> I am not sure whether the problems are something I have created in the database but am more inclined to think that the issue stems from the pumping software not being able to convert and represent characters appropriately for unicode use since I never had this problem when lilimiting text to ASCII characters with codes below 128.

I doubt that this is problem in pumping software as itself, rather
than the way you use it.
If you created database with UTF-8 charset and want to pump data in
different languages, you should do it step-by-step.
At first, set up connection using German character set and pump
German texts. Then set up connection using Finnish character set and
pump Finnish text. Continue it until all texts are inside.
Don't ever try to use character set NONE or UTF-8 directly because,
indeed, pumping software have no idea how to convert national character
sets into them.

SY, SD.