Non HTML Entities breaking certain things

I found that when I tried to alter $previous or $next using the same:

$nav = $nav_array;
$previous = !empty($nav['prev']) ? l('‹ ' . t('previous'), 'node/'. $nav['prev']) : '';

from my custom_pager.tpl.php that any alteration to $previous would not work. I finally got it working by removing the non html entity character. Attached is a patch that uses html entities for the pager's arrows.

the comment here may be related: #276804-2: custom pagers icon navigation