How to workaround failures with Unicode filepaths?

Questions
,
1

(Cross-posted from Mathematica.SE)

The Mathematica’s Kernel and FrontEnd currently work well with Unicode file/directory paths, but some other components of the system contain long-standing bugs which are source of troubles for the users, especially for the users from non-English-speaking countries.

The most recent version of Mathematica 11.2.0 still fails to Import a PDF file when its path contains non-ASCII characters: under Windows Import returns $Failed, under OSX it returns empty list. This is due to a long-standing bug in the component “PDF.exe” which is responsible for importing of PDF files:

Export["????.pdf", Plot[Sin[x], {x, 0, Pi}]]
Import["????.pdf"]

"????.pdf"    
$Failed

The same is true for Importing Mathematica’s native NB files as "Plaintext" due to a similar long-standing bug in “NBImport.exe”:

Export["????.nb", Plot[Sin[x], {x, 0, Pi}]]
Import["????.nb", {"NB", "Plaintext"}]

"????.nb"
$Failed

The new in version 11 HTTPRequest/URLRead functionality also suffer from this bug. Here is an attempt to upload an image with non-ASCII filename to imgur.com using the method from this answer:

Export["????.png", Plot[Sin[x], {x, 0, Pi}]]

URLRead[HTTPRequest[
  "http://stackoverflow.com/upload/image", <|
   "Body" -> {"image" -> <|"Content" -> File["????.png"], "MIMEType" -> "image/png"|>}|>]]

screenshot

And undoubtedly there are other components suffering from this bug because reports about problems with Unicode filepaths keep appearing on Mathematica.SE:

In the original dedicated Mathematica.SE thread two workarounds are given, each of which has its own set of limitations/drawbacks. Are there some other, potentially better ways to avoid failures with Unicode file/directory paths?

Reported to the support as [CASE:3965891].
[1]: https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/143953/280
[2]: https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/143953/how-to-workaround-failures-with-unicode-filepaths#comment387154_143953
[3]: http://imgur.com
[4]: https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/a/141853/280
[5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wPkUF.png
[6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wPkUF.png
[7]: https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/
[8]: https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/143953/280

2

I should note that due to a bug of this forum in the original post all Cyrillic letters are replaced with ?. In all cases where you see ???? please read it as тест. You can find the most recent information on the subject in the original thread on MMa.SE: https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/143953/280