So I added Japanese to WindowsXP.

[The_Niply_Elder]

So, I have this same annoying problem at work. I work for a Japanese company and I regularly receive CAD files whose names have kanji and kana in them, so I need to enable the “non-Unicode” setting, yet this changes the backslash to the yen symbol even when typing server names into windows exploder. Does anyone know how to fix this such that I can see Japanese fonts, but I don’t need to type them.

[Shot_From_Guns]

Not sure what you did there, Niply. The exact method probably depends on your OS (brand and version), but I’m not sure why you’re doing anything with “non-Unicode” settings. (It sounds *vaguely *familiar… from something I was mucking about with in 2001 or so.)

IIRC, for Windows, you should be able to enable Japanese language support by going into your Regional and Language options (via Control Panel), looking at the Language tab, and clicking the “Install files for East Asian Languages” option. There are additional steps after that to add *input *support for various languages, but I’m not sure they’re necessary if all you want to do is read Japanese.

[BigT]

@scr4

Unfortunately, for that you might need to switch the system to Japanese again. It depends on how those Japanese characters are encoded. If it’s Unicode, no problem. If it’s not unicode, well, that’s exactly what the “Language for non-Unicode programs” setting is for - whether to display non-unicode characters as Japanese or English (or something else).

Actually, due to a bug, switching to Japanese and switching back keeps the ability to read Japanese characters in filenames. I’m not sure how long it lasts, though.

Really, there ought to be programs out there that will automatically convert filenames to unicode, and translations services that will take the garbled text and convert it before attempting translation. In fact, I was surprised that Google didn’t do this.

@The_Niply_Elder

So, I have this same annoying problem at work. I work for a Japanese company and I regularly receive CAD files whose names have kanji and kana in them, so I need to enable the “non-Unicode” setting, yet this changes the backslash to the yen symbol even when typing server names into windows exploder. Does anyone know how to fix this such that I can see Japanese fonts, but I don’t need to type them.

See above.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@BigT

Really, there ought to be […] translations services that will take the garbled text and convert it before attempting translation.

I’m sure there are way too many collisions for this to work.

[BigT]

@Shot_From_Guns

I’m sure there are way too many collisions for this to work.

If my computer can do the conversion, I don’t see why theirs can’t. It’s not like they have to be able to detect all the different code pages–just the one most likely used for that language.

Unless you are saying that the text would contain control characters that wouldn’t paste properly. But then I’d just ask to be able to send the entire file.

[Shot_From_Guns]

Because you’re not copying the original text–you’re copying the mishmash of characters that your computer is displaying it as. Unless I’m completely missing what you’re suggesting here.