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How to Set Your Computer to Read Foreign Languages

Small businesses, or website owners who do not have the budgets for full fledged website localization, can still market to foreign cultures using little tricks to get around common cultural hurdles. One of these cultural hurdles can simply be related to the different alphabets and “character sets”. How can you communicate with a foreign country if you can’t even type in language?

A reader emailed me today with a question on the readability of different language character sets. This questions deserves more than just a quick answer.

Here is her question is:

We are adding Russian to our website and our usual visitors do not have Cyrillic type, thus cannot view the Russian area. Have you had this problem with any languages and if so is there a way to solve it without using PDFs or art?

There are two easy way out.

• Using a PDF file
• Saving each page as images are options

Both of these solutions allow most people to read your Russian characters. But each has disadvantages.

• PDF files can be big and some users will not download a PDF.
• The text in an image is just an image, so the search engines will never find it.

Installing The Cyrillic Type For Internet Explorer And Firefox

There is one thing to do first.

• On YOUR page, make sure that you identify your content as being in Cyrillic.

If you don’t call out that the characters are in a different alphabet then you may see something like the following entry instead of Cyrillic letters:

• ::::::::::::::::::::::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;????????????????????///////////////////

The HTML code to use the Cyrillic character set (CHARSET below) is very important.

Here is what you need to insert with the rest of your meta tags above the body of your html code:

<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Content-Type” CONTENT=”text/html; CHARSET=windows-1251″>

Need To Use A Different Character Set?

If you want to do this with a different character set, this is where you can get the full list of Windows character sets. There is a link to the Microsoft site in the resource box at the end of this article.

How To Set Your Computer To Read Foreign Languages

I am not going to tell you how do this on all computer operating systems and all versions of those systems.

Here are changes you will want to make on the two most common operating systems in use. The examples used are for Cyrillic.

In Windows XP

To Be Able To View A Different Character Set Such As Russian:

• Go to your Control and double click on ‘Regional and Language Options which will open a window.
• From this new window select ‘Advanced’ and a list will appear with supported languages.
• From this list select the languages which match the version on of the languages that you wish to see.
• At the top of the list is Cyrillic which you should select.
• Lower on the list there are other versions of Cyrillic which you should also select.
• In addition, it is safer to include the language Ukrainian.

If you are doing this for languages using something other than the Cyrillic alphabet, it is better to select more options than you think necessary – other people can make mistakes when defining their language.

To Be Able To Type In Russian:

• Go to your Control and double click on ‘Regional and Language Options’ which will open a window.
• From this new window select ‘Languages’ and then ‘Details’.
• Clicking ‘Details’ will open a new window ‘Text Services and Input Languages’.
• In this window select ‘Add’ and yet another new window will open.
• In this window, from the ‘Input Language’ drop down menu select ‘Russian’.
• The ‘Keyboard layout/IME’ drop down menu will change to Russian.

The results in the ‘Text Services and Input Languages’ will be an additional keyboard listed which you can select when typing in Russian.

In Windows Vista

In Vista there is only one process to both read and type in a different character set.

• From the Control Panel select the ‘Regional and Language Options’ icon which will open a new window.
• From this new window select ‘Keyboards and Languages’, then ‘Change Keyboard’, which will open a new window.
• In the new window click ‘Add’ (yet another window) and from this final window select ‘Russian’.

You should now be able to type in Russian in Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and most other applications. You can switch to ‘Russian’ by either clicking on the ‘Ru’ icon from your task bar or by using Alt + Shift to select your language.

And likewise, once you have finished typing in Russian, you can switch back to English by clicking on ‘En’ or using Alt + Shift again.

In some programs such as AOL and old versions of Word (95) you will also need to choose a specific Cyrillic font such as ‘Arial Cyr’.

Easier Than It Seems

Enabling your computer to view and read different character sets will make it easier for you to do market research and communicate within that particular language and country.

Remember that other computers outside of the country in question may not be set up for those languages. To get around this problem you can use PDFs and images to transmit your message in the different character set.

This way all of your readers will be able to see your message, in Cyrillic for example, instead of thinking there is a mistake either on your website or their computer.

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About the Author

Cindy King
Cross-Cultural Marketer & International Sales Specialist

Over 25 years field experience in aligning cultural offers for international sales.

International content strategy
Custom publishing in English to build international markets B2B international lead generation

40km south of Paris, France – GMT+1
Cell: +33 6 98 91 86 11
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