Wednesday, October 28, 2009
With more than half of the 1.6 billion Internet users speaking languages other than English, it seemed only a matter of time before Web domains began to reflect this reality. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which regulates domains, is preparing to introduce domains using non-Latin characters. By the middle of next year, urls will exist in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian and other languages that don’t use Latin characters.
The switch was first put into motion in June 2008, when experts at ICANN began working on creating the first Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). “You have to appreciate what a fantastically complicated technical feature this is,” tPeter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the board in charge of reviewing the change, told BBC News. “What we have created is a different translation system.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Web Domain Names Written in Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian Coming Soon (by Andrew Nusca, ZDNet)
Net Set for 'Language Shake-Up' (by Jonathon Fildes, BBC News)
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