When trying to tick the item:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/alacarte/Alacarte/MainWindow.py", line 343, in on_item_tree_show_toggled
    self.editor.setVisible(item, True)
  File "/usr/share/alacarte/Alacarte/MenuEditor.py", line 182, in setVisible
    self.writeItem(item, NoDisplay=False)
  File "/usr/share/alacarte/Alacarte/MenuEditor.py", line 408, in writeItem
    f.write(contents)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/codecs.py", line 691, in write
    return self.writer.write(data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/codecs.py", line 351, in write
    data, consumed = self.encode(object, self.errors)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xd8 in position 86: ordinal not in range(128)

When trying to delete the item:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/alacarte/Alacarte/MainWindow.py", line 438, in on_delete_button_clicked
    self.on_edit_delete_activate(None)
  File "/usr/share/alacarte/Alacarte/MainWindow.py", line 287, in on_edit_delete_activate
    self.editor.deleteItem(item)
  File "/usr/share/alacarte/Alacarte/MenuEditor.py", line 275, in deleteItem
    self.writeItem(item, Hidden=True)
  File "/usr/share/alacarte/Alacarte/MenuEditor.py", line 408, in writeItem
    f.write(contents)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/codecs.py", line 691, in write
    return self.writer.write(data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/codecs.py", line 351, in write
    data, consumed = self.encode(object, self.errors)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xd8 in position 86: ordinal not in range(128)