Help:Multilingual support (East Asian)

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H:VN

Throughout Wikipedia, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese and Zhuang characters (CJKV characters) are used in relevant articles.

Computers with older operating systems with the default language set to English or other Western or Cyrillic language settings will require some setup and proper fonts (See also: List of CJK fonts) to be able to display the characters.

Newer computer operating systems may not require any additional steps to view most CJKV characters.

Check for existing support

If you see boxes, question marks, or meaningless letters mixing into the first part, you do not have full support for East Asian characters.

Chinese

The text below has been language-tagged as Chinese and is shown in the default font used by your browser. Unless your browser locale is set to Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau, this is usually the same font as is used for simplified Chinese characters.

人人生来自由，
在尊严和权利上一律平等。
他们有理性和良心，
请以手足关系的精神相对待。

Compare it to this image:

The Second round simplified Chinese text below has been language-tagged as simplified Chinese and is shown in the default font used by your browser. "N" is in place for unencoded characters.

人人生来自由，
在N严和权利上一N平N。
他们有理性和良心，
𰵕以手足关系的𰪱神相对待。

Compare it to this image:

The text below has been language-tagged as traditional Chinese and is shown in the default font used by your browser.

人人生來自由，
在尊嚴和權利上一律平等。
他們有理性和良心，
請以手足關係的精神相對待。

Compare it to this image:

Japanese

The text below has been language-tagged as Japanese and is shown in the default font used by your browser.

すべての人間は、生まれながらにして自由であり、
かつ、尊厳と権利とについて平等である。
人間は、理性と良心とを授けられており、
互いに同胞の精神をもって行動しなければならない。

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Korean

The text below has been language-tagged as Korean and is shown in the default font used by your browser.

모든 인간은 태어날 때부터
자유로우며 그 존엄과 권리에
있어 동등하다. 인간은 천부적으로
이성과 양심을 부여받았으며 서로
형제애의 정신으로 행동하여야 한다.

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Vietnamese

The text below has been language-tagged as Vietnamese and is shown in the default font used by your browser.

Hán-Nôm

The text below has been language-tagged as Vietnamese written in Hán-Nôm characters and is shown in the default font used by your browser.

悉𪥘󠄁𤗆𠊛生𠚢調得自由吧平等𧗱人品吧權利。
𡥵𠊛調得造化頒朱理智吧良心吧懃沛對處貝僥𥪝情英㛪。

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Zhuang

The text below has been language-tagged as Zhuang and is shown in the default font used by your browser.

Sawndip

The text below has been language-tagged as Zhuang written in CJK ideographs and is shown in the default font used by your browser.

俌俌𮜃𦘭忑𭑆就𬚳自由，尊嚴凑權利俌俌平等。
衆伝𬚳理性凑良心，應當待衆𬿇㑣彼侬一樣。

Compare it to this image:

Instructions

Windows XP and Server 2003

Windows XP and Server 2003 include native support for East Asian languages. To install the files, check the Install files for East Asian languages in the Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages. Note that a minimum of 230 MB of disk space is required and that the Windows CD-ROM is needed while installing support for East Asian languages using this method. (Non-East Asian localizations only)

See also Enabling International Support in Windows XP/Server 2003 Family, including setting up Input Language and language of menus and dialogs. (Archived from the original^{[permanent dead link]} on 14 August 2016)

Alternatively, you can download the following installation packages. No disc is needed for this option.

Windows Vista, 7, 8

Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 include support for East Asian characters in the standard installation.

Windows 10

In the standard installation of Windows 10, Dengxian, SimFang, SimHei, SimKai, DFKai, MingLiU, Meiryo, MS Mincho, Ms Gothic, Yu Mincho, Batang, Gungsuh, Dotum and Gulim are no longer included. So when running certain apps on Windows 10, some characters display as a square or rectangular box, or as a box with a dot, question mark or "x" inside. To solve this problem, you must install the optional font feature of the specific language.

Instructions for Windows 10

macOS

All recent versions of macOS (10.4+) support East Asian characters natively. You may need to install appropriate fonts.

GNOME

GNOME supports East Asian characters natively. You may need to install appropriate fonts.

KDE

KDE supports East Asian characters natively. You may need to install appropriate fonts.

Debian-based GNU/Linux

For a large collection of Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts encoded in the Unicode standard:

sudo apt-get install fonts-noto-cjk

Arch Linux

For a large collection of fonts which comprehensively support Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, with a consistent design and look, install the following package:

pacman -S adobe-source-han-sans-otc-fonts

Gentoo Linux

Enabling the cjk (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) USE flag improves East Asian support in some packages, but is not essential.

Some useful font packages are (category media-fonts) arphicfonts (han), baekmuk-fonts (hangul) and kochi-substitute (hiragana/katakana).

e.g. for viewing Chinese text:

# emerge arphicfonts

Mageia Linux

Install the appropriate fonts packages. For example:

# urpmi fonts-ttf-japanese fonts-ttf-chinese fonts-ttf-korean

FreeBSD

CJK fonts can be installed on FreeBSD using freebsd ports collection:

# cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/cyberbit-ttfonts && make install clean
# cd /usr/ports/japanese/font-kochi && make install clean

or by installing precompiled packages:

# pkg install ja-font-kochi

NetBSD

On NetBSD and other systems using pkgsrc, one can install CJK fonts with the following commands:

# cd /usr/pkgsrc/fonts/kochi-ttf && make install clean
# cd /usr/pkgsrc/fonts/cyberbit-ttf && make install clean

Other UNIX Distributions

Download the appropriate .ttf file (for example, kochi-gothic-subst.ttf) and copy it to your system's TrueType font directory (for example, /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/). For example, (for Dejavu fonts):

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/dejavu/dejavu/2.35/dejavu-fonts-ttf-2.35.tar.bz2
tar -xjvf dejavu-fonts-ttf-2.33.tar.bz2
cp ./dejavu-fonts-ttf-2.33/ttf/* /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF

(or get the link to the current version here, and then update this help)

Then run (as root):

fc-cache /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/

Restart X if it is in use, and the new font should be installed.

Unicode Fonts

List of free unified Simplified/Traditional fonts Integrates both Simplified and Traditional Chinese with display-tuned fonts (without anti-aliased blurring)
List of free Simplified Chinese fonts
List of free Traditional Chinese fonts
List of free Japanese fonts
List of free Korean fonts
A chữ nôm font for the former Vietnamese script
A set of chữ nôm fonts
A set of fonts for Vietnamese Hán Nôm characters released by Han Nom Revival Committee of Vietnam (Uỷ Ban Phục Sinh Hán Nôm Việt Nam):
- Minh Nguyên 明源 (Serif)
- Gô-tích Nguyên 𦁣夕源(Sans-serif)
- Hán Nôm Khải 漢喃楷 (Regular style)

Input methods

Vietnamese Hán Nôm characters

Weasel Han Nom IME

The screenshot of Weasel Han Nom IME

Weasel Han Nom IME (Bộ gõ Hán Nôm Uy-xơn 部𢫈漢喃威𢺛) developed by Han Nom Revival Committee of Vietnam: Download and Instructions