My producer friend hired a translator to watch his film and create Japanese subtitles. The translator provided an Excel spreadsheet with the English dialogue in one column and the Japanese translation in another column. But when he got the file back, the producer wasn't able to get the Japanese to display--just garbage characters and blocks. He says that he's installed the Japanese language pack(s) and Microsoft Japanese fonts and still no luck. Has anybody solved this problem before? What does he need to do to see the Japanese?

It now appears that the translator used a specialty font that the producer does not have on his computer. The translator is incommunicado and clueless about computers to boot. Is there any source of Japanese fonts, where we could try just installing a bunch of them and seeing if the Excel file likes any of them?

Robert,

You can send it to me, if you like. I'll open it on one of the Japanese system computers at my office, then resave it using a variety of fonts. (PC or Mac format?)

(Tip: If you're downloading fonts, the most common here are the "Gothic" family for PCs and "Osaka" for a Mac)

We eventually loaded the file on one of the other producer's computers--a Mac with some Adobe typefaces installed, I believe--and the Japanese was legible.

The film, by the way, premieres next week in Paris March 1st and begins its festival run at the SKIP CITY D-Cinema festival outside Tokyo on March 22nd, 2004.

I think you also need to install an "asian" language pack for
Windows to be able to view such things. At least, that's something
I seem to remember.