unicode symbol processing

[Pavel_47]

Hello,

While scarping web page I've faced problem of recognized unicode symbols.
Here is original string:

Output:
978-1-4419-5905-8

Here is how it looks in read page:

Output:
----

And here is output when I execute text[ind0:ind1]:

Output:
\uf641\uf63f\uf640-\uf6dc-\uf63c\uf63c\uf6dc\uf641-\uf63d\uf641\uf639\uf63d-\uf640

So I have couple of questions:

1. How to detect that a particular fragment of text is not ASCII coded ?
   
2. How to convert it in ASCII ?
   

Thanks.