<sod>{{nihongo|'''Mojibake'''|文字化け|}} ({{IPA-ja|mod͡ʑibake|IPA}}; lit. "character transformation"), from the [[Japanese (language)|Japanese]] 文字 (moji) "character" + 化け (bake, pronounced "bah-keh") "transform", is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended [[character encoding]].<ref name="ieee">"[http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2012.6221090 Will Unicode soon be the universal code?]" ''IEEE Spectrum'', vol. 49, issue 7, p. 60 (July 2012).  ''The advantage of Unicode is that if everyone adopted it, it would eradicate the problem of '''mojibake''', Japanese for "character transformation." Mojibake is the jumble that results when characters are encoded in one system but decoded in another.''</ref> The result is a systematic replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones, often from a different [[writing system]]. This display may include the generic [[Specials (Unicode block)#Replacement character|replacement character]] � or the undefined [[Private Use Areas]] symbol  in places where the binary representation is considered invalid. A replacement can also involve multiple consecutive symbols, as viewed in one encoding, when the same binary code constitutes one symbol in the other encoding. This is either because of differing constant length encoding (as in Asian 16-bit encodings vs European 8-bit encodings), or the use of variable length encodings (notably [[UTF-8]] and [[UTF-16]]).<eod>
<sod>{{nihongo|'''Mojibake'''|文字化け|}} ({{IPA-ja|mod͡ʑibake|IPA}}; lit. "character transformation"), from the [[Japanese (language)|Japanese]] 文字 (moji) "character" + 化け (bake, pronounced "bah-keh") "transform", is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended [[character encoding]].<ref name="ieee">"[http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2012.6221090 Will Unicode soon be the universal code?]" ''IEEE Spectrum'', vol. 49, issue 7, p. 60 (July 2012).  ''The advantage of Unicode is that if everyone adopted it, it would eradicate the problem of '''mojibake''', Japanese for "character transformation." Mojibake is the jumble that results when characters are encoded in one system but decoded in another.''</ref> The result is a systematic replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones, often from a different [[writing system]]. This display may include the generic [[Specials (Unicode block)#Replacement character|replacement character]] � or the undefined [[Private Use Areas]] symbol <code>U+E5FA</code> in places where the binary representation is considered invalid. A replacement can also involve multiple consecutive symbols, as viewed in one encoding, when the same binary code constitutes one symbol in the other encoding. This is either because of differing constant length encoding (as in Asian 16-bit encodings vs European 8-bit encodings), or the use of variable length encodings (notably [[UTF-8]] and [[UTF-16]]).<eod>