Web domain names written in Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian coming soon
Summary: Internet regulation body ICANN said it is finalizing plans to introduce Web domain addresses using non-Latin characters, such as those in Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew and other languages.
Just a month after it formally severed all ties to the U.S. government, Internet regulation body ICANN said it is finalizing plans to introduce Web domain addresses using non-Latin characters, marking the first time Web addresses will be written natively in Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew and other languages.
It's the biggest change to the system in its history, the organization said. ICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
The body said it that it was finalizing plans to introduce web addresses using non-Latin characters.
If the proposal (.pdf) is approved on Oct. 30, the first applications for non-Latin domains would be accepted by Nov. 16, the organization said. The first Internationalized Domain Names, or IDNs, could go live by mid-2010.
"Of the 1.6 billion internet users today worldwide, more than half use languages that have scripts that are not Latin-based," said Rod Beckstrom at the opening of ICANN's conference in Seoul, South Korea, as reported by the BBC. "So this change is very much necessary for not only half the world's internet users today but more than half, probably, of the future users as the internet continues to spread."
The original proposal was approved in June 2008, and testing has been ongoing. In the meantime, some countries such as China and Thailand have introduced unsanctioned workarounds that allow users to enter Web addresses in their own language.
The full list of languages that have been tested is: Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese, Tamil, Hebrew and Amharic.
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Talkback
I don't read arabic or chinese
I hope ICANN has some method of translating from whatever to whatever so we can still all communicate.
They'll probably have duplication...
dual addresses & IP addresses
Another alternative -- non-English websites could publish their web server IP address instead of the domain name.
It won't be a big deal.
Too bad though. I think part of the cause of globalization has been the unifying influence of a common-language interface ... the web. Until now, even if I couldn't speak the language the website was mostly presented in, I could at least type in the address to visit. Now my curiousity will be dampened because I won't even know what that Chinese website URL says.
RE: Web domain names written in Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian coming soon
Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian web domains
where can we register
RE: Web domain names written in Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian coming soo
non-Latin symbols is like using Latin symbols in a
foreign language, only those who speak the language
will use it. Those who want to access most web content
will have to use Latin symbols in the English
language.
As far as communicating world-wide it will be the
greatest non-electronic disaster that could happen to
the Internet.
But we shouldn't complain. When ICANN was run by the
US it was equally stupid, just differently.