Wow, somebody using an older version of Moodle than my productions site.
This is really not a Lesson forum issue, but an Installatioin forum (I think) post. We will be going though similar things in June. You and your site administrator should check Upgrading in Moodle docs and do not skip the "See also" and every page on every version. This is going to be easier than bringing a CP/M WordStar file residing on an 8 inch floppy to a place where Word 2007 will read it. BUT the process will require as much luck, prayers and good karma.
If it was me, I would create a local host version of 1.4 on my local computer (see Installation FAQ for a link to "Downloading previous releases of Moodle") and restore my course there. This is probably not going to be easy because of potential PHP, MySQL and Apache requirements. Then I would upgrade that Moodle to 1.5 and see if the course still worked. One more upgrade the site to 1.6 brings it into UTF-8 . I think the documentation says you can skip 1.7 and go to 1.9. However, I would try a restored version of 1.6 of the course in the existing 1.9 site, you might get lucky.
Of course a easier and faster way might be to just to recreate the course in 1.9.
Good luck and MoodleSpeed Chris
.