Japanese address has unsupported characters so can't create shipping label

[timomills]

We recently got an order from Japan for our Shopify website.   The buyer address is almost entirely in Japanese language text with Japanese characters.  When I try to create a shipping label on Shopify I get an error message indicating the address contains "unsupported characters".   How can I resolve this?   Does customer in Japan need to provide an address in English language?   

[Maz]

Hi, @timomills!

Thanks for reaching out about this.

If you're receiving the error 'unsupported characters' message when trying to create your shipping label, this is because of a limitation of the carriers that we integrate with. Carrier label APIs often do not support character sets such as Japanese, Chinese, and Cyrillic, which can result in this error. Regrettably, Shopify has no control over this.

To work around this issue, you can contact the customer and request an English spelling of their address. If they wish to include the original address on the parcel, you can copy the original name and address to a program such as Word Doc or Notepad, print it separately, and tape it to the package next to the translated shipping label. This will ensure that the original address is still visible on the package while also allowing for the creation of a shipping label that is recognized by the carrier's system.

Speaking of Shipping, you may find our guide on Shipping Strategies: How To Offer Free, Flat Rate, and More at this link here helpful for your store!

[Hana9]

Hi @Maz we are running in the same issue, does Shopify offer any other solution? is there any app that can be used for this? Thank you in advance!

[Maz]

Hey. @Hana9!

Thanks for subscribing to this thread.

This is a limitation of the carriers that we integrate with and not something Shopify can fix as the issue lies on the carriers side with their API.

For now, the only workaround is the one mentioned above. Instead, I have gone ahead and sent this as feedback with our developers for you, and maybe we will see this fixed in the future, so I appreciate your feedback on this. 

Let me know if you have any other questions.