diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index b4b10f81..a6d7bcb2 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+2019-01-05  Jay Berkenbilt  <ejb@ql.org>
+
+	* Add method QUtil::utf8_to_utf16.
+
 2019-01-04  Jay Berkenbilt  <ejb@ql.org>
 
 	* Add new option --optimize-images, which recompresses every image
diff --git a/include/qpdf/QUtil.hh b/include/qpdf/QUtil.hh
index 5532149c..c7473bf3 100644
--- a/include/qpdf/QUtil.hh
+++ b/include/qpdf/QUtil.hh
@@ -152,8 +152,14 @@ namespace QUtil
     QPDF_DLL
     std::string toUTF16(unsigned long uval);
 
-    // Convert a UTF-8 encoded string to ASCII by replacing all
-    // characters outside of ascii with the given unknown_char.
+    // Convert a UTF-8 encoded string to UTF-16. Unrepresentable code
+    // points are converted to U+FFFD.
+    QPDF_DLL
+    std::string utf8_to_utf16(std::string const& utf8);
+
+    // Convert a UTF-8 encoded string to the specified single-byte
+    // encoding system by replacing all unsupported characters with
+    // the given unknown_char.
     QPDF_DLL
     std::string utf8_to_ascii(
         std::string const& utf8, char unknown_char = '?');
diff --git a/libqpdf/QPDF_String.cc b/libqpdf/QPDF_String.cc
index 633f1699..7cfb6bcc 100644
--- a/libqpdf/QPDF_String.cc
+++ b/libqpdf/QPDF_String.cc
@@ -64,65 +64,10 @@ QPDF_String::~QPDF_String()
 {
 }
 
-enum encoding_e { e_utf16 };
-
-static
-std::string
-transcode_utf8(std::string const& utf8_val, encoding_e encoding)
-{
-    std::string result = "\xfe\xff";
-    size_t len = utf8_val.length();
-    for (size_t i = 0; i < len; ++i)
-    {
-        unsigned char ch = static_cast<unsigned char>(utf8_val.at(i));
-        if (ch < 128)
-        {
-            result += QUtil::toUTF16(ch);
-        }
-        else
-        {
-            size_t bytes_needed = 0;
-            unsigned bit_check = 0x40;
-            unsigned char to_clear = 0x80;
-            while (ch & bit_check)
-            {
-                ++bytes_needed;
-                to_clear |= bit_check;
-                bit_check >>= 1;
-            }
-
-            if (((bytes_needed > 5) || (bytes_needed < 1)) ||
-                ((i + bytes_needed) >= len))
-            {
-                result += "\xff\xfd";
-            }
-            else
-            {
-                unsigned long codepoint = (ch & ~to_clear);
-                while (bytes_needed > 0)
-                {
-                    --bytes_needed;
-                    ch = utf8_val.at(++i);
-                    if ((ch & 0xc0) != 0x80)
-                    {
-                        --i;
-                        codepoint = 0xfffd;
-                        break;
-                    }
-                    codepoint <<= 6;
-                    codepoint += (ch & 0x3f);
-                }
-                result += QUtil::toUTF16(codepoint);
-            }
-        }
-    }
-    return result;
-}
-
 QPDF_String*
 QPDF_String::new_utf16(std::string const& utf8_val)
 {
-    return new QPDF_String(transcode_utf8(utf8_val, e_utf16));
+    return new QPDF_String(QUtil::utf8_to_utf16(utf8_val));
 }
 
 std::string
diff --git a/libqpdf/QUtil.cc b/libqpdf/QUtil.cc
index 7c2d9bc9..ba4aea2c 100644
--- a/libqpdf/QUtil.cc
+++ b/libqpdf/QUtil.cc
@@ -893,6 +893,67 @@ QUtil::parse_numrange(char const* range, int max)
     return result;
 }
 
+enum encoding_e { e_utf16 };
+
+static
+std::string
+transcode_utf8(std::string const& utf8_val, encoding_e encoding)
+{
+    std::string result = "\xfe\xff";
+    size_t len = utf8_val.length();
+    for (size_t i = 0; i < len; ++i)
+    {
+        unsigned char ch = static_cast<unsigned char>(utf8_val.at(i));
+        if (ch < 128)
+        {
+            result += QUtil::toUTF16(ch);
+        }
+        else
+        {
+            size_t bytes_needed = 0;
+            unsigned bit_check = 0x40;
+            unsigned char to_clear = 0x80;
+            while (ch & bit_check)
+            {
+                ++bytes_needed;
+                to_clear |= bit_check;
+                bit_check >>= 1;
+            }
+
+            if (((bytes_needed > 5) || (bytes_needed < 1)) ||
+                ((i + bytes_needed) >= len))
+            {
+                result += "\xff\xfd";
+            }
+            else
+            {
+                unsigned long codepoint = (ch & ~to_clear);
+                while (bytes_needed > 0)
+                {
+                    --bytes_needed;
+                    ch = utf8_val.at(++i);
+                    if ((ch & 0xc0) != 0x80)
+                    {
+                        --i;
+                        codepoint = 0xfffd;
+                        break;
+                    }
+                    codepoint <<= 6;
+                    codepoint += (ch & 0x3f);
+                }
+                result += QUtil::toUTF16(codepoint);
+            }
+        }
+    }
+    return result;
+}
+
+std::string
+QUtil::utf8_to_utf16(std::string const& utf8)
+{
+    return transcode_utf8(utf8, e_utf16);
+}
+
 std::string
 QUtil::utf8_to_ascii(std::string const& utf8, char unknown_char)
 {