for _, frag := range []string{"â€", "é"} {
+		if strings.Contains(rendered, frag) {
+			t.Errorf("rendered PDF text contains mojibake %q:\n%s", frag, rendered)
+		}
+	}
+	for _, w := range want {
+		if !strings.Contains(rendered, w) {
+			t.Errorf("rendered PDF text missing %q after cp1252 translation:\n%s", w, rendered)
+		}
+	}
+}
+
+// winAnsiSpecials covers the 0x80-0x9F block where cp1252 places the
+// typographic punctuation that latin-1 lacks; every other byte maps to the
+// identical Unicode code point.
+var winAnsiSpecials = map[byte]rune{
+	0x80: '€', 0x82: '‚', 0x83: 'ƒ', 0x84: '„', 0x85: '…', 0x86: '†', 0x87: '‡',
+	0x88: 'ˆ', 0x89: '‰', 0x8A: 'Š', 0x8B: '‹', 0x8C: 'Œ', 0x8E: 'Ž',
+	0x91: '‘', 0x92: '’', 0x93: '“', 0x94: '”', 0x95: '•', 0x96: '–', 0x97: '—',
+	0x98: '˜', 0x99: '™', 0x9A: 'š', 0x9B: '›', 0x9C: 'œ', 0x9E: 'ž', 0x9F: 'Ÿ',
+}
+
+func decodeWinAnsi(s string) string {
+	var b strings.Builder
+	for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
+		c := s[i]
+		if c < 0x80 {
+			b.WriteByte(c)
+			continue
+		}
+		if r, ok := winAnsiSpecials[c]; ok {
+			b.WriteRune(r)
+			continue
+		}
+		b.WriteRune(rune(c))
+	}
+	return b.String()
+}