System Language French prevents project from being created due to character encoding issues

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Change instance Default Language to French.
2. Attempt to create Service Desk project

Expected Results:

Service Desk created successfully.

Actual Results:

Service Desk project cannot be created and the error below is shown.

Cannot find status: En attente du service d& #39 ;assistance

Error importing issue ExternalIssue

Unknown macro: {externalId=null, summary=Create a customer request, issueType=10200}

Workaround:
Change the Default Language back to English fixes this.

Notes (Optional):

This seems to be caused by the instance not being able to identity the escape character & #39 ; as ' . Thus preventing it from finding the specific status. En attente du service d'assistance is Awaiting Support in English.