Mojibake

Mojibake (文字化け, moji character + bake change) is Japanese for broken characters: garbage that comes out when one tries to display international character sets through software not configured for them.

It is called luan ma (亂碼 or 乱码 luan4 ma3), or "chaotic code(s)", in Chinese.

Example: "文字化け" is displayed as "•ÃƒÂ‚¶Žš‰ÃƒÂ‚»‚¯"

External Links

• What Is Mojibake? - an excellent article about mojibake.
• 乱码大全 (A Comprehensive Guide to Mojibake) (in simplified Chinese)