Encoding issue with a .txt file? Thread poster: Tilman Loeffler
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Dear fellow translators,
I have delivered a .txt file to a client a few days ago, which I translated from English into German. The client keeps coming back to me stating that there is something wrong with the file as certain German special characters are not displayed correctly, like the ß.
This is what he says: "The XXX file seems to have an issue, it doesn't display certain characters such as the German ß properly, according to the client. I guess it is one of those... See more Dear fellow translators,
I have delivered a .txt file to a client a few days ago, which I translated from English into German. The client keeps coming back to me stating that there is something wrong with the file as certain German special characters are not displayed correctly, like the ß.
This is what he says: "The XXX file seems to have an issue, it doesn't display certain characters such as the German ß properly, according to the client. I guess it is one of those encoding issues, ANSI vs UTF-8?"
Now I really don't know what to do with it. Does anyone have an idea what I can do on my side to fix this problem.
Thanks in advance! ▲ Collapse
| | | | ..... (X)
Local time: 05:08
| My recommendation | Aug 27, 2015 |
Hi Tilman,
Yes, seems like an encoding issue. The text editor the client is opening the file in is most likely guessing an encoding that is different than the encoding you saved the file in.
My recommendation, download this free text editor called Sublime Text. It has a great feature called "Save with Encoding" and you can choose which encoding to save the file in. This way, you could save the file in a few differ... See more Hi Tilman,
Yes, seems like an encoding issue. The text editor the client is opening the file in is most likely guessing an encoding that is different than the encoding you saved the file in.
My recommendation, download this free text editor called Sublime Text. It has a great feature called "Save with Encoding" and you can choose which encoding to save the file in. This way, you could save the file in a few different encodings (UTF-8, UTF-16, etc.) and send them to the client. Typically my recommendation would be to save it in UTF-8 and you shouldn't have any trouble.
Kevin ▲ Collapse
| | | | esperantisto 
Local time: 23:08
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Save files in Unicode (UTF-8 or UTF-16LE) to be on the safe side, as modern programs do support Unicode, and inform the client about the encoding that you’ve used. To control the encoding, use a good text editor such as jEdit, or geany, or, well, there are other good choices.
| | | | Tilman Loeffler
France
Local time: 22:08
Member (2015)
English to German
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks for the swift answers. I'll try this out and let you know if it solved the problem.
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esperantisto
Local time: 23:08
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Kevin Dias wrote: …this free text editor called Sublime Text.
Your information is wrong. Sublime Text is neither free software, nor freeware:
Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use.
See: https://www.sublimetext.com/buy
| | | | | MS Word *.txt format | Aug 27, 2015 |
Tilman Loeffler wrote:
This is what he says: "The XXX file seems to have an issue, it doesn't display certain characters such as the German ß properly, according to the client. I guess it is one of those encoding issues, ANSI vs UTF-8?"
I only use MS Word with *.txt plain text encoding to save a number of non-English texts easily e.g. JP, TH, FR, IT. This text file can be handled in various CAT tools as well.
Soonthon L.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 22:08
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Tilman Loeffler wrote:
This is what he says: "The XXX file seems to have an issue, it doesn't display certain characters such as the German ß properly, according to the client. I guess it is one of those encoding issues, ANSI vs UTF-8?"
It may be that your computer saved the file as UTF8 without a byte order mark, and that the client's computer expects the byte order mark, and in the absence of the byte order mark his computer assumes that it is ANSI. However, some computers do not believe that UTF8 files should have a byte order mark, and if the file has one, the computer will stubbornly open it as something else. The solution to all this infighting between computers is to save your file as UTF16LE.
If you have MS Word, open your text file in MS Word. MS Word will guess what your file's encoding is (you can select something else with the preview feature). When you've opened the file in MS Word, press F12 to save it again, and select "Text" or "Encoded text", and then select "Unicode" in the list of encodings. "Unicode" is Microsoft's special way of saying "UTF16LE" (everyone else uses the word "Unicode" for something different).
My unicode text editor of choice is Akelpad (small and free), but although it can save UTF8 files with and without byte order mark, it can't properly guess a file's encoding if the file is UTF8 but doesn't have a byte order mark. I know of no free text editor that will guess text files' encodings correctly as often as MS Word does.
| | | | Tilman Loeffler
France
Local time: 22:08
Member (2015)
English to German
TOPIC STARTER
Hey everyone.
As I had to solve this quickly I went for Kevins approach and downloaded Sublime Text and changed the encoding to variuos types which I all sent to client so he can pick the one that works best for him. I'll let you guys know once he has replied.
Thanks to your helpful replies.
Edit: The client has contacted me and at least one of the submitted files works for him. Issue solved! You guys are the best!
[Edited at 2015-08-28 07:00 GMT]
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