diff --git a/htrace-zipkin/src/main/java/org/apache/htrace/zipkin/HTraceToZipkinConverter.java b/htrace-zipkin/src/main/java/org/apache/htrace/zipkin/HTraceToZipkinConverter.java
index 44baea0..5b23032 100644
--- a/htrace-zipkin/src/main/java/org/apache/htrace/zipkin/HTraceToZipkinConverter.java
+++ b/htrace-zipkin/src/main/java/org/apache/htrace/zipkin/HTraceToZipkinConverter.java
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@
 import org.apache.htrace.core.TimelineAnnotation;
 
 import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
+import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.HashMap;
 import java.util.List;
@@ -153,13 +154,9 @@
     List<BinaryAnnotation> l = new ArrayList<BinaryAnnotation>();
     for (Map.Entry<String, String> e : span.getKVAnnotations().entrySet()) {
       BinaryAnnotation binaryAnn = new BinaryAnnotation();
-      binaryAnn.setAnnotation_type(AnnotationType.BYTES);
+      binaryAnn.setAnnotation_type(AnnotationType.STRING);
       binaryAnn.setKey(e.getKey());
-      try {
-        binaryAnn.setValue(e.getValue().getBytes("UTF-8"));
-      } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException ex) {
-        LOG.error("Error encoding string as UTF-8", ex);
-      }
+      binaryAnn.setValue(e.getValue().getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
       binaryAnn.setHost(ep);
       l.add(binaryAnn);
     }