# My Browser Speaks Chinese! **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 28, 2001, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584 "2001-04-28T01:06:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/1 "2001-04-28T01:06:40Z")
- - - Why is it that when I view a Chinese webpage (that uses Chinese characters, I don’t know, they show up as boxes), I can’t read the characters on the webpage, but the stuff in the browser’s status line is in English? - MC ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/2 "2001-04-28T01:37:13Z")
First, I think you’re more likely to be seeing a Japanese page, since there are lots of those around. (I don’t read either, so I don’t know for sure.) Your browser is set up to work in English, so of course its messages are in that language. The content is probably composed in \, or some other language-specific set. Since you don’t have the necessary software installed, your browser can’t cope and just shows a box. If you go to the menu and ‘View page source’ (depends on the browser and version, so hunt for it), you’ll see a line near the top that specifies the character set. Then go to Google and look up “ISO characters”, if you care that much. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/3 "2001-04-28T02:12:05Z")
- - - Yes, but what I am wondering is, if the text of the link -as it appears- is in Chinese, why is the text in the status bar in English? There would either have to be some translation going on, or the actual link target info for the Chinese page would have to have been written in English. Which is it? (-It’s probably Chinese, Chinese cities are referred to in the status bar link info) - MC ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/4 "2001-04-28T02:58:59Z")
There are two parts to a link, the URL itself and the text (or image, for example a button) to display for clicking. The URL is defined to be in Roman characters, but the displayable part can be anything the browser can show. (Since you don’t have the character set, it’s displayed _wrong_, but no matter.) As I said above, all will become clear if you view the source, Luke. ---
**Author:** ![Zarathustra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/898d66/32.png) [@Zarathustra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zarathustra)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/5 "2001-04-28T04:01:28Z")
You may not have to go to the trouble of separately seeking out a website to download such a font. If you’re using IE, then look under the View menu for “Encoding”, click on where it says “more”, and find one of the three or four types of Chinese fonts (such as the “Big 5” standard for pages in Taiwan). If you select one of them and your browser doesn’t have it already, it will automatically start downloading and installing as soon as you click it. Now that I think of it, Chinese characters **shouldn’t** be showing up as empty boxes. This is what it should look like: ¯Â°Ó·~¿ì¤½«Ç¥X¯² ``` ±MªùªA°È°Ó¥Î¿ì¤½«Ç¤§©Ó¯²¤H¡C ¥x¥_¦Uµ¥¯Å°Ó¥Î¿ì¤½«Ç®×¥ó¡A¾A¦X¦UºØ°Ó·~»Ý¨D¡I¡I §Ú­Ì¾Ö¦³ºZ³qªº¸ê°T¡B¦³«Ü¦h¥ß§Y­n¥X¯²ªº¿ì¤½«Ç¡A¥¿µ¥«ÝµÛ±zªº¬D¿ï¡A ¤@©w­n¬°±z§ä¨ì¤@³B³Ì¾A¦X±z¹ê²{±z¶¯¹Ï§§§Óªº³õ©Ò¡I¡I¡I¡I °Ï°ì¡G ¤j¦w°Ï ¦p ¡G´°¤Æ«n¡B¥_¸ô¯Â¿ì¡A80¢w700©W¡I¡I ``` ªQ¤s°Ï ¦p ¡G«n¨ÊªF¸ô ¤T¡B¥|¬q¯Â¿ì 50¢w250©W ¡I¡I «H¸q°Ï ¦p ¡G°ò¶©¸ô¤G¬q¡A«H¸q¸ô¤T¬q¯Â¿ì¡A¬Á¼þ±c¹õ¤j¼Ó¡C 30-280©W¡I¡I ¤¤¤s°Ï ¦p ¡Gªø¦wªF¸ô¡A¤¤¤s¥\_¸ô¯Â¿ì 70¢w200©W ¡I¡I ªA°È²Ä¤@¡A«~½è«OÃÒ¡CÅwªï¬¢¸ß. ·ç°T¤£°Ê²£ °Ó¥ò³¡ Ápµ¸¤H¡G³³¤p©j TeL¡]¥Nªí¸¹¡^¡G 02-27544275 ±zªºº¡·N¡A¬O§Ú­Ìªº¦¨´N¡C This is from a [thread of a few months ago](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=45087) where someone asked a sort of related question. If you select “Big 5” as your browser encoding, then the above text should show up as perfectly intelligible Chinese. (Hur hur hur.) ---
**Author:** ![dqa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/6 "2001-04-28T04:46:08Z")
I have only the simplified Chinese character set installed, and viewing the traditional Chinese paragraph above, i have about half of the characters as boxes, the rest Chinese characters. Not sure if this explains why MC sees his characters this way. This brings up another question: How does the advanced search in Google determine in what language a page is written? I’ve seen “EN” and particular character sets written in the HTML source code for some pages, but even in the absence of these Google can distinguish. What gives? ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/7 "2001-04-28T15:00:17Z")
IF you are using Netscape 5+ just select ‘View’ then ‘Character Set’ youll see so many choices youll be suprised. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/8 "2001-04-28T22:28:55Z")
> [@](#): > > “IF you are using Netscape 5+ ,” - - - Well nuts. I didn’t ever see any version 5, I thought they just went to 6. Where can I find 5? - I tried downloading Netscape 6, but it took two and a half hours to download on my 56K dialup, and after all that, it didn’t work right. When it tried to install it stopped and said “some sort of file error” or “something’s missing”. -I normally download big stuff on the 300K lines at school and save it to a Zip disk, but the way they have Netscam 6 set up, you have to download it directly onto the computer it will (automatically) install on, so that won’t work. And 2.5 hours is too long to bother trying more than once, IMO. Oh well. - MC ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2001, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-browser-speaks-chinese/63584/9 "2001-04-28T23:50:33Z")
Far as I know they have every version of Netscape there ever was on the net to download. You just kinda have to look around.Oh, you are right, I got confused, they have 4.7 but no 5 (Musta thought of IE). [http://home.netscape.com/computing/download/?cp=hom01tdow](http://home.netscape.com/computing/download/?cp=hom01tdow) 4.7 is what I use, its got tons of character sets, you can even make your own.