Russian text in Epub

[pokladvlad]

Dear friends,

my book, which is in Russian, went fine through Meatgrinder, converted fine to pdf, but in Epub format every Russian character is changed to question mark, so the text looks like "??"

Any suggestions please?

[Ted]

It sounds like your Russian font wasn't embedded in the document, required by ePub I believe, although there could be other reasons why you are getting ??.

To embed a TrueType font in a saved document in Microsoft Office Word 2007, follow these steps:

Click the Microsoft Office Button.
Click Word Options.
On the Save tab, click to select the Embed fonts in the file check box.

Hope this helps.

[pokladvlad]

Dear Ted,

thanks so much for helping me! I did as you suggested, but still with the same `questioning` result )). Maybe it has something to do with encoding?

[Ted]

First I would check to make sure that the device/program you are using to read the ePub file can read all foreign languages. I'm not a computer/ereader guru, but I understand from reading blogs/forums that not all devices are smart enough to read some languages and the device needs a flash update for foreign languages.

MSWord default encoding is Unicode, which should work for Russian Cyrillic fonts.

If your device read other Russian ebooks in the past, then I'm not sure why it isn't now.

The only other suggestion I have is to ensure the font you are using is legitimate TrueType Cyrillic font or, if memory serves me correctly, a compatible Open Type font. Open Type fonts are recognized by Windows, but I don't know it they will be recognized by epub.

Try using Calibre with an OpenType Cyrillic font in a PDF of your Word Doc. Copy your ebook, save as test copy.doc, change font to an OpenType Cyrillic font, create a PDF, open it in Calibre, then Convert to ePub and see if the ?'s remain.

PS: Computers can be a pain sometimes when there are not standard standards.

[Ted]

It might be easier and quicker to review Russian language ebooks on Smashwords and contact some of the authors to see if they've had a problem with 's in ePub. If they haven't, then find out why not.

[pokladvlad]

Dear Ted,

Thanks a lot for all the suggestions, will try them tomorrow after finishing my travel.

[pokladvlad]

It turned to be easier than I thought, as usual. I tried to read other books in Russian with installed Adobe Digital Editions, and the result was the same, `?`s

After an hour of searching for the answer I skipped (Adobe turned not to be very user-friendly) and downloaded Mozilla add-on for reading epub files. I can read both my and other books with this add-on even when I don't embed fonts in my book file. I think this is good as embedded fonts make my book 10 times heavier.

For the future reference, here is the link for the Mozilla add-on:
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/epubreader/