Problem with Japanese in email

[Mirage]

Hey all,

I'm having a problem with someone from Japan reading my email. The first mail i wrote was fine, but ever since then the symbols they recieve are weird.

The come back and something like this :

縺ゅ↑縺溘・闍ア隱槭・遘√・譌・譛ャ隱槭ｈ繧贋ク頑 焔縺ァ縺吶ｈ

I'm not sure why. I can read Japanese from my Outlook just fine, so it may be something on the other end, but I'm not sure. Anyone see anything like this before?

Thanks

 

[SacredBlue]

I have the same problem with my comcast mail..

踉擦鬚靴討い泙后�(B
2回?ウ髟阡札瓮螢�惺圓辰燭海箸����ります。
ハワイ・髟阡札�螢侫�襯縫���・髟阡札罐拭���ウ髟阡札螢��ナなど

 

[Elizabeth]

I don't know that it works for this type of mojibake, but here's a fix you might try. Just copy everything into the first large box, check the and click.

文字化けしたメールの修復

 

[Elizabeth]

My apologies -- apparently it only works with this ascii-like garble:

ŽOŽl˜Y'³'ñ'©'ç'̃[ƒ‹.

I've only gotten something like Sacred Blue and Mirage's displays when trying to translate a page of web site hits through Nifty (it works with AltaVista fine)....

 

[Mirage]

Hm... its just weird that it worked fine one time, then all of a sudden it stopped.

 

[MikeM]

yeah. Hotmail.com does not support Japanese as me and my penpal have learned to we use MSN Messenger.

If I switch to hotmail.co.jp will it enable japanese language? I believe it will.

 

[Elizabeth]

Is that just Hotmail.com ? It used to work fine for me.

 

[bakadesu]

Switch to EUC if you're using S-JIS. Switch to S-JIS if you're using EUC.

 

[bakadesu]

Whoa, just kidding. I tried, and it looks - really, really funky.

 

[Mirage]

Well outlook XP automatically detects the language settings. It takes the language settings from your IE setup. I've got my IE on autodetect. I've never had any problems with it myself. Maybe i'll try sending mail through the ISP (verizon) web interface rather than through outlook.

 

[Mirage]

bah, the web interfacee doesnt support Japanese. This is no fun. So your sayin it could be hotmail? Maybe a recent change with it... because as I said its worked before.

 

[PaulTB]

Originally posted by MikeM
yeah. Hotmail.com does not support Japanese as me and my penpal have learned to we use MSN Messenger.

If I switch to hotmail.co.jp will it enable japanese language? I believe it will.

Maybe, but you don't need to.

Just change your _default_language_ to Japanese then www.hotmail.com will work (as well as Hotmail ever does ;-)

 

[Keiichi]

Anyone knows how email encoding works from various email providers/softwares?
On my side, I've tried using my University's email webclient to send Japanese. On another person using the same client sees it fine, but if I send it to someone using something else, like yahoo, it won't show (it shows ?'s).
Same for yahoo. I send a Japanese email from my yahoo.com to a yahoo.co.jp, the person sees it fine, and vice versa. This was encoded with EUC appraently.
But if I send from my yahoo.com to some other (Japanese) email account, it won't show for them, and I can't see theirs either regardless whether is view/use EUC, Shift-JIS, UNICODE... and vice versa, when they send to me from their email client.
And it sucks that when I want to 'type' Japanese, i have to use romaji to do that...

 

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by Keiichi
Anyone knows how email encoding works from various email providers/softwares?
On my side, I've tried using my University's email webclient to send Japanese. On another person using the same client sees it fine, but if I send it to someone using something else, like yahoo, it won't show (it shows ?'s).
Same for yahoo. I send a Japanese email from my yahoo.com to a yahoo.co.jp, the person sees it fine, and vice versa. This was encoded with EUC appraently.
But if I send from my yahoo.com to some other (Japanese) email account, it won't show for them, and I can't see theirs either regardless whether is view/use EUC, Shift-JIS, UNICODE... and vice versa, when they send to me from their email client.
And it sucks that when I want to 'type' Japanese, i have to use romaji to do that...

And it isn't just between Japan and the US -- I have the same problem between excite and outlook, hotmail, etc. and have just had to set up matching accounts.

 

[PaulTB]

Originally posted by Keiichi
Anyone knows how email encoding works from various email providers/softwares?

Quick answer.

