The help here worked great for me.
I've installed v1.3.9h like two weeks ago, the tutorial worked great to get Spanish language running.
Two small notes: Database was allready utf8 collation; also, query_factory.php comes with some logic to assign tf8, so no need to make this change:
//BOF changed for utf-8
mysql_query('SET NAMES "utf8"', $this->link);
//EOF changed for utf-8.

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Aside from that, to beginners like me I recommend making sure you work one language at a time, one file at a time -making a safe coopy of your original file-.
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Finally, using View | Character Encoding to make sure you're encoding right from the start, was of great help to me.

Thank you so much !!

Carlos