Talend Studio tDBOutput error [Teradata Database] [Error 6706] caused by column definitions using Unicode

[wei_guo]

Loading data from the source (PostgreSQL/Raw) to the Teradata target via JDBC using the tDBOutput component in Talend Studio may lead to the following write error:

[ERROR] tDBOutput - [Teradata Database] [TeraJDBC 20.00.00.58] [Error 6706] [SQLState HY000] The string contains an untranslatable character.

Environment

• Talend Studio

Resolution

• DDL Update: Update the non-Unicode table column definitions on the Teradata target to unified Unicode-based types (e.g., NVARCHAR / CHARACTER SET UNICODE).
• JDBC Configuration: Apply CHARSET=UTF8 to the JDBC connection string to align session parameters with incoming data streams.

After applying the changes, verify the write operations. Data loading will resume successfully without untranslatable character errors.

Cause

The issue was identified as a character-set conversion failure. Analysis of the Teradata table DDL revealed that certain target columns were configured with non-Unicode definitions (e.g., standard VARCHAR without Unicode encoding), preventing Teradata from storing multi-byte character strings passed from Talend during insertion.

Environment

• Talend Studio