javac and java are in wrong encoding and locale

Question

I'm on Windows 7. The system locale is zh_CN and there's no way to change the OS's locale. When install java, it detected the system locale and therefore java and javac will, supposedly print its output in localized language (Chinese in this case). I don't want this behaviour but there's no way to change it.

However, it doesn't work. I tried Cygwin, git bash and Win CMD, all print just question marks. See below sample output (from Cygwin): enter image description here

Anyone has any idea how to make it output English? Any help is much appreciated!

Have u tried this? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6217297/forcing-the-use-of-english-in-jdk7-tools — anonymous, Mar 24 '14 at 13:11
check this `http://www.java.com/en/download/help/locale.xml` — Vinayak Pingale, Mar 24 '14 at 13:13
Are you sure your terminals actually support printing Chinese characters? — fge, Mar 24 '14 at 13:14
@fge maybe it doesn't, and that's why I want to switch to English — Boyang, Mar 24 '14 at 14:16
@VinayakPingale I have said that system locale cannot be changed — Boyang, Mar 24 '14 at 14:16

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 24 '14 at 13:19

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I believe you can do this with this command:

java -Duser.language=en -Duser.country=US ...

answered Mar 24 '14 at 13:19

James Curtis

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I will have to do this every single time but it works. – Boyang Mar 24 '14 at 14:17
wow, good to know... This indeed works. On my system it works on French, Spanish, German. – AlexR Mar 24 '14 at 14:35

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

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I compared your and my output of javac and saw that in your case the text is much shorter. So I believe that your javac prints messages in Chinese that is not supported by your terminal. So, you should either teach your terminal Chinese or re-install JDK and choose English as a current interface language (if it is possible) or probably download English version of JDK.

See the following discussion. Try their recommendations how to turn command prompt to be UTF8-compliant.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

Community

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answered Mar 24 '14 at 13:22

AlexR

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There's nowhere to specify interface language when installing JDK. And I don't want the messages to be in Chinese either- I want them to be in English – Boyang Mar 24 '14 at 14:18

javac and java are in wrong encoding and locale

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