gibberish at homepage in Chinese

Could anyone help me,please?

Zencart v1.5.4 and installed chinese patch simplified utf8. I've imported v1.5.1 data and changed all web file Simplified Chinese text to traditional Chinese.

But I found there is gibberish at the homepage

i.e. New Product For "???"

and

Monthly Specials For "???"

I've changed all collation to utf8_generic_ci from default latin1_swedish_ci

And when installing v1.5.4, is it possible to change the default collation to utf8_generic_ci instead of latin1_swedish_ci? I cannot change it even I choose to default utf8 when installing.

Thank you very much in advance!

I've imported v1.5.1 data and changed all web file Simplified Chinese text to traditional Chinese.

What do you mean by that?

Some of their characters are different. In my city, people use Traditional Chinese, so I have to change all Simplified Chinese characters to Traditional.

Are these ???? supposed to be month names?

Thannaree:

Are these ???? supposed to be month names?

Yes.
In English patch, it should be "New Products For September & "Monthly Specials For September". But the month name cannot be decoded properly in Chinese patch!

In files includes/languages/schinese.php and admin/includes/languages/schinese.php

$locales = array('zh_CN', 'zh_CN.utf8', 'zh');

Could you try adding locales for traditional?

I am pulling these from Google:
Hong Kong: 'zh_HK', 'zh_HK.utf8',
Traditional: 'zh_HANT', 'zh_HANT.utf8',
Taiwan: 'zh_TW', 'zh_TW.utf8',

Thannaree:

In files includes/languages/schinese.php and admin/includes/languages/schinese.php

Could you try adding locales for traditional?

I am pulling these from Google:
Hong Kong: 'zh_HK', 'zh_HK.utf8',
Traditional: 'zh_HANT', 'zh_HANT.utf8',
Taiwan: 'zh_TW', 'zh_TW.utf8',

Thank you Thannaree! I'm in Hong Kong so I guess I should use zh_HK.

Here is the original code:

$locales = array('zh_CN', 'zh_CN.utf8', 'zh');
  @setlocale(LC_TIME, $locales);

I changed to :

$locales = array('zh_HK', 'zh_HK.utf8', 'zh');
  @setlocale(LC_TIME, $locales);

The gibberish still exists.

I'm not familiar with programming. I tried to remove the definition of $locales, i.e.

$locales = array('zh_HK', 'zh_HK.utf8', 'zh');
  @setlocale(LC_TIME,  'zh_HK.utf8');

The month gibberish problem seems solved!
Homepage

Admin page

But I wonder it will drive other problems in somewhere, won't it?

Could you please also telling me whether I have to change all table collations to utf8_generic_ci in database?

Thank you!

I changed to :
Code:
$locales = array('zh_HK', 'zh_HK.utf8', 'zh');
@setlocale(LC_TIME, $locales);
The gibberish still exists.

Have you also tried with

$locales = array('zh_HANT', 'zh_HANT.utf8', 'zh');
@setlocale(LC_TIME, $locales);

And when installing v1.5.4, is it possible to change the default collation to utf8_generic_ci instead of latin1_swedish_ci? I cannot change it even I choose to default utf8 when installing.

How did you install it? I just did a fresh v1.54 install manually and UTF-8 is set by default in the drop down. And after installation collation is utf8_generic_ci.

Thannaree:

Have you also tried with

$locales = array('zh_HANT', 'zh_HANT.utf8', 'zh');
@setlocale(LC_TIME, $locales);

I've tried it and TW and HANS but the month "September" displayed in English instead of Chinese. 

Could you give me advise if changing like this should be okay?

@setlocale(LC_TIME, 'zh_HK.utf8');

Thannaree:

How did you install it? I just did a fresh v1.54 install manually and UTF-8 is set by default in the drop down. And after installation collation is utf8_generic_ci.

Thank you Thannaree for your great help!

I deleted the whole test site folder and tried to install it again.

I chose ULT8 (default) and then install it.

But all collations are latin1_swedish_ci.

Actually, is it workable if I keep all collations to be latin1_swedish_ci (I will have to install Chinese patch zencart)? If not, could you teach me how I can switch them to utf8_generic_ci in one time instead of revising them one by one? Thank you so much!

Regarding locales I guess that $locales should be using: $locales = array('zh_HK', 'zh_HK.utf8', 'zh'); and that therefore you should not have to change (LC_TIME, $locales). Just in case, have you well refreshed the page after trying with that?

$locales = array('zh_HK', 'zh_HK.utf8', 'zh');
@setlocale(LC_TIME, $locales);

To change collation in your database:
Log into phpMyAdmin in your cpanel.
Select your database from the list on the left.
Click on "Operations" from the set of tabs at the top.
In the Collation box, select utf8_general_ci from the dropdown menu.
Click Go.

Perhaps you should contact your hosting admin and ask them what locales they use.

There is also a database conversion utility to do something similar to this:
Convert db2utf8

Thank you Thannaree! All problems are solved.

mc12345678:

There is also a database conversion utility to do something similar to this:
Convert db2utf8

This is a very powerful program! All collations changed to UTF8 in few seconds, Thank you!