diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 420cadc484..e0ea1222ea 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@
 
 ## BUG FIXES
 
+1. If `fread()` discards a single line footer, the warning message which includes the discarded text now displays any non-ASCII characters correctly on Windows, [#4747](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/4747). Thanks to @shrektan for reporting and the PR.
+
 ## NOTES
 
 
diff --git a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
index 390fadd0f3..a6013a3a11 100644
--- a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
+++ b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
@@ -17246,3 +17246,15 @@ class(e) = "foo"
 dt = data.table(id=1, funs=list(e))
 test(2161.2, dt[, .(funs), by=id], dt)
 
+# fread message display non-ASCII messages correctly, #4747
+x = "fa\u00e7ile"; Encoding(x) = "UTF-8"
+# should only run this test if the native encoding can represent latin1 correctly
+if (identical(x, enc2native(x))) {
+  txt = enc2utf8(sprintf("A,B\n%s,%s\n%s", x, x, x))
+  txt2 = iconv(txt, "UTF-8", "latin1")
+  out = data.table(A = x, B = x)
+  test(2162.1, fread(text = txt, encoding = 'UTF-8'), out,
+               warning="Discarded single-line footer: <<fa\u00e7ile>>")
+  test(2162.2, fread(text = txt2, encoding = 'Latin-1'), out,
+               warning="Discarded single-line footer: <<fa\u00e7ile>>")
+}
diff --git a/src/fread.c b/src/fread.c
index 5b9bac3f03..7b1ba6df03 100644
--- a/src/fread.c
+++ b/src/fread.c
@@ -2575,7 +2575,7 @@ int freadMain(freadMainArgs _args) {
     if (ch==eof) {
       // whitespace at the end of the file is always skipped ok
     } else {
-      const char *skippedFooter = ch;
+      const char *skippedFooter = ENC2NATIVE(ch);
       // detect if it's a single line footer. Commonly the row count from SQL queries.
       while (ch<eof && *ch!='\n' && *ch!='\r') ch++;
       while (ch<eof && isspace(*ch)) ch++;
diff --git a/src/fread.h b/src/fread.h
index e5eff12263..0f365511cc 100644
--- a/src/fread.h
+++ b/src/fread.h
@@ -7,8 +7,13 @@
 #include "myomp.h"
 #ifdef DTPY
   #include "py_fread.h"
+  #define ENC2NATIVE(s) (s)
 #else
   #include "freadR.h"
+  extern cetype_t ienc;
+  // R's message functions only take C's char pointer not SEXP, where encoding info can't be stored
+  // so must convert the error message char to native encoding first in order to correctly display in R
+  #define ENC2NATIVE(s) translateChar(mkCharCE(s, ienc))
 #endif
 
 // Ordered hierarchy of types
diff --git a/src/freadR.c b/src/freadR.c
index bab178dc39..29c75db720 100644
--- a/src/freadR.c
+++ b/src/freadR.c
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ static SEXP selectSxp;
 static SEXP dropSxp;
 static SEXP colClassesSxp;
 static bool selectColClasses = false;
-static cetype_t ienc = CE_NATIVE;
+cetype_t ienc = CE_NATIVE;
 static SEXP RCHK;
 static SEXP DT;
 static SEXP colNamesSxp;
diff --git a/src/freadR.h b/src/freadR.h
index b16eb97ee4..4230986b27 100644
--- a/src/freadR.h
+++ b/src/freadR.h
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 #define dt_FREAD_R_H
 #define STRICT_R_HEADERS   // https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-exts.html#Error-handling
 #include <R.h>
+#include <Rinternals.h>
 #include "po.h"
 
 #define FREAD_MAIN_ARGS_EXTRA_FIELDS \