Non-english languages appearing weird on my computer

[billypnats]

Hi, whenever I got russian, japanese, korean, chinese stuff on my computer, the names appear all weird, they look like random symbols and stuff. This doesn't happen if I'm on the internet, but when its actually on my computer it gets all messed up.

For example

I read chinese and I'm learning japanese and korean, but the folder names that I've received looks really strange and some of the .pdf titles refuse to open unless I change it to some english name

or

when I'm using chinese and japanese programs, like PPS (its an online television popular in china), some of the tool bars appear in chinese but otherwise its all symbols. If I use applocale, or set the system locale to chinese, its fine. But I cant do this for the word document things, and I switch back and forth between these asian languages really fast and its a pain to restart all the time.

 

I'm using Win7, and already have the capability to type all the languages, what did I do wrong?

[Vagrant0]

Sometimes it's because you don't have all the fonts for that language installed, and some of it is just with how those programs don't like unicode characters. It's one of those unfortunate problems with trying to combine languages on a single system. It's also why most people attempting this tend to just set their system locale to that language, and just leave it that way. Although this can still prevent some US programs from running, it's mostly limited to small or independent companies.

 

You can still use applocale for English and Japanese even if you have your system setup to Chinese.

Edited February 10, 2010 by Vagrant0