mojibake

English

WOTD – 11 February 2024

Etymology

Mojibake in the text of the Japanese Wikipedia when displayed with the wrong encoding.

Borrowed from Japanese 文字化け (mojibake), from 文字 (moji, “character”) + 化ける (bakeru, “to transform, take a different form”, generally in a negative way).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌməʊd͡ʒiˈbɑːki/, /-keɪ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌmoʊd͡ʒiˈbɑki/, /-keɪ/
• Hyphenation: mo‧ji‧ba‧ke

Noun

mojibake (uncountable)

Example
The Japanese term 文字化け, when displayed using the wrong character set or encoding, results in the following mojibake: •¶Žš‰»‚¯.

1. (computing) Corrupt characters or letters, especially resulting from being displayed or transferred through an inappropriate character set or encoding.
   • 2012, Tom Christiansen, brian d foy, Larry Wall, Jon Orwant, Programming Perl, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 285:

     Alas, you'll even see “text” files where some lines have one encoding but other lines have different encodings. You are guaranteed to see mojibake.

   • 2021, Lydia Chen, When the Flowers Withered‎^[1], Singapore: Partridge Publishing, →ISBN:

     The space behind the door is filled with mojibake, more specifically, a mojibake that is made of pieces of my memory. “Why? Why do I like girls?” I hear a younger voice of mine echoing in the room.

Related terms

• emoji

Translations

corrupt characters or letters

• Arabic: مُوجِيبَاكِي m (mujibākī)
• Belarusian: краказя́бра f (krakazjábra)
• Bulgarian: маймуница f (majmunica)
• Central Franconian: Bochstabesallaat ?
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 亂碼／乱码 (lyun⁶ maa⁵)

  Hokkien: 亂碼／乱码 (zh-min-nan) (loān-bé)

  Mandarin: 亂碼／乱码 (zh) (luànmǎ)

• Dutch: mojibake ?
• Esperanto: moĝibako
• Finnish: mojibake
• French: mojibake (fr) m
• Galician: mojibake ?
• German: Mojibake f, Krähenfüße (de) m pl, Zeichensalat m
• Hebrew: סינית f (sinít)
• Hungarian: modzsibake, betűszemét, krikszkraksz (hu)
• Italian: mojibake pl
• Japanese: 文字化け (ja) (もじばけ, mojibake)
• Korean: 깨진 (kkaejin) 글자 (ko) (geulja), 글자 깨짐 (geulja kkaejim), 외계어 (oegyeeo)
• Macedonian: please add this translation if you can
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: tegnsalat m

  Nynorsk: teiknsalat m

• Persian: موجیباکه (mojibâke)
• Polish: krzaczek (pl) m pl (humorous), krzak (pl) m pl, krzaki m pl
• Portuguese: mojibake m
• Romanian: maimuțica ?
• Russian: модзиба́ке n (modzibáke), бнопня́ f (bnopnjá), бНОПНЯ́ f (bNOPNJÁ), бу́ква «зю» f (búkva «zju»), кракозя́бра f (krakozjábra), крякозя́бра f (krjakozjábra), крокозя́бра (ru) f (krokozjábra), закаля́ка f (zakaljáka), зю́ква f (zjúkva)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: ђу̏бре n

  Roman: đȕbre (sh) n

• Spanish: mojibake (es) ?
• Swedish: mojibake ?
• Thai: ภาษาต่างดาว (th) (paa-sǎa-dtàang-daao)
• Ukrainian: крокозя́бра f (krokozjábra)
• Vietnamese: loạn mã (亂碼)

Further reading

• mojibake on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Japanese

Romanization

mojibake

1. Rōmaji transcription of もじばけ