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How to convert text symbols like ‰^“]€”õONŠ back to Japanese so I can google translate it to English? (Script?)


I am working with Mitsubishi PLC files that were originally commented in Japanese but then opened on English-only computers which converted the Japanese symbols to incomprehensible latin keyboard symbol combinations such as ‰^“]€”õONŠm”F(‘€ì”Õ1).

Being able to understand these comments would greatly enhance my ability to analyze and modify these files as I am required to do so for my work. If I could translate these back to Japanese symbols (I do have the Japanese language pack installed on my windows laptop), I could then translate these with Google Translate, which I know is not perfect, but is a lot better than #@$$##&^.

Does anyone have any ideas how this could be done? I figure that Windows must have interpreted the original characters somehow, and there may be a way to interpret them back to the original symbols.

I am thinking of trying to do some kind of character translation using a script in Python or Powershell or VBA (maybe I can create a map in Excel...)

Any ideas? I can export these comments into CSV files so easy to get to and manipulate if I can figure out how.... This is an ongoing problem for me so I am willing to put some time into a solution.

I tried re-opening the oldest version of the files, in my computer with the Japanese language pack installed and no luck.


Solution

  • You can run your text through an ascii to hex converter and then through a hex to ascii converter in order to change the encoding without your system settings being in the way.