Not really sure what the problem is, but would appreciate your opinion anyway.
. Joomla english pages are UTF-8 (meaning I have changed the Encoding in the language file)
. SMF 1.1RC3 is UTF-8, bridged to Joomla
. I have czech translation of our pages, also in UTF-8 and they all work fine. Example:
http://www.naviter.si/index.php?lang=cz
The only place where this does not work is the Joomla menu in Forum (which is a link to Bridge component). You have to click the link to make sure you land on czech forum pages.
Looking at the sources I can see UTF-8 encoding twice in the file (once from J, once from SMF/bridge I guess).
Any idea what makes the menu display differently?
I'm using Joomla 1.0.11, Bridge 1.1.6, JoomFish 1.7, RT_Mobius template, SMF 1.1RC3
Not sure if this helps, but I have a Chinese site and had a similar problem. It was solved by reinstalling SMF WITHOUT checking the UTF-8 check box during the installation.
Again, not sure if it's the same case as yours, but if nothing else works maybe this is worth a try ;)
(ps. I installed SMF 6 times before I realized that check box was the problem.)
You need to delete that call from the index.template file of your template.
Should be
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=', $context['character_set'], '" />