# Character Sets

`Zend_Mail` does not check for the correct character set of the mail parts. When instantiating `Zend_Mail`, a charset for the e-mail itself may be given. It defaults to iso-8859-1. The application has to make sure that all parts added to that mail object have their content encoded in the correct character set. When creating a new mail part, a different charset can be given for each part.

## Only in text format

Character sets are only applicable for message parts in text format.

## Usage in CJK languages

The following example is how to use `Zend_Mail` in Japanese. This is one of CJK (aka CJKV ) languages. If you use Chinese, you may use HZ-GB-2312 instead of ISO-2022-JP.

    //We suppose that character encoding of strings is UTF-8 on PHP script.
    function myConvert($string) {
        return mb_convert_encoding($string, 'ISO-2022-JP', 'UTF-8');
    }

    $mail = new Zend_Mail('ISO-2022-JP');
    // In this case, you can use ENCODING_7BIT
    // because the ISO-2022-JP does not use MSB.
    $mail->setBodyText(
        myConvert('This is the text of the mail.'),
        null,
        Zend_Mime::ENCODING_7BIT
    );
    $mail->setHeaderEncoding(Zend_Mime::ENCODING_BASE64);
    $mail->setFrom('somebody@example.com', myConvert('Some Sender'));
    $mail->addTo('somebody_else@example.com', myConvert('Some Recipient'));
    $mail->setSubject(myConvert('TestSubject'));
    $mail->send();