Characters different in RcURL/getURL than in browser - r

Question

I am looking to extract foreign-language text from a website. The following code (hopefully self-contained) will demonstrate the problem:
require(RCurl)
require(XML)
options(RCurlOptions = list(cainfo = system.file("CurlSSL", "cacert.pem", package = "RCurl")))
agent="Chrome 39.0.2171.71 (64-bit)"
curl = getCurlHandle()
curlSetOpt(cookiejar = 'cookies.txt' ,useragent = agent,followlocation = TRUE , autoreferer = TRUE , curl = curl)
html <-getURL('http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/psearch/result12.aspx?dbsl=1008', maxredirs = as.integer(20), followlocation = TRUE, curl = curl)
work <- htmlTreeParse(html, useInternal = TRUE)
table <- xpathApply(work, "//table[#id = 'ctl00_ContPlaceHolderMain_DataList1' ]//font|//table[#id = 'ctl00_ContPlaceHolderMain_DataList1' ]//p", xmlValue) #this one captured some mess in 13
table[[2]]
Where the first bunch of characters in the console printout appear for me as ¸Ã\u0089Ã\u0092 iÃ\u0089{Ã\u0089xÃ\u0089 Ã\u008aºÃ\u0089Eònù®ú.
Note that if I go to the actual page (http://bit.ly/1AcE9Gs), and view the page source and find the second opening <font tag (corresponding to the second list item in my table, or inspect the element near the first Hindi characters) what renders in the page source looks something like this: ¸ÉÒ iÉ{ÉxÉ ÊºÉEònù®ú (nù¨Énù¨É): which is what I want.
Anyone know why this might occur, and/or how to fix? Something to do with encodings in R, or RcURL? I can see all the way up to the initial getURL call that the characters are different like this, so it doesn't have to do with passing from the html text to xpathApply.
I am using MAC OSX 10.9.3, Chrome browser (for viewing the actual page), R 3.1.1.
If interested, see a related question on xpathApply here: R and xpathApply -- removing duplicates from nested html tags
Thanks!

Answer 1

Add encoding options to htmlParse and getURL:
require(RCurl)
require(XML)
options(RCurlOptions = list(cainfo = system.file("CurlSSL", "cacert.pem", package = "RCurl")))
agent="Chrome 39.0.2171.71 (64-bit)"
curl = getCurlHandle()
curlSetOpt(cookiejar = 'cookies.txt' ,useragent = agent,followlocation = TRUE , autoreferer = TRUE , curl = curl)
html <-getURL('http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/psearch/result12.aspx?dbsl=1008'
, maxredirs = as.integer(20), followlocation = TRUE, curl = curl
, .encoding = 'UTF-8')
work <- htmlParse(html, encoding = 'UTF-8')
table <- xpathApply(work, "//table[#id = 'ctl00_ContPlaceHolderMain_DataList1' ]//font|//table[#id = 'ctl00_ContPlaceHolderMain_DataList1' ]//p", xmlValue) #this one captured some mess in 13
> table[[2]]
[1] "¸ÉÒ iÉ{ÉxÉ ÊºÉEònù®ú (nù¨Énù¨É):\r\nºÉ¦ÉÉ{ÉÊiÉ ¨É½þÉänùªÉ, {ɽþ±Éä ÊnùxÉ ¨ÉèÆ ¤ÉÉä±É\r\n®ú½þÉ lÉÉ iÉÉä ¨ÉèÆxÉä =iiÉ®ú {ÉÚ´ÉÒÇ ¦ÉÉ®úiÉ Eòä\r\n+ÉiÉÆEò´ÉÉnù {É®ú =ºÉ ÊnùxÉ nùÉä {ɽþ±ÉÖ+ÉäÆ EòÉ =±±ÉäJÉ\r\nÊEòªÉÉ lÉÉ* +ÉVÉ ¦ÉÒ ¨ÉèÆ, ÊVÉºÉ EòÉ®úhÉ ºÉä +ÉiÉÆEò´ÉÉnù\r\n{ÉènùÉ ½þÖ+É, =ºÉEòä Ê´É¹ÉªÉ ¨ÉäÆ lÉÉäc÷É ºÉÉ =±±ÉäJÉ\r\nEò°üÆMÉÉ*"

Answer 2

Here's an alternative implementation using rvest. Not only is the code simpler, but you don't have to do anything with the encoding, rvest figures it out for you.
library("rvest")
url <- "http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/psearch/result12.aspx?dbsl=1008"
search <- html(url)
search %>%
html_node("#ctl00_ContPlaceHolderMain_DataList1") %>%
html_nodes("font, p") %>%
html_text() %>%
.[[2]]
#> [1] "¸ÉÒ iÉ{ÉxÉ ÊºÉEònù®ú (nù¨Énù¨É):\r\nºÉ¦ÉÉ{ÉÊiÉ ¨É½þÉänùªÉ, ...