diff --git a/mesonbuild/mesonmain.py b/mesonbuild/mesonmain.py
index 7236d1a8a..037d76c8e 100644
--- a/mesonbuild/mesonmain.py
+++ b/mesonbuild/mesonmain.py
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ import os.path
 import importlib
 import traceback
 import argparse
+import codecs
 
 from . import mesonlib
 from . import mlog
@@ -150,6 +151,17 @@ def run_script_command(script_name, script_args):
         mlog.exception(e)
         return 1
 
+def ensure_stdout_accepts_unicode():
+    if sys.stdout.encoding and not sys.stdout.encoding.upper().startswith('UTF-'):
+        if sys.version_info >= (3, 7):
+            sys.stdout.reconfigure(errors='surrogateescape')
+        else:
+            sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter('utf-8')(sys.stdout.detach(),
+                                                   errors='surrogateescape')
+            sys.stdout.encoding = 'UTF-8'
+            if not hasattr(sys.stdout, 'buffer'):
+                sys.stdout.buffer = sys.stdout.raw if hasattr(sys.stdout, 'raw') else sys.stdout
+
 def run(original_args, mainfile):
     if sys.version_info < (3, 5):
         print('Meson works correctly only with python 3.5+.')
@@ -157,6 +169,11 @@ def run(original_args, mainfile):
         print('Please update your environment')
         return 1
 
+    # Meson gets confused if stdout can't output Unicode, if the
+    # locale isn't Unicode, just force stdout to accept it. This tries
+    # to emulate enough of PEP 540 to work elsewhere.
+    ensure_stdout_accepts_unicode()
+
     # https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/3653
     if sys.platform.lower() == 'msys':
         mlog.error('This python3 seems to be msys/python on MSYS2 Windows, which is known to have path semantics incompatible with Meson')
diff --git a/mesonbuild/mtest.py b/mesonbuild/mtest.py
index 8ce95383b..b4bd4f233 100644
--- a/mesonbuild/mtest.py
+++ b/mesonbuild/mtest.py
@@ -647,8 +647,8 @@ Timeout:            %4d
         self.logfilename = logfile_base + '.txt'
         self.jsonlogfilename = logfile_base + '.json'
 
-        self.jsonlogfile = open(self.jsonlogfilename, 'w', encoding='utf-8')
-        self.logfile = open(self.logfilename, 'w', encoding='utf-8')
+        self.jsonlogfile = open(self.jsonlogfilename, 'w', encoding='utf-8', errors='replace')
+        self.logfile = open(self.logfilename, 'w', encoding='utf-8', errors='surrogateescape')
 
         self.logfile.write('Log of Meson test suite run on %s\n\n'
                            % datetime.datetime.now().isoformat())