# Ruby (not rails) internationalization

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-not-rails-internationalization/184961>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 11, 2010, 2:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-not-rails-internationalization/184961 "2010-03-11T02:23:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![amishera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@amishera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/amishera)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 2:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-not-rails-internationalization/184961/1 "2010-03-11T02:23:28Z")

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I have some web page which contains accented words (in french/italian  
etc) which I need to parse/extract and display. But the  
internationalization is not being taken into consideration so crazy  
characters are being shown. I searched in google for ruby  
internationalization but came up with rails internationalization. As you  
know that I don’t need rails right now (which btw, I have no knowledge  
in). I just need to work in plain ruby. I don’t know how  
internationalization is dealt with in regular ruby. Can someone throw  
some light on this?

Thanks.

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**Author:** ![amishera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@amishera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/amishera)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 2:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-not-rails-internationalization/184961/2 "2010-03-11T02:43:45Z")

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Try use the i18n [http://github.com/svenfuchs/i18n](http://github.com/svenfuchs/i18n) gem or  
r18n[http://github.com/ai/r18n](http://github.com/ai/r18n)gem.

Rafael Mendonça França  
Twitter: [http://twitter.com/rafaelfranca](http://twitter.com/rafaelfranca)  
Blog: www.rafaelfranca.com.br

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Amishera Amishera

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**Author:** ![amishera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@amishera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/amishera)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 6:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-not-rails-internationalization/184961/3 "2010-03-11T06:37:52Z")

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On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Amishera Amishera  
[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> I have some web page which contains accented words (in french/italian  
> etc) which I need to parse/extract and display. But the  
> internationalization is not being taken into consideration so crazy  
> characters are being shown. I searched in google for ruby  
> internationalization but came up with rails internationalization. As you  
> know that I don’t need rails right now (which btw, I have no knowledge  
> in). I just need to work in plain ruby. I don’t know how  
> internationalization is dealt with in regular ruby. Can someone throw  
> some light on this?

Easiest is to use Ruby 1.9 with Nokogiri for the HTML parsing.  
Then all you need to do is converting from the original encoding to  
your target encoding.  
See also a nice introduction into the world of encodings by JEGII:  
[http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/understanding\_m17n](http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/understanding_m17n)