Is there any word or phrase that describe messed up letters? For example, something like these letters "æ–‡å­—åŒ–ã‘" which was a Japanese word but it got messed up due to encoding trouble. This often

Yohei

Is there any word or phrase that describe messed up letters? For example, something like these letters "æ–‡å—åŒ–ã‘" which was a Japanese word but it got messed up due to encoding trouble. This often happens when transferring files between Windows and Mac, etc. By the way, it's called "mojibake" in Japanese so I searched it on Wikipedia and it says it's same in English but I don't know how many people use mojibake in English.

Apr 22, 2015 3:00 AM

Answers · 12

I don't know of a specific word for that, but I would guess you could say it got scrambled. If you do find out a word in English I'd like to know!

April 22, 2015

I've never heard of a word for it, either. Something like "the letters got messed up" might be the best thing you could say. There's a long English Wikipedia article on "mojibake," so if we had to refer to it by name I guess we'd use the Japanese word, but it's probably not very well-known. I like Rayne's suggestion of "scrambled," but you might have to specify what you mean.

April 22, 2015

Not that I know of. I'm pretty sure most American wouldn't understand what a "mojibake" is. You can say you had an error?

April 22, 2015

encrypted. sometimes the file that gets encrypted cant be reviewed or opened.

May 20, 2015

"the letters were scrambled" is the closest thing we have to describe that. I've never heard anyone use the term mojibake so doubt it's very well know out side of Japanese learners.

April 23, 2015

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