Unicode for multi-lingual website

[tedmex]

Hi there,

do you think it is a good time to start using unicode for a multi-lingual website?

Even though the latest version of Internet Explorer can handle it very well, I am having 2nd thoughts about using it for my website development... thinking of using the respective encoding for different language versions of the website instead.

Other web browsers as well as earlier versions of IE may not handle unicode that well... and that would mean a significant number of your website users being affected.
Taking into consideration that a lot of internet users out there are not really that internet savvy, using unicode may be excluding a significant number of possible website users.

Please do let me know how you feel.
Please do correct me if you feel any of the above is not really true...

Thanks!

[bill]

Welcome [webmasterworld.com] to WebmasterWorld, tedmex.

do you think it is a good time to start using Unicode for a multi-lingual website?

That's a very interesting question. I've avoided Unicode on my Japanese and Chinese sites for just the reasons you've mentioned. There always seems to be a contingent of older browser users just big enough that it convinces me that it's still not worth the effort.

Has anybody had good luck with Unicode sites? Is it ready for prime time yet?

[as_is]

bill, do you designed your Japenese and Chinese website for people who speaks Japanese and Chinese?

Part of site is Chinese and I am targetting people from English speaking country, so I think unicode would be better.
I decide to change it to unicode , because one day when I use opera, and saw my site is really a mass.

so, i am just thinking maybe that depends on your target.

[bill]

bill, do you designed your Japenese and Chinese website for people who speaks Japanese and Chinese?

Yes, I am referring to sites written in Japanese or Chinese, not English.

Several years ago there were some known problems with Unicode encoding on Japanese sites and Netscape browsers. That was back when there was a much larger percentage of the market that still used older Netscape browsers. I recall that there were some other difficulties but can't recall the specifics now. Those were the primary reasons I stayed away from Unicode in general. Although I really like the idea of Unicode it just didn't seem ready for use if it caused display problems for users of certain software.

Part of site is Chinese and I am targetting people from English speaking country, so I think unicode would be better.

That was the real appeal of Unicode for me; using several different character sets on one page. Unfortunately I was seeing the page rendered incorrectly on several browsers. It may be time to look into this again as the percentage of older browser use is declining. I've resorted to using .gif images on areas of the page where I need to use a different character set.

[tedmex]

Hi Bill and as_is...

thanks for joining the discussion...

If I am not wrong, even though the latest browsers can use unicode quite seamlessly... the user has to install some support pack on the IE before they can use it... if not they will be prompted to download it...which some people may not be comfortable with (especially if they are not so internet savvy)

because one day when I use opera, and saw my site is really a mass.

as_is... you mean opera still cannot handle standard encodings like GB? that's scary!

By the way Bill, what "display problems of certain software" are you refering to?

I really like unicode too... but I'm hesitating to implement it... because my target customers are in Asia...

Another question :o)
which IE version can already handle unicode well? IE 5.0? or even earlier?

[Eric_Jarvis]

with Japanese it seems to be a minor problem, so if Japan isn't a special focus then Unicode is well enough supported (certainly I was gettin plenty of traffic to utf-8 Japanese pages)...if Japan is vitally important you need shift_jis

Chinese it's still a question of where you are targetting...the mainland and Chinese people around the world are generally able to cope with simplified Chinese in Unicode...I was getting terrific traffic with it...especially from Sohu...if you are targeting Hong Kong it still has to be traditional Chinese and GB encoding...it is well worth having both

Arabic speakers seem to be fine with Unicode these days...and it's now pretty much OK for Russian...the big fly in the ointment is India...whilst there is good Unicode support for a lot of Indian languages, there are few web sites using it...and many Indian people claim that the unicode fonts are ugly and not very readable

[ghyman]

Don't mind me jumping in on this thread.

Do any one of you have an opinion about the SysTrans product - SysTranLinks [systransoft.com...] , to handle translation from English to Asian web sites?

Hows the translation accuracy from English to Asian languages of this product?

Gary.

[as_is]

"as_is... you mean opera still cannot handle standard encodings like GB? that's scary!"

yes. I use opera 6.05. And as far as i know, most opera users are using 6.05. Because, 7.0 version would not automatically update private information on 6.05 .

I am quite a newbie on internet and I am sure people here would shed more light on your question.

And I suggest that if you are targetting China, Chinese tradition is really worth your try. Not only because HK and Taiwan people are using. Part of mainland people are using traditional Chinese.

[bill]

By the way Bill, what "display problems of certain software" are you refering to?

Well, as you know we are not always dealing with standard browsers viewing our content from PCs. I had run into some display issues with web pages encoded in Unicode on various mobile phones and had heard that some PDA software had issues as well. Again this was a few years ago, but that was another strike against Unicode for me.

Eric_Jarvis has more experience than most when it comes to multi-lingual sites, so I would trust his observations. If you're targeting certain Asian language groups it may be necessary to approach each one differently. As Eric pointed out some markets seem to have better Unicode support than others.

[PeterHo]

Like as_is said, if you're going to choose either traditional or simplified you should go for traditional because most chinese people understand traditional... I also thought that HK, Taiwan and Singapore are larger "e-markets" for the moment.. Maybe it's changed in 10 years when China rises but one never knows.

[tedmex]

the mainland and Chinese people around the world are generally able to cope with simplified Chinese in Unicode...I was getting terrific traffic with it...especially from Sohu

Eric_Jarvis....
I'm quite new to the multi-lingual world... don't mind me asking you this...
How did you come to the conclusion that the mainland Chinese are able to cope with simplified chinese in Unicode?
It seems to me that all their major portals in China are using GB and not unicode...

What about the input of simplified Chinese on these unicode websites? Would it be a problem?
I believe the users must also change whichever input methods they are using to Unicode, instead of GB, to fill in the fields.

Eric_Jarvis... do you face any such problems when it comes to your users filling in the form fields?

Thanks :)

[Eric_Jarvis]

tedmex: "I'm quite new to the multi-lingual world... don't mind me asking you this...
How did you come to the conclusion that the mainland Chinese are able to cope with simplified chinese in Unicode?
It seems to me that all their major portals in China are using GB and not unicode..."

Most of the major portals were set up some while ago and mainly to cater to the Hong Kong market...Internet use on the mainland is growing, and there is a lot more money around in China than there used to be...however completely rebuilding a portal takes time and costs money...traditional Chinese in GB encoding is still the most effective way to reach people in Hong Kong...but Unicode will get to a far wider audience these days

there is, of course, no reason to only use one

"What about the input of simplified Chinese on these unicode websites? Would it be a problem?
I believe the users must also change whichever input methods they are using to Unicode, instead of GB, to fill in the fields."

yes...forms and scripts tend to be more of a problem when it comes to encoding...the answer is to keep everything as simple as possible...and, if you really need to reach both Hong Kong and China, to have multiple versions of Chinese

[hotice_2002]

Yes, to build a multiple versions of Chinese websites is a good method at present.
As I know China government does NOT give UNICODE much support, the government insists GB CODE!

But I know DMOZ.ORG is upgrading their system and all page encode will be UTF-8, it is a great changes. The upgrad is still processing!

[tedmex]

Thanks Eric_Jarvis... for spending some time to share your experience with us... really appreciate it...

Thanks also to Hotice_2002.... for the insider news :o)

[jackjm]

[kanhan.com...]