Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:34 am
I've had this very same problem with Russian and Greek subtitles or any subtitles that use a different alphabet. I think that maybe your solution will work in some instances, but I have a different solution (the solution discussed on this post did not work for me).
This is what I did. I opened the subtitle file (a .txt file usually) in Microsoft Word. When Word opens, it asks what encoding should be used to display the text. Choose whichever Cyrillic encoding in compatible with the original text and hit "ok". Then copy and past the entire file from Word into Wordpad or Notepad. The text should show up correctly по-русски. That's still not enough for it to play in your media player though (I'm assuming VLC). Now you have to save the .txt file. Make sure you close Word first so the .txt file can be written. Overwrite the original .txt file. You will receive a message saying that the encoding isn't compatible and the changes will be lost, unless you change the encoding. So click on "cancel" (instead of "save") and change the encoding to UNICODE! Then save it. If you can see the Russian characters in Wordpad or Notepad then it will work correctly during the movie. I think the "Turkish" option in that bar in Wordpad was just to set the text as from a certain region. I think. As far as I know, that does NOT change the encoding to make the subtitles more compatible.
Hope this helps other users because I searched for a year trying to solve this problem!!! :-p