Website Encoding

Website Encoding Services

For web sites, proper character encoding is important. Advice on proper encoding can be shared upon request. The best avenue to a multi-lingual site that encompasses all languages, including character based and RTL languages, is Unicode, also known as UTF-8. While this encoding is accepted on newer operating systems in all countries, ironically, it is the default for none of them – not even the United States, which typically uses Latin-1 encoding (formally called ISO 8859-1).

The operating systems in countries vary, which causes much more complexity than is generally expected from someone who is doing localization for the first time. This affects browser-server interactivity such as forms submissions and attachments, as well as data display. The actual operating systems themselves are different as well: Beijing does not use the operating system we call “Windows”, but rather “Windows Chinese.” This can cause incompatibilities with your operating system. Encodings often vary by country; for example:

Mainland China: GB2312, UTF-8, GB18030 or HZ is used. GB2312 is most popular.
Taiwan: Big5 or UTF-8 is used. Big5 is most popular.
Japanese: JIS, Japanese EUC or UTF-8 is used. JIS is most popular.
Korean: Korean EUC, ksc5601, ISO02022-KR or UTF-8 is used. Korean EUC is most popular.

Pre-testing interactive text is recommended, plus a final product check to assure that the font displays properly. Various browsers can be used to test a finished web site.

To avoid any font issues for web sites we recommend image files for text boxes, headings and content pages.