Mail_Mime and english/french html/text

hey guys, I'm trying to send emails with both HTML and TXT versions, which have english and french content. I'm using:

Mail           1.1.4   stable
Mail_Mime      1.2.1   stable

What happens is, kinda funny. If I send my email in a loop (in php), once to each recipient, they get a garbled message with the text and html together. The text/html are files that are sent to me by someone else. If, using the same code, I send it ONCE, it works and looks just fine! WTF. Anyway, I'm realising that I have little clue when it comes to encoding. Mail_Mime sets some stuff for you: $this->_build_params=array( 'text_encoding'=>'7bit', //'text_encoding'=>'8bit', 'html_encoding'=>'quoted-printable', '7bit_wrap'=>998, 'html_charset'=>'ISO-8859-1', //'html_charset'=>'UTF-8', 'text_charset'=>'ISO-8859-1', //'text_charset'=>'UTF-8', 'head_charset'=>'ISO-8859-1' ); (you can see my frankenstein like attempts at getting this working in 5 minutes or less :)) So, any advice for people who use PEAR to send en/fr/other language emails around and looking funky? curse funny languages! bring on homogenisation, I say! help/advice/linkage appreciated. -sm