In Windows, how can I view web pages using foreign language characters?

On this page:

• Internet Explorer 7 and higher
• Firefox

Internet Explorer 7 and higher

Displaying languages correctly

Internet Explorer has an Auto-Select feature for displaying languages correctly. Some web pages include information about what encoding to use when displaying the page; the Auto-Select feature enables Internet Explorer to determine the appropriate language encoding for a web page even if the page itself doesn't specify which encoding to use. To turn on Auto-Select:

1. From the View menu, select Encoding, and then Auto-Select.

   Note: To make the File, View, and Edit menus at the top visible, press Alt once.

2. You may be prompted to download a language support component; if so, click Download.

If Auto-Select cannot determine the correct language and you know what the language should be, to manually select it while viewing a web page:

1. From the View menu, select Encoding, and then More.
   
   
2. Select the appropriate language or character set/encoding. If prompted to download language support components, click Download.

Setting a preferred language

You can also specify which language you would like Internet Explorer to use when a web page is supplied in more than one language:

1. In Internet Explorer, from the Tools menu, select Internet Options... .
   
   
2. On the General tab, click Languages... .
   
   
3. In the Language Preference dialog box, click Add... . Select the language that you want, and then click OK.

   Note: Five different encoding methods are used to process Chinese characters. You must choose the appropriate encoding method for your situation. If you are not sure which method to use, you can click all five methods, and Internet Explorer will automatically choose the appropriate version for each web site. Three different encoding methods are used to process Japanese characters; all three are processed automatically.

4. If you read several languages, you can click Add... again to add other languages. Use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to arrange the languages in order of priority. For web sites that offer multiple languages, the browser will display the content in the language that you've given the highest priority.
   
   
5. In the Language Preference dialog box, click OK.
   
   
6. In the Internet Options dialog box, click OK.

You will have to close and restart Internet Explorer for the change to take effect.

Firefox

Displaying languages correctly

To set Firefox to automatically try to display the correct character encoding within a particular language for web pages:

1. From the View menu, select Character Encoding, and then Auto-Detect.
   
   
2. On the menu that appears, select the appropriate language.

To manually select the correct character encoding for a page:

1. From the View menu, select Character Encoding, and then More Encodings.
   
   
2. From the list that appears, select the correct language family, and then the correct character set.

Setting a preferred language

To specify which language you would like Firefox to use when a web page is supplied in more than one language:

1. From the Tools menu, select Options... .
   
   
2. On the Content tab, under "Languages", click Choose... .
   
   
3. Click Select a language to add... and select the language you want to add. Click Add.
   
   
4. If you read several languages, you can click Select a language to add... again to add other languages. Use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to arrange the languages in order of priority, and the Remove button if you need to remove a language.
   
   
5. Click OK.

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