PUTTYandMC

Pytty does not set LOCALE env variable on SSH connection so bash picks up a default value which is C locale. MC will honor the locale settings and will adapt its output. Putty, however, expects an UTF-8 encoded terminal output and will missinterpret the lines-forming characters. To set an implicit LOCALE, edit /etc/sysconfig/i18n.

vim /etc/sysconfig/i18n
LANG=en_US.UTF-8