Mojibake Fixer & Encoding Converter

This free online tool automatically restores garbled (Mojibake) text just by pasting it. It auto-detects all conversion patterns between UTF-8 / Shift_JIS / EUC-JP / ISO-2022-JP and presents the most natural result.

All processing runs entirely in your browser via JavaScript — your sensitive data is never sent to any external server. No registration or login required, so you can use it with complete privacy.

Mojibake (Scrambled Text)

A phenomenon where the character encoding used to save a text doesn't match the encoding used to read it, resulting in scrambled, unreadable symbols (e.g., "縺ゅ＞縺").

UTF-8

The universal character encoding standard of the modern web, encompassing almost all global languages. Often scrambles when mistakenly read by older software using legacy encodings.

Shift_JIS

A legacy character encoding heavily used in older Japanese Windows systems. Opening UTF-8 Japanese text in a Shift_JIS environment causes very specific Mojibake patterns.

EUC-JP / ISO-2022-JP

EUC-JP originates from older Unix/Linux platforms, while ISO-2022-JP (JIS) was the strict standard for early internet emails in Japan. Both can cause decoding mismatches.

Encoding / Decoding

Encoding transforms human-readable text into byte arrays based on a specific standard. Decoding translates bytes back to text. A mismatch during decoding causes Mojibake.

Irreversible Data Loss

When text is scrambled, sometimes bytes are entirely discarded or swapped with a literal "?" symbol by old databases, rendering it mathematically impossible to recover.

Brute-force Analysis

The tool's methodology of exhaustively testing multiple combinations of legacy encoding -> modern decoding vectors to find the one combination that reveals readable text.

Q.Why do some texts fail to recover?

If the scrambled text was re-saved in a destructive format (like ANSI/Windows-1252), missing byte information is permanently lost. Irreversible mojibake cannot be mathematically fixed.

Q.Is it safe to paste and decode confidential work emails?

Yes. The brute-force fixing engine runs entirely client-side via JavaScript. Your text never leaves your workstation or travels to external servers.

Q.What does a pattern like "UTF-8 → Shift_JIS" mean?

It represents the "mistake" that caused the garbled text: The original document was saved in "UTF-8", but the software you are using erroneously opened it assuming it was "Shift_JIS".

Q.How do I know which of the output results is the correct one?

The tool shows attempts from all common encoding combinations. Simply scroll through the output panel and visually identify the block where the Japanese characters become a coherent, legible sentence.

Q.Can this fix the common "縺" scrambling issue?

Yes. The occurrence of characters like "縺" is the hallmark of UTF-8 text incorrectly opened as Shift_JIS. Our tool easily translates this back to correct Japanese.

Q.Can it recover emoji that turned into question marks (?)

Generally, no. If the software did not support emojis and overwrote the 4-byte characters with an actual "?" or "□" character, the original data is destroyed and cannot be recovered.

Q.How can I prevent Mojibake from happening to my team?

Ensure all team members set their text editors, IDEs, databases, and CSV export settings to use the universal "UTF-8" standard to eliminate encoding mismatches entirely.