DS 160 social media handles in non-Latin alphabets

[Hemutian 68]

As of May 29, the DS 160 requires inputting the beneficiary's social media handles.

My fiancee has an account on Sina Weibo. Her handle is written using Chinese characters.

The social media section of the DS-160 form does NOT accept Chinese characters (it converts them to gibberish).

What should she do?

(she could write out her handle using the "pinyin" romanization, but this would be misleading, because many Chinese characters share the same pinyin romanization, so there would be no way for an investigator to match her pinyin handle to her actual handle).

 

I was originally going to post this in the China regional forum, but realized that it may be applicable for applicants outside of China, in other countries where non-Latin alphabets are used. 

[RandyW 149]

Although pinyin with the tone marks generally produces the correct character, anything other than Chinese characters would be completely useless to them - they are REQUIRED for her account on Weibo.

Check with ustraveldocs.com, or with the Consulate through their email form. The Consulate used to require telegraphic codes for the characters to prevent any mis-interpretation - maybe 15 years ago.

[RandyW 149]

Until you have a better answer, enter pinyin with tone marks (diacritical or numeric) - let THEM sort it out.

[Hemutian 68]

7 hours ago, RandyW said:

Although pinyin with the tone marks generally produces the correct character, anything other than Chinese characters would be completely useless to them - they are REQUIRED for her account on Weibo.

Check with ustraveldocs.com, or with the Consulate through their email form. The Consulate used to require telegraphic codes for the characters to prevent any mis-interpretation - maybe 15 years ago.

Submitted an inquiry to ustraveldocs.com and they just responded with a generic stock answer, nothing of use to my specific question.

 

However, a visajourney.com user on another thread says that my fiancee can simply change her Weibo account handle. We haven't tried yet, but if that's true then that's probably the easiest way of solving this particular problem.

[RandyW 149]

4 hours ago, Hemutian said:

Submitted an inquiry to ustraveldocs.com and they just responded with a generic stock answer, nothing of use to my specific question.

 

However, a visajourney.com user on another thread says that my fiancee can simply change her Weibo account handle. We haven't tried yet, but if that's true then that's probably the easiest way of solving this particular problem.

 

 

That is a good idea, which I expect will work. At least on Weixin, You can change your display name and still keep all friends and messages.

 

Then change it back AFTER you get the visa.