# About Chinese characters **URL:** \ **Category:** The Garage\ **Created:** [April 29, 2013, 9:30am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064 "2013-04-29T09:30:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1

**Author:** ![Cibo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Cibo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cibo)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 9:30am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/1 "2013-04-29T09:30:14Z")

Hello everyone I am living in Taiwan and my main language is Chinese. My friends and I love DDA, we all love survival + crafting + zombie games. But some friends just can’t understand English well. So I tried to translate some messages in game to Chinese and failed. I know I can choose ttf in FONTDATA, but game seems only read English characters. The Chinese characters will show nothing but space character " ". Is it possible to make DDA support Chinese words? ---

**Author:** ![AerialK7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@AerialK7](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/AerialK7)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 10:28am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/2 "2013-04-29T10:28:25Z")

What are you wanting to translate? The item names? Or… EDIT: If its the things like the “Z” for zombies the I guess data-\>RAW-\>monstergroups MIGHT be able to change them…but im not sure, im not that knowledgeable about this sorta stuff ---

**Author:** ![Cibo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Cibo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cibo)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:21am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/3 "2013-04-29T11:21:15Z")

I would like to translate everything in game if possible. 😛 It’s not a problem play with ascii tiles. I wanna translate some skills or messages first. Something like “dodge = 閃躲” , “melee = 近戰” \<-- can see Chinese? I know where to change them, but game didn’t show words correctly. ---

**Author:** ![AerialK7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@AerialK7](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/AerialK7)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:23am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/4 "2013-04-29T11:23:27Z")

Where can you change them? Ima try and see if theyre supported when I do it EDIT: Oh I see, in the skills section, ima try now. ---

**Author:** ![Caconym](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aca169/32.png) [@Caconym](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Caconym)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:25am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/5 "2013-04-29T11:25:35Z")

[quote=“Cibo, post:3, topic:1064”]I would like to translate everything in game if possible. 😛 It’s not a problem play with ascii tiles. I wanna translate some skills or messages first. Something like “dodge = 閃躲” , “melee = 近戰” \<-- can see Chinese? I know where to change them, but game didn’t show words currently.[/quote] What about doing it in [Pinyin?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin) Just a suggestion. ---

**Author:** ![AerialK7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@AerialK7](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/AerialK7)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:30am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/6 "2013-04-29T11:30:33Z")

[quote=“Caconym, post:5, topic:1064”][quote=“Cibo, post:3, topic:1064”]I would like to translate everything in game if possible. 😛 It’s not a problem play with ascii tiles. I wanna translate some skills or messages first. Something like “dodge = 閃躲” , “melee = 近戰” \<-- can see Chinese? I know where to change them, but game didn’t show words currently.[/quote] What about doing it in [Pinyin?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin) Just a suggestion.[/quote] I was actually thinking about using that. And nope, I tried using those characters and they just ended up as " " ---

**Author:** ![Cibo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Cibo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cibo)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:33am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/7 "2013-04-29T11:33:26Z")

[quote=“Caconym, post:5, topic:1064”][quote=“Cibo, post:3, topic:1064”]I would like to translate everything in game if possible. 😛 It’s not a problem play with ascii tiles. I wanna translate some skills or messages first. Something like “dodge = 閃躲” , “melee = 近戰” \<-- can see Chinese? I know where to change them, but game didn’t show words currently.[/quote] What about doing it in [Pinyin?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin) Just a suggestion.[/quote] Thanks for suggestion, but we don’t use Pinyin in Taiwan. Pinyin more difficult than English for Taiwan ppl. XD ---

**Author:** ![AerialK7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@AerialK7](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/AerialK7)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:37am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/8 "2013-04-29T11:37:14Z")

you could just write it down on paper for them as a easy quick solution for the stats (eg dodge=閃躲) but ya know…im a tad weird like that ---

**Author:** ![Cibo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Cibo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cibo)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:41am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/9 "2013-04-29T11:41:30Z")

[quote=“AerialK7, post:6, topic:1064”][quote=“Caconym, post:5, topic:1064”][quote=“Cibo, post:3, topic:1064”]I would like to translate everything in game if possible. 😛 It’s not a problem play with ascii tiles. I wanna translate some skills or messages first. Something like “dodge = 閃躲” , “melee = 近戰” \<-- can see Chinese? I know where to change them, but game didn’t show words currently.[/quote] What about doing it in [Pinyin?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin) Just a suggestion.[/quote] I was actually thinking about using that. And nope, I tried using those characters and they just ended up as " "[/quote] I know the problem is DDA just read English ttf characters. English ttf is include A~Z and a~z and @#$% those symbles. Chinese ttf is include not only those in English but also thousands or more Chinese characters. DDA doesn’t read more than English characters. I guess DDA limited characters loading just English range bytes. ---

**Author:** ![AerialK7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@AerialK7](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/AerialK7)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:43am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/10 "2013-04-29T11:43:03Z")

😃 SO MY SOLUTION IS BEST man im lazy… ---

**Author:** ![Cibo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Cibo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cibo)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:44am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/11 "2013-04-29T11:44:40Z")

> [@AerialK7](#): > > you could just write it down on paper for them as a easy quick solution for the stats (eg dodge=閃躲) but ya know…im a tad weird like that Surely I can just make a translate list paper. XD But that really not helpful if we wanna introduce this cool game to a new one. Especially DDA has a ascii face already. 😛 ---

