Hey guys,
I have a bit of chinese language in my essay which is kind of crucial for it. (It’s the dialogue between me and someone in China). However, when I preview the essay through the Common App, the symbols show up as question marks. Is there anything I can do besides rewrite the essay with perhaps pinyin…
Yes and no. While you can fix so that it displays correctly on your screen/printout, there is no guarantee that it will display properly for the AO. Personally, I would avoid any use of a foreign language because it’s unlikely that the AO will know that foreign language. But if it’s crucial to the essay, then any languages with non-Latin alphabets should be romanized and a translation provided, IMO.
Avoid Chinese. English should be used throughout your essays and common app. AOs don’t have time to look that sort of thing up and as ^ said, it may show up as question marks for them.
It is best NOT to put foreign characters in your essay. (I am not even sure if the system can support the character coding. Your browser supports Unicode so you can read it.) AOs can’t understand it anyway. So for your own benefit, please rewrite in a way to put in the abstract meaning but not the actual words.
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXpgcFZ6Vno
It is from a girl about your age talking about essay. Are you mature enough to give a talk like that in two years? Best luck to your college application journey 
I can’t imagine why using another language is relevant. Nor that the effort to make a phrase read in the original language is the best use of time.