If you have a string as below, with unicode chars, you can print it, and get the unescaped version:
>>> s = \"äåö\" >>> s \'\\xc3\\xa4\\xc3
Another solution
s = ['äåö', 'äå'] encodedlist=', '.join(map(unicode, s)) print(u'[{}]'.format(encodedlist).encode('UTF-8'))
gives [äåö, äå]