How can text be properly converted (e.g., to UTF-8 or Unicode) to ensure accurate word counting in PHP, particularly when special characters are involved?

When dealing with text that contains special characters, it is important to properly convert the text to UTF-8 encoding to ensure accurate word counting in PHP. This can be achieved by using the `mb_convert_encoding()` function to convert the text to UTF-8 before performing any word counting operations.

// Convert text to UTF-8 encoding
$text = "This is some text with special characters like café and résumé.";
$utf8_text = mb_convert_encoding($text, 'UTF-8', mb_detect_encoding($text));

// Perform word counting on the UTF-8 encoded text
$word_count = str_word_count($utf8_text);

echo "Word count: " . $word_count;