kitunes:Fixing Language Problems in iTunes/iPod

(Updated 10/05) The Language Display Capabilities of iTunes should be the same as those of OS X or WinXP/2000, that is to say just about any language for which you can find a font. But the iPod is more limited and its capabilities can differ by model. For the most recent iPods (as of 9/2005), the specs say that Menu Languages are Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese and Turkish. Additional language support for display of song, album and artist information includes Bulgarian, Croatian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian and Ukrainian. (A non-Apple Russian localization for the iPod can be found here.)

Out of the box the iPod cannot display song names in Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Hindi, or other languages not on the list above, and some earlier iPods may not even do all of those. There are no Apple downloads to fix this, and it is not known when Apple will add support for these and other missing languages. A non-Apple hack for Thai may be available here and for Hebrew <a href="http://www.hebpod.info/>here</a>and <a href="http://www.yeda.co.il/iPodHE/index.html>here.

Correct display of the language in song titles in both iTunes and on the iPod depends on the language being properly encoded and identified in the ID3 tags of the song. If it isn't working right, you can try to fix the tags. These docs give some info on doing this:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25293
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=165188
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=165151
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88186

A program which may be helpful in fixing certain kinds of tags is Unicode Rewriter.

If fixing the tags doesn't do the trick, the only alternative is to type titles in manually. If iTunes crashes when you edit ID3 tags, try removing any Visual plug-ins.

WinXP/2000, unlike OS X, does not have all languages enabled by default. Instructions for enabling Asian languages in Windows can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/user/xpintlsupp.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/user/2kintlsupp.mspx

If an iPod has its menus in the wrong language, you can change them to another one by going to Main Menu > Settings > Language or by doing a Reset. Doing a Restore may also work, but it will erase the contents of the iPod.

iTunes localizations are currently (version 6) available in Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Korean, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.

You cannot buy music from the iTunes store in another country. Because of licensing agreements you can only buy music from the store which services the billing address for your credit card. As of 10/05, iTunes stores are only available for the US, Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

For help with this issue, see this note:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/mlingos9.html#itunes