Japanese & Mandarin Fonts

[DanaLookadoo]

A client is looking to translate PDFs on their website into Japanese & Mandarin fonts. I found this resource:

http://www.vistawide.com/languages/foreign_language_fonts2.htm

I'm not sure about the quality.

This is a call for any international font designers/experts for input. Any suggestions or resources?

[Kenoshi]

Hi Dana,

I'm not sure of your coding level, but I just recently built a website that had a lot of Japanese Kanji on it.  From what I could determine when I first approached the job, writing the Kanji right within the HTML was as straightforward as writing english text, but I believe the encoding for the HTML file (or PHP or what have you) needs to be UTF-8.  Most advanced text editors have a place to set the encoding type.  I did tests on Firefox, Safari, Chrome and IE on Windows and Mac, as well as iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry. However, I suppose I didn't test all of those with my image-replacement turned off, which I'll explain in a moment.

If you would like to inspect the site, it's www.renbukaibc.ca

When I designed the site I did end up using a CSS image-replacement technique so I could use a specific typeface for the Kanji called Kozuka Gothic.  I would've used @font-face to embed that font (like I did with other fonts on the site) but the font file size is over 4MB.

So to get an idea of how the Kanji really works on the site you should turn off CSS or use seo-browser.com (must click Simple button to avoid registration).  You can see there that the text is understood properly by search engines.

As a further test, if you do a Google search for 克己館 , which translates to Kokkikan (the name of my client's business), you will see that my client's website shows up without any problem.

As far as that font resource you linked to, I didn't look in depth but in order to use on of those fonts on your website you'll need to utilize something like the @font-face CSS directives.  The thing to watch out for with international fonts is the size of the font files that your visitors will need to download (it's all automatic) in order to view your font.  For example, the Kozuka Gothic font I referenced above is 4MB+ because of the large number of Kanji characters.  These fonts may suffer from a similar issue, making your website slow to load.  You'd probably be better off with image-replacement to achieve a particular style of Kanji (only good for headings, really), or use a standard web font.  Based on what I've said above, it should display fine for your users.

If you have any other questions I'd be glad to help. This is the first answer I've provided on seomoz, and quite a fluke that I saw it when I came into the Q&A section, so I hope this was helpful!

[DanaLookadoo]

Kenoshi,

Thank you for your detailed reply! I'm glad to have this and you as a reference for HTML. However, the client only needs the fonts for PDFs. They are not doing any HTML translation.

Any suggestion as a quality resource for such fonts or if the resource I questioned would work. They do not want to use some free font library that would produce low-quality letters in their PDF documents.

Thanks!

P.S. Nice job on the website!

[Kenoshi]

Awesome!  I wasn't clear on whether they were keeping the fonts as PDF or converting to HTML, so I made an assumption and dove right in.

"Low quality letters" is a tough thing to define.  From a technical standpoint, all fonts are vector-based so they will reproduce well at any size and not be pixelated or anything, especially in PDF.  So that aspect of "quality" shouldn't concern you.  But the style of a font may make it more / less readable or appropriate.

Like English text, Japanese text can be styled in different ways while keeping the same meaning.  Some may be more artistic, some more technical looking, etc.  For example: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/type/search.cfm?loc=EN&term=kozuka&store=OLS-US&category_type=Package&go=Go

To really get an idea of which font is appropriate for your situation, you may need to find someone who reads Japanese and Mandarin to help you make a subjective decision.  You won't want to use a heavily decorated font if you're dealing with a technical specification document, for instance.

Honestly, try posting an ad on Craigslist and someone will probably help for free or a very small fee.  Or inquire by email at your local Japanese Society or something similar.

I would use that as a guide in choosing the right font, as well as price perhaps.  I'm sure you'd be able to find some free fonts that meet your needs instead of paying.

Unfortunately I can't install any of the fonts from the web page you provided, so I'm not able to say if there are any other technical reasons why they may or may not work.  Again, someone who can read the languages would be able to tell you if any symbols are missing from the font file, for instance, just like how some English fonts may not have accented characters, or mathematical characters, etc.  If you purchase a font from a reputable source they often show you the exact character map that you'll get.

I hope this was more helpful this time!