attack of the mutant vowels

[wondershot.livejournal.com]

I just got back to the USA from teaching English in Novgorod and my students want to talk to me on icq. This is wonderful, but sometimes when they type Russian, I get a stream of crud that looks like this:

ëó÷øå âñåõ

The same sort of thing happens when I try to import, for instance, my Наутилус Помпилиус tracks onto iTunes. For another example, Тополиный Пух by Иванушкий International becomes:

Òîïîëèíûé ïóõ by Èâàíóøêè International

I know this is about text coding, but I don't know much about that kind of thing. Could one of you generous people help me?

Comments

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

The principal question is, what system do you run: Mac or Windows?

[pzrk.livejournal.com]

These symbols appear when people use cp1251 or koi8-r, and other party's software think it's iso8859-1.
Solution is simple: use UTF-8

[serpent-849.livejournal.com]

http://www.artlebedev.ru/tools/decoder/

I often have this problem with icq, but mostly with people not on my contact list.

[merry1978.livejournal.com]

If you've got MS Office with Russian language, you can use an option from Tools menu, that restores the normal text. Unfortunately, I don't remember the original English name of this option (in Russian Office it is Исправить поврежденный текст), but it is just under the choice of language.

Or you could look for decoder programms out in the net.

[24hourmoon.livejournal.com]

This is how I get my Russian music to display correctly in iTunes:

Download and install this program: http://sourceforge.net/projects/unicoderewriter/, then run it on your mp3 collection, but first change the encoding in the program to 1251 (it's obvious how to do it). Then import the files into iTunes.

[wondershot.livejournal.com]

It's a mac.

[wondershot.livejournal.com]

Such helpful replies. Thank you everybody!

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I give up, then, I'm a PC person. Hope your fellow different thinkers will find a solution for you.