diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index ba09d86308..5f3276556d 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -72,6 +72,8 @@
 
 16. `copy()` is now more consistent about reallocating nested `data.table`s, [#7456](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/7456). The resulting list is now only overwritten when necessary, list columns inside data.tables are searched recursively, and their attributes are walked in search of data.tables to reallocate as well. Thanks to @be-marc for the report, @david-cortes for additional information, and @aitap for the fix.
 
+17. `print()` works with multi-byte characters on R before 4.2.0, [#7848](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/pull/7848). Thanks @MichaelChirico for the fix and @aitap for the improvement.
+
 ### Notes
 
 1. {data.table} now depends on R 3.5.0 (2018).
diff --git a/R/print.data.table.R b/R/print.data.table.R
index e602f80d69..2aae182b09 100644
--- a/R/print.data.table.R
+++ b/R/print.data.table.R
@@ -256,8 +256,9 @@ char.trunc = function(x, trunc.char = getOption("datatable.prettyprint.char")) {
   if (is.null(trunc.char)) return(x)
   trunc.char = max(0L, suppressWarnings(as.integer(trunc.char[1L])), na.rm=TRUE)
   if (!is.character(x) || trunc.char <= 0L) return(x)
-  nchar_width = nchar(x, 'width', allowNA = TRUE)
-  nchar_chars = nchar(x, 'char', allowNA = TRUE)
+  # TODO(R>=4.2.0): we only need the tryCatch() for old bug in allowNA=TRUE, see #7848
+  nchar_width = tryCatch(nchar(x, 'width', allowNA=TRUE), error=function(.) NA)
+  nchar_chars = nchar(x, 'char', allowNA=TRUE)
   is_full_width = nchar_width > nchar_chars
   is_full_width[is.na(is_full_width)] = FALSE
   idx = !is.na(x) & !is.na(nchar_width) & pmin(nchar_width, nchar_chars) > trunc.char