**Author:** ![AerialK7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@AerialK7](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/AerialK7)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:47am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/12 "2013-04-29T11:47:49Z")

Well…If I knew Chinese (which I dont, and im learning Japanese) Id make a list for you. It wouldnt take a horrible amount of time ---

**Author:** ![Soyweiser](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/soyweiser/32/37_2.png) [@Soyweiser](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Soyweiser)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 12:15pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/13 "2013-04-29T12:15:53Z")

I think it is not currently possible to easily translate the game into a different language (Or at least one with a non ascii charset). Sorry about that. As you have probably noticed proper chinese (or any unicode) support is very rare. I do however love the idea of using the chinese (or any non western) character set for a roguelike. “The 閃 throws a car at your head.” (I have no clue what 閃 means). ---

**Author:** ![Soyweiser](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/soyweiser/32/37_2.png) [@Soyweiser](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Soyweiser)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 12:17pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/14 "2013-04-29T12:17:37Z")

But the best (and only) way to properly do this is to implement unicode support. Which is a shitload of annoying work. ---

**Author:** ![AerialK7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@AerialK7](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/AerialK7)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 12:19pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/15 "2013-04-29T12:19:21Z")

> [@Soyweiser](#): > > But the best (and only) way to properly do this is to implement unicode support. Which is a shitload of annoying work. OR write it down on paper 😉 ---

**Author:** ![Soyweiser](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/soyweiser/32/37_2.png) [@Soyweiser](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Soyweiser)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 12:42pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/16 "2013-04-29T12:42:55Z")

What? That does not make sense. I’m seriously trying to say that there is a very low chance of DDA getting proper unicode support. (which sucks). ---

**Author:** ![AerialK7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@AerialK7](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/AerialK7)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 12:56pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/17 "2013-04-29T12:56:34Z")

Well, you could translate it to paper as a short term solution… ---

**Author:** ![Cibo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Cibo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cibo)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 1:07pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/18 "2013-04-29T13:07:51Z")

> [@AerialK7](#): > > Well, you could translate it to paper as a short term solution… I just confuse why DDA can’t load Chinese characters in ttf. It loads English characters in same ttf. ---

**Author:** ![Soron](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/soron/32/885_2.png) [@Soron](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Soron)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 5:59am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/19 "2013-04-30T05:59:50Z")

Cataclysm is having issues with Chinese characters in TTF files because it’s not set up to handle Unicode. In part, that’s because some portions of Cataclysm still interact with software that assumes everything is ASCII - specifically, it assumes that the total number of characters is no greater than 128 (or maybe 256). Unfortunately, that doesn’t really work for something like Chinese, which has thousands of characters. Making it so that Cataclysm can use Unicode would definitely be good, but it might also be very tricky (especially since the original author left us very messy code, when he stopped working on Cataclysm). I was going to mention a potential workaround involving [zhuyin fuhao](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin_fuhao), but now that I think of it, that would have technical issues as well. Now, looking into Unicode support… On Linux, we’d need to use a version of ncurses that supports Unicode. I found some instructions [here](http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.games.roguelike.development/2010-09/msg00050.html), and a little bit of example and discussion [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4703168/adding-unicode-utf8-chars-to-a-ncurses-display-in-c). On Windows, we’d need to edit catacurse.cpp and catacurse.h to use a larger variable than char for text. I’ve pushed a [test version](https://github.com/ethankaminski/Cataclysm-DDA/tree/unicode-test) to my copy of the repository, but I honestly have no idea if that will work (since it’s using code that I can’t test, as I’m on Linux). So, assuming you’re on Windows (due to the talk of TTF), maybe try that test version I have? Can’t guarantee it’ll work, but there’s a chance it will help. ---

**Author:** ![Cibo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Cibo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cibo)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:30pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064/20 "2013-04-30T12:30:24Z")

[quote=“Soron, post:19, topic:1064”]Cataclysm is having issues with Chinese characters in TTF files because it’s not set up to handle Unicode. In part, that’s because some portions of Cataclysm still interact with software that assumes everything is ASCII - specifically, it assumes that the total number of characters is no greater than 128 (or maybe 256). Unfortunately, that doesn’t really work for something like Chinese, which has thousands of characters. Making it so that Cataclysm can use Unicode would definitely be good, but it might also be very tricky (especially since the original author left us very messy code, when he stopped working on Cataclysm). I was going to mention a potential workaround involving [zhuyin fuhao](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin_fuhao), but now that I think of it, that would have technical issues as well. Now, looking into Unicode support… On Linux, we’d need to use a version of ncurses that supports Unicode. I found some instructions [here](http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.games.roguelike.development/2010-09/msg00050.html), and a little bit of example and discussion [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4703168/adding-unicode-utf8-chars-to-a-ncurses-display-in-c). On Windows, we’d need to edit catacurse.cpp and catacurse.h to use a larger variable than char for text. I’ve pushed a [test version](https://github.com/ethankaminski/Cataclysm-DDA/tree/unicode-test) to my copy of the repository, but I honestly have no idea if that will work (since it’s using code that I can’t test, as I’m on Linux). So, assuming you’re on Windows (due to the talk of TTF), maybe try that test version I have? Can’t guarantee it’ll work, but there’s a chance it will help.[/quote] Very thanks. I will try and report. 😃 Guess I have to learn how to compile it in windows. [Next page](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/about-chinese-characters/1064.md?page=2)