If you want to control the content of your email then don't use
webpage based email systems. 'Cuz you often have sod all say about
what encoding is used and what headers are included.

In other words use POP, IMAP, HTTP or whatever - but from a proper
bit of email SW on your computer.

Outlook Express isn't perfect - but it is a) free and b) I know it's
faults well. So if you have that I can advise you on the settings
you need to make.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla - Internet for people, not profit (US)

We’re working to put control of the internet back in the hands of the people using it.

www.mozilla.org

Is also free, and should be a lot better - but I haven't used
it myself so I can't confirm it personally.

On my side, I've tried using my University's email webclient to send Japanese.

Stuck using university computer, not able to install email SW?

You've probably had it. ^^v Rough rule of thumb - if you _have_ to
use a web based system - use one from the country which has the
language you want to communicate with. In other words .co.jp for
your Japanese emails. (Although as I've said before Hotmail works
fine for me _after_ I set the default language to Japanese in my
profile).

 

[Keiichi]

Thanks! I hope the POP thing should solve it using Outlook Express.

Oh, and when I meant Uni's email client, I mean the University's website email system (kinda like yahoo, hotmail, etc.), and not a Uni computer. Since I can only check Uni mail using that or via a unix interface over SSH.
But I can get a POP supported email without a hitch. =)

 

[Musoka]

mmmm...I havent tried to send kanji or hiragna through email yet, however I suspect that its your internet browsers or the coding of the mail system. I currently use hotmail.com for my email but I have it set so that I live in japan but I speak english. I might send my self an email later and see how it comes out

 

[PaulTB]

Originally posted by Keiichi
Thanks! I hope the POP thing should solve it using Outlook Express.

[...] But I can get a POP supported email without a hitch. =)

OK I'll give you the standard "Welcome to Outlook Express" speech then.

Tools -> Options -> Send -> Mail Sending Format -> Plain Text [o]
-> Plain Text Settings -> Message Format [o] Mime
-> Encode Text using [None]

If you do that you will ensure
a) You never send ???? of ????? you actually ?????? to say.
b) Your emails will include the header

Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-2022-jp"

when you are using Japanese and

Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="ISO-8859-1"

when you are not using Japanese.

c) Any half-way decent email system will be able to tell if it
is in Japanese or not. (because of [b)] ;-)

 

[Keiichi]

Edit:

I got it to send to that format:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-2022-jp"
I have to change the encoding of the new message in Outlook Express itself (to JIS).
By the way, is that character set common to Japanese computers? Meaning message sent in that format, most should be able to read/encode it?

Oh, and another thing, kinda not really related to this. Is it possible to limit some of that header stuff being sent by Outlook Express? It's also sending my IP and my (WinXP) computer name along with it. >_> Not very important though.

Thanks!


Old message:

Thanks for the response. I tried out what you said, though it didn't turn out exactly like that.

I usually type my (Japanese) email from JWPce, which when I 'copy' is encoded into EUC (though can be changed) before I paste it into Outlook Express' new message window. When I hit 'send,' a prompt came up stating that "this message contains some text having a character set other than the default character set," and gave me two options of sending the message as Unicode or As Is. When sent (to my yahoo account as a test) using Unicode, I had to switch my browser encode settings to Unicode to view it. The headers of the email show it was encoded in Unicode also. If I sent the message As Is, it would show the ???'s (with charset being the one you stated not using Japanese).
I can't get the header of the sent email to send with:
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-2022-jp"

The message is in plain, and not html.
Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[PaulTB]

Originally posted by Keiichi
Edit:

I got it to send to that format:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-2022-jp"
I have to change the encoding of the new message in Outlook Express itself (to JIS).
By the way, is that character set common to Japanese computers? Meaning message sent in that format, most should be able to read/encode it?

Yes the great majority should be able to read JIS with no problem.
Although they tend to use EUC more often when sending email themselves. Unfortunately Outlook Express doesn't do EUC to send although it will quite happily read it.

Oh, and another thing, kinda not really related to this. Is it possible to limit some of that header stuff being sent by Outlook Express? It's also sending my IP and my (WinXP) computer name along with it. >_> Not very important though.

Short answer, No.

Long answer, Nooooooooooo.

(only kidding)

You can't alter the headings in Outlook Express. You'd have to look at other email SW for that - and for sending in EUC. (although you almost certainly won't have any trouble through sending in JIS).

As I mentioned Thunderbird has had some good reviews and is free - but I've never tried it myself so you'll have to decide for yourself if you want to check it out.