Convert Big5, GBK, Shift_JIS and EUC-KR files to UTF-8

Supported encodings

• Big5 – Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, Hong Kong). In Chinese: Big5 轉 UTF-8.
• GBK, GB2312 and GB18030 – Simplified Chinese (mainland China). In Chinese: GBK 转 UTF-8.
• Shift_JIS (CP932), EUC-JP and ISO-2022-JP – Japanese. In Japanese: Shift_JIS を UTF-8 に変換.
• EUC-KR (CP949) – Korean. In Korean: EUC-KR UTF-8 변환.
• Western files in Windows-1252 (ANSI) are recognized too.

How to convert a file

1. Drag the file into the box above or choose it – CSV, TXT, SRT, JSON and other text formats work.
2. Mojibuster reads the file in every supported code page and keeps the reading that gives real Chinese, Japanese or Korean text.
3. The result names the encoding it used. If the preview looks wrong, click Looks wrong? Read as … to try the next candidate.
4. Click Download. The file is saved as UTF-8 – for CSV files with a BOM if you like, so Excel opens it correctly.

Why the encoding can’t always be read from the file

A legacy file doesn’t say which code page it uses. Big5, GBK, EUC-JP and EUC-KR all store a character as two bytes from the same range, so the same bytes can be valid Korean in EUC-KR and valid Chinese in GBK. Mojibuster picks the reading with the most common characters of each script and offers the others as alternatives – one look at the preview tells you which is right.

Where legacy files come from

• Exports from older accounting, ERP or banking software.
• Files saved as “ANSI” in Notepad on a Chinese, Japanese or Korean Windows.
• Old websites, forum backups and e-mail archives.
• Subtitle files (SRT) downloaded from Asian sites.

Text that is already garbled

This page converts files that are still in their original code page. If the text was already read wrongly and saved – 縺薙ｓ縺ｫ縺｡縺ｯ instead of こんにちは, or 浣犲ソ instead of 你好 – use the page in that language: Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese or Korean. More on the background: what is mojibake?

Characters that can’t be converted

If a file already contains ? instead of characters, the information was lost when it was saved and can’t be restored. Mojibuster counts these spots so you know where to look.

Frequently asked questions

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