list_to_binary([8734,45,72,79,112,101,64,9786,46,69,88,65,77,112,108,101, 46,99,111,109,47,77,121,10084]) It works only for elements from 1 to 255. Use unicode:characters_to_binary/1 instead. If ux is slow, than try i18n (it is NIFs for ICU).