title: How to keep Java properties files human readable
body: <p>Grails uses Java Properties files too.</p>
  
  <p>I can use Google translate to do an initial translation of my message.properties file, even into languages like Chinese. I can see the actual Chinese characters in my new messages_zh_CN.properties file, when I view it in Netbeans or notepad++.</p>
  
  <p>But once the file goes into svn, when it's checked out, the Chinese characters aren't visible any more. All you can see is the ISO 8859-1 encoding. For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>default.paginate.prev =\u4e0a\u4e00\u9875
  default.paginate.next =\u4e0b\u4e00\u6b65
  default.boolean.true =\u771f
  default.boolean.false =\u5047
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It does still work once the app is run. And Google translate is a great short cut to a translation. But after that, the properties file needs to be sent to a native speaker for editing.</p>
  
  <p>So how can I get the properties file in ISO 8859-1 back to being human readable? Like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>default.paginate.prev =上一页
  default.paginate.next =下一步
  default.boolean.true =真
  default.boolean.false =假
  </code></pre>