Methods, devices, and computer programs are provided for character conversion. An original file is compressed, for instance, by a source or target device, to obtain a compressed file. Then, characters in the compressed file are converted from a source code page to a target code page to obtain a converted compressed file. The converted, compressed file may, where applicable, be sent to a target device. Also, the target device may decompress the converted compressed file to obtain a file in the target code page.