Luit is a filter that can be run between an arbitrary application and
a UTF-8 terminal emulator such as xterm.  It will convert application
output from the locale's encoding into UTF-8, and convert terminal
input from UTF-8 into the locale's encoding.

This particular version of luit is vestigial. It's been hacked at
randomly since X.Org 6.7, but is not actively maintained and has
known issues. You are almost certainly better off using Thomas Dickey's
version, which can be found at:

    http://invisible-island.net/luit/