Language and Locale Issues

  • In the distributable live report for a non-English campaign, the "Active Since" date may be displayed in the recipient locale. In Oracle Responsys, this date is displayed in English.
  • German versions of Outlook Express and Eudora have problems displaying HTML in the German version of Mac OS. HTML-format campaign messages may be incorrectly interpreted for recipients using these email clients. It is hoped that future versions of Outlook Express and Eudora for German will include improved display of HTML.
  • As a best practice, your HTML documents and attachments should include (between the <head> and </head> tags) a META tag specifying the appropriate character set. (For non-HTML attachments, your recipients may have to select the correct character set.)

    For English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Swedish:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">

    For Estonian, Latvian (Lettish), and Lithuanian:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=windows-1257">

    For Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, and Slovene:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-2">

    For Greek:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-7">

    For Japanese:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-2022-jp">

    For Korean:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=euc-kr">

    For Russian, (to match document content) use either of the following:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=koi8-r">

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=windows-1251">

    For Simplified Chinese:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=gb2312">

    For Traditional Chinese:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=big5">

    For Turkish:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-9">
  • For best results, use the Shift-JIS character set for Japanese documents and data that you upload into Oracle Responsys. (To change a file's character encoding, open the file in a Japanese-enabled editor or browser; then use the "save-as" feature, specifying Shift-JIS as the output character encoding.)

    If you upload an HTML document for use in your campaigns, though, be sure to delete any META tags (inserted by some HTML editors) that refer to the Shift-JIS character set, such as:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=shift_jis">

    Instead, replace them with the following Meta tag, which refers to the character encoding ISO-2022-JP. Oracle Responsys converts your document to this character set when the campaign is launched, and you can avoid problems in some email programs by specifying this character set instead:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-2022-jp">

    Important: If your HTML document has more than one Meta tag, this one must be first.

    Warning: There is a known issue with Microsoft® Outlook Express for Macintosh. Attached forms that include this META tag are corrupted by that email software. Inline HTML forms (HTML forms inside the body of the campaign message) submitted from the Japanese version of Netscape may cause corrupt data to appear in the database. Inline HTML forms submitted from Outlook Express on Macintosh may cause a "server is very busy” message to be displayed in English. The only way to completely avoid these possible problems with forms is to use linked forms (forms to which links are placed in your campaign messages) rather than attached or inline HTML forms. For related information, see the note under the Outlook heading in Email client and portal issues.

  • Each launched campaign is permanently associated with a "recipient locale" (the language that is used for message footers and for the response pages recipients see if they take certain actions in response to the campaign).

    If you import a folder containing a campaign that was created with one recipient locale, and then launch it from an account that specifies a different recipient locale, the message will contain footers in the first locale—even if the body of the campaign message is in the second locale—and responses to the campaign will be in the first locale, too.

    You can copy the campaign and then edit the copy to assign a different locale (if more than one is available to your account).

  • If you upload data or documents in one recipient-locale character set into an account with a different default recipient-locale character set, the data or documents will likely be corrupted.
  • Math-related built-in functions (add(), sub(), etc.) do not support commas (as in 1,234.56). This means these built-in functions also do not support the French (1 234,56) and European (1.234,56) number formats.
  • The following built-in functions are not supported in double-byte locales (which include Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese): commalist(), leadingcapital(), and firstname().
  • Word "and" returned by the commalist() built-in function is translated only for French and German ("et" and "und"). For any other target locale, the function returns "and" as it does for English.
  • Some email programs, such as Microsoft® Outlook and AOL, may not display non-English locales correctly in the Subject line of the email message if the operating system isn't localized for that locale. For example, Outlook displays Chinese subject lines correctly on the Chinese version of Windows, but may not display them correctly on the English version of Windows.
  • In email messages sent to Yahoo's Japanese webmail customers (through Yahoo.co.jp), attached or inline HTML forms in Japanese may not submit data properly. Linked forms work fine.
  • Problems have been found with inline HTML forms (forms included in the body of an email message) sent to goo.ne.jp accounts. The characters are garbled if the Display HTML Message in a Separate Window option is selected; however, if the Display HTML Message in the Main Body option is selected, the Submit button doesn't work. (The page refreshes, but nothing happens.)
  • Oracle Responsys correctly handles only English field names in tables. However, some programs (such as the Japanese version of Microsoft Outlook) export non-English CSV files (such as an address book) with the column headings (field names) in that locale. This creates a problem when you import the CSV file into Oracle Responsys.

    To solve this problem, edit the column headings, translating them into English; or complete the following steps to use the data without the column-heading row.

    1. Edit the CSV file to remove the heading row, and save the file.
    2. Create a table in Oracle Responsys using the Specify Fields Directly option.

      Note: Be sure to match the fields to the data in the file you want to upload.

    3. On the Folders page, click the table name, and select Preview from the pop-up menu.
    4. Click Upload.
    5. Click Browse, and find the CSV file on your computer.
    6. Click Next.
    7. Change the delimiter and quote character selections if necessary, but leave the Check This Box If the First Line Contains Field Names option unselected.
    8. Click Next.
    9. Select the appropriate field names from the drop-down lists.
    10. Click Upload.

      Note: Upload may take some time. Don't be alarmed if you see only a portion of the expected records at first.

  • English-language plain-text messages launched from an English-language account are displayed incorrectly in goo.ne.jp's email client. Other Japanese email portals may act similarly. To ensure that Japanese recipients see campaigns as intended, launch all plain-text English-language campaigns from a Japanese-language account.
  • On Windows, Foxmail doesn't display a Traditional Chinese campaign's main message if the main message is in plain-text format and the campaign includes an HTML form or other HTML document as an attachment.
  • On Windows, the English-language version of Eudora corrupts Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese campaign messages.
  • Recipients at iloveilove.com may have trouble receiving Traditional Chinese campaigns.
  • Recipients at netvigator.com may receive an error message when they submit a form included inline as part of a Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese campaign message.
  • Recipients at commerce.china.com don't receive HTML forms included within the body of the campaign message. (Form information is stripped out, leaving the rest of the message intact.) If your distribution list includes these recipients, use only attached or linked forms.
  • If your distribution list includes recipients at netian.com, use only attached or linked forms. HTML forms included within the body of the campaign message may be corrupted.
  • If your distribution list includes recipients at mail.china.com, use only attached or linked forms. HTML forms included within the body of the campaign message aren't supported.
  • AOL currently appears not to support the Korean character set.

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