Comment 4 for bug 181399

Similar woes. I am running Ubuntu 9.04, emacs-snapshot, and the single line
"(require 'tramp)" in my .emacs brings

Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading `/home/allenk/.emacs':

Invalid read syntax: invalid multibyte form

then with emacs --debug-init,

͂͂͂Debugger entered--Lisp error: (invalid-read-syntax "invalid multibyte form")
  require(comint)
  byte-code("..." [require comint custom-declare-group shell nil "Running shell from within Emacs buffers." :group processes unix shell-directories "Directory support in shell mode." shell-faces "Faces in shell buffers."] 8)
  require(shell)
  byte-code("..." [load-in-progress current-message message "Loading tramp..." require trampver add-hook tramp-unload-hook (lambda nil (when ... ...)) tramp-compat (lambda nil (when ... ...)) format-spec password-cache nil noerror password shell advice auth-source autoload tramp-get-file-property "tramp-cache" tramp-set-file-property tramp-flush-file-property tramp-flush-directory-property tramp-get-connection-property tramp-set-connection-property tramp-flush-connection-property tramp-parse-connection-properties (lambda nil (when ... ...))] 4)
  require(tramp)
  eval-buffer(#<buffer *load*> nil "/home/allenk/.emacs" nil t) ; Reading at buffer position 402
  load-with-code-conversion("/home/allenk/.emacs" "/home/allenk/.emacs" t t)
  load("~/.emacs" t t)
  #[nil "..." [init-file-user system-type user-init-file-1 user-init-file otherfile source ms-dos "~" "/_emacs" windows-nt directory-files nil "^\\.emacs\\(\\.elc?\\)?$" "~/.emacs" "^_emacs\\(\\.elc?\\)?$" "~/_emacs" "/.emacs" t load expand-file-name "init" file-name-as-directory "/.emacs.d" file-name-extension "elc" file-name-sans-extension ".el" file-exists-p file-newer-than-file-p message "Warning: %s is newer than %s" sit-for 1 "default" alt inhibit-default-init inhibit-startup-screen] 7]()
  command-line()
  normal-top-level()

where I removed some of the \300s etc. I tried Phil Sung's workaround, also to no effect.