# Old mp3 with tags in japanese
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [January 22, 2026, 3:08pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546 "2026-01-22T15:08:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@misternaad](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/misternaad)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2026, 3:08pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/1 "2026-01-22T15:08:23Z")
hello,
i can’t read text on my mp3 files (it is in japanese) how can i convert it to read it please ?
version ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3V2.3)
thanks for your help 🙂
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### Author:  [@AreDigg](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/AreDigg)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2026, 3:11pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/2 "2026-01-22T15:11:36Z")
Do you mean that you need them transliterated, translated, or are they shown incorrectly?
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2026, 3:16pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/3 "2026-01-22T15:16:07Z")
> [@misternaad](#):
>
> version ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3V2.3)
Please check your settings in File -\> Options -\> Tag -\> Mpeg - Write:
From the [documentation](https://docs.mp3tag.de/customization/options/tags/mpeg/):
- **ID3v2.4 UTF-8** The newest revision of the ID3v2 standard. Tags are written in Unicode as UTF-8 encoded string. If you have problems with displaying the tags in other programs, please ask their authors to support ID3v2.4 (or switch to another option).
- **ID3v2.3 UTF-16** If enabled, Mp3tag writes ID3v2.3 tags in Unicode encoded as UTF-16 LE.
- **ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1** If enabled, Mp3tag doesn’t use Unicode when writing ID3v2 tags. This is useful if you are using software or devices (like some car radios) which can’t read tags stored in Unicode format.
Unfortunately, if you haven't written your Japanese text in UTF-8 or UTF-16 from the outset, I don't see how you can translate/convert it later.
Could you show us a [screenshot](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/hints-for-asking-support-requests/56190#p-168842-use-screenshots-to-exemplify-the-issue-2) of what the text looks like now?
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2026, 4:13pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/4 "2026-01-22T16:13:32Z")
> [@misternaad](#):
>
> how can i convert it to read it please
You would have to set your PC to the original code page with which the files were tagged originally.
You can see the encoding if you add a custom column with
Value: `%_id3v2_character_encoding%`
It does not tell you the codepage, though. The original Japanese codepage is 932.
Then you set the options\>Tags\>Mpeg to write UTF-16 encoded tags,
select the files
and press Ctrl-S to save the new encoding.
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### Author:  [@misternaad](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/misternaad)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2026, 6:09pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/5 "2026-01-22T18:09:38Z")
thanks for helping,
yes they shown incorrectly. like this
VocabularyEGoiE²¢Eêb:
HajimemashiteEͶßܵÄEßܵÄ- Nice to meet you. / How do you do?
Watashi wa Yumiko desu.Eí½µÍȱŷBEÍÄqÅ·B
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### Author:  [@misternaad](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/misternaad)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2026, 6:23pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/6 "2026-01-22T18:23:14Z")
i tried. so at the beginning, in the column, it said UTF-8, now I set the options\>Tags\>Mpeg to write UTF-16 encoded tags, and saved.
I have UTF-16 but japanese don’t appears …
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### Author:  [@misternaad](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/misternaad)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2026, 6:26pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/7 "2026-01-22T18:26:29Z")
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2026, 6:47pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/8 "2026-01-22T18:47:32Z")
> [@misternaad](#):
>
> VocabularyEGoiE²¢Eêb:
To me it looks like the structure of your line is:
- English word: **Vocabulary**
- Japanese middle dot: **・**
- Japanese word: **語彙** ("Goi")
- Japanese middle dot: **・**
- Japanese word: **あい** (ai)
- Japanese word: **挨拶** (aisatsu)
- Colon
So the intended line was probably something like: **Vocabulary ・ Goi ・ あい ・ 挨拶:**
Why characters like `E` appear: `E` is not an actual character. It represents two bytes:
- `0x81` (Shift‑JIS lead byte)
- `0x45` (Shift‑JIS trail byte)
If a program interprets these bytes as Windows‑1252 instead of [Shift‑JIS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_JIS), it displays the strange symbol `E`.
In **Shift‑JIS** , the byte pair `81 45` corresponds to:
**"・"** (Japanese middle dot)
As far as I know, once the text has already been misinterpreted, the original byte values are lost - and without those bytes, the Japanese text cannot be reliably reconstructed.
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2026, 6:48pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/old-mp3-with-tags-in-japanese/70546/9 "2026-02-21T18:48:25Z")
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