Try Unicode::Map:

NAME
       Unicode::Map V0.112 - maps charsets from and to utf16 uni­
       code

SYNOPSIS
       use Unicode::Map();

       $Map = new Unicode::Map("ISO-8859-1");

       $utf16 = $Map -> to_unicode ("Hello world!");
         => $utf16 == "\0H\0e\0l\0l\0o\0 \0w\0o\0r\0l\0d\0!"

       $locale = $Map -> from_unicode ($utf16);
         => $locale == "Hello world!"
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you could then write something like this to read your unicode file (if it is utf16):

use strict;

use Unicode::Map;

my $Map = new Unicode::Map({ ID => "ISO-8859-1" });

while (<>) {
  print $Map->from_unicode($_);
}
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---- kurt