By “without signature format”, do you mean a Unicode byte order mark (BOM)?

iOS .strings files are handled with the Passolo text file parser and when there is no BOM for UTF-8 encoded files it is extremely important to correctly setup the code pages for source and target files in the Passolo. This will ensure that translated target files will be aligned and generated correctly.

If your generated target files for non-1252 languages have garbled characters, it means they are most likely generated from Passolo with western encoding (you can check that by opening them in a text editor like EmEditor to see the encoding). In Passolo you can specify what encoding should be used for target files by going to the string list properties for the target file and clicking on "Advanced". UTF8 is typically a safe selection. This option can be specified for files using the text parser. By the way, this has nothing to do with alignment, as long as the translated text displays ok inside Passolo. It is strictly a target file option issue. Another approach is to make sure all your source files are UTF8 with BOM (signature), and then the default option "same as target file" will work too.

However - if the target files have UTF8 encoding but are still appearing garbled, then my guess is that it's an environment issue on your PC/Mac. Check to make sure you have the correct Asian fonts installed.