Multi-language inc. character-based

Hi all  -  I need some advice regarding multi-lingual support on my site.

I'm running an .asp site that has content in a SQL Server dbase, and I need to be able to reliably show various languages (inc. Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simple/Traditional) across browser-types - Netscape 4.x, IE 4.x and IE 6 NN6, NN7, Opera etc..  I'm setting the <META> tags at the top of the .asp pages to reflect the language that i'm loading up.

Does anyone have any experience of this kind of thing?  The more I research, the more confused I'm getting...  this is the first time I've needed to run anything using character-based languages, it seems like a minefield!