diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index ef7ec00..ef765cd 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -519,6 +519,8 @@ secrets-backup/**/.env.*
 # ============================================================================
 # Backend unified data directories (cache, receipts, telegram)
 backend/data/cache/*.db
+backend/data/cache/*.db-wal
+backend/data/cache/*.db-shm
 backend/data/receipts/*.db
 backend/data/telegram/*.db
 backend/data/receipts/uploads/*
diff --git a/backend/modules/data_entry/services/ocr/ocr_worker_pool.py b/backend/modules/data_entry/services/ocr/ocr_worker_pool.py
index 679e838..dedd9a8 100644
--- a/backend/modules/data_entry/services/ocr/ocr_worker_pool.py
+++ b/backend/modules/data_entry/services/ocr/ocr_worker_pool.py
@@ -367,6 +367,17 @@ def _worker_initializer() -> None:
 
     Total warmup time = max(engine_times) instead of sum(engine_times).
     """
+    import io
+
+    # Fix stdout/stderr encoding in spawned worker process.
+    # On Windows, 'spawn' context creates a subprocess with charmap (CP1252) encoding.
+    # Romanian diacritics (ș, ț, ă, â, î) cannot be encoded in charmap, causing
+    # UnicodeEncodeError when print() is called with OCR-extracted text.
+    if sys.stdout and hasattr(sys.stdout, 'buffer'):
+        sys.stdout = io.TextIOWrapper(sys.stdout.buffer, encoding='utf-8', errors='replace')
+    if sys.stderr and hasattr(sys.stderr, 'buffer'):
+        sys.stderr = io.TextIOWrapper(sys.stderr.buffer, encoding='utf-8', errors='replace')
+
     global _paddle_engine, _tesseract_engine, _doctr_engine, _worker_initialized
 
     if _worker_initialized: