Is there a way to use non english symbols?

edit

Apparently the way we use matplotlib doesn't allow non-ascii strings. See Trac 21008.

I've encountered the same problem attempting label axes with Cyrillic letters. In Sage 7.3 the following code:

plot(sin, 0, pi, axes_labels=(ur'Ось абсцисс $x$', ur'Ось ординат $y$'))

Yields warning and display dummy-characters instead of Cyrillic letters:

MathTextWarning: Font 'default' does not have a glyph for '\u0441' [U441]

After some testing I ended up with the following code to prepare graphics to include in LaTeX, and it works in Sage 7.3 with Cyrillic letters as well (possibly requires Computer Modern Unicode font to be installed):

from matplotlib import rc

rc('text', usetex=True)
rc('text.latex', unicode=True)
rc('text.latex', preamble='\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}')
rc('text.latex', preamble='\usepackage[russian]{babel}')

font = {'family': 'serif',
        'serif': ['Computer Modern Unicode'],
        'size': 12,
        }

rc('font', **font)

plot(sin, 0, pi, axes_labels=(ur'Ось абсцисс $x$', ur'Ось ординат $y$'))

P.S. Before that issue resolved I had to rename all axes manually, so whoever fixed it or helped fixing it - many thanks!!!