--- contrib/python/pytest/py2/_pytest/compat.py	(index)
+++ contrib/python/pytest/py2/_pytest/compat.py	(working tree)
@@ -243,7 +243,7 @@ if _PY3:
         if isinstance(val, bytes):
             ret = _bytes_to_ascii(val)
         else:
-            ret = val.encode("unicode_escape").decode("ascii")
+            ret = val
         return _translate_non_printable(ret)
 
 
@@ -262,11 +262,11 @@ else:
         """
         if isinstance(val, bytes):
             try:
-                ret = val.decode("ascii")
+                ret = val.decode("utf-8")
             except UnicodeDecodeError:
-                ret = val.encode("string-escape").decode("ascii")
+                ret = val.decode("utf-8", "ignore")
         else:
-            ret = val.encode("unicode-escape").decode("ascii")
+            ret = val.encode("utf-8", "replace").decode("utf-8")
         return _translate_non_printable(ret)