Ready for IDN? Its coming...and soon

[Doc Com]

Coming to a URL near you...

Spanish
Bulgarian
Arabic
Greek
Korean
Laotian
Mongolian
Russian
Chinese
Yiddish
Tongan
Catalin
Farsi
Hebrew
Romanian
Sinhala, Tamil
Thai

http://www.icann.org/en/announcement...10feb09-en.htm

[Acro]

This is another anticipated "brilliant" move by ICANN.

For example, the ccTLD for Greece under the IDN scheme will be ".ελ"
In other words, it's the ISO 3166-1 two-letter code that corresponds to the official country name (Ελλάς).

Now, bear in mind that Greeks have the bad habit of communicating on the Internet mostly in "Greeglish", that is, writing Greek with latin characters, phonetically or visually. So to assume that someone not only would type the first part of a domain name in Greek (current allowance) but also assign to it a ".ελ" TLD, is quite a long shot. Greek users go to .com or .gr and the current IDN status allows for that extra namespace in successful manner.

What happens now for domains with an ASCII domain part and an IDN ccTLD part? Would these hybrids be allowed?

Trademark nightmare - lawyers rejoice.

[Doc Com]

The only way I see all of this working seemlessly is via browser.

I think browsers have to be intuitive enough, somehow, to allow someone in Greece (say a member of this forum) to go ahead and enter everything according to the Greek language and characters but I read it in English as I see it right now because that is the default language I have set.

It is going to be a nightmare.

I fully understand and can appreciate the billions of non-english speakers using the internet.

And I realize that the ability to communicate in Hindi, Bengali, and Mandaran is great.

But if the internet becomes hundreds of pieces of of languages and the only ones who use these IDN's are member of and within that country, then this may create some virtual closed societies within those borders.

[Acro]

Doc, there is nothing progressive with the addition of the ccTLD being in IDN. They are expanding the DNS to include specific characters in the TLD for whatever participating countries. The mindset of a local person is tied to their international ISO code (e.g. ".gr" for Greece) or to the worldwide TLDs (.com, .net, .org etc.). I don't know who in their right mind, no matter how much of a geek they were, would use their localized TLD

This is just more money thrown in the garbage.

[bwhhisc]

Substantial IDN rollout money in the ICANN 2009 budget to the tune of $14,328,000, that does not even include the money all the various registrars are going to spend to make it happen on the local levels. The publicity alone particularly in Russia where they are chomping at the bit to roll has created some nice steady buildup of idn.com traffic over the last 6-9 months.

http://www.icann.org/planning/ops-bu...amework-09.pdf

The plan framework paints the picture of an ICANN of the future that has:
• rolled out hundreds of new operational TLD’s including IDN TLD’s;
• achieved significant progress on all of the strategic initiatives;
• and remained financially stable.
The three-year budget model provides a focal point for discussing and answering the many new gTLD and IDN questions such as timing, fees, risks, and market demand that the community should consider.

IDN and New gTLD expenses
...........................FY 2008 ...............FY 2009 ......................Change $
01- IDN Activities $ 968,000..............$2,111,000.................+$ 1,143,000
02- New gTLD implementation
........................$2,640,000..............$8 ,547,000.................+$5,907,000
03 - Operational systems for new gTLDs
.........................$ 165,000...............$3,670,000.................+ $3,505,000

Grand Total ........$3,773,000..............$14,328,000....... ........+$10,555,000

[Carter]

Originally Posted by Doc Com

Coming to a URL near you...

Spanish
Bulgarian
Arabic
Greek
Korean
Laotian
Mongolian
Russian
Chinese
Yiddish
Tongan
Catalin
Farsi
Hebrew
Romanian
Sinhala, Tamil
Thai

http://www.icann.org/en/announcement...10feb09-en.htm

Italian not
We don't have a language lol

[bwhhisc]

Originally Posted by Carter

Italian not
We don't have a language lol

Some countries did not respond or did not "choose" ICANN Fast Track.
Finland is an example and most likley the reason is that they already have idn.com and idn.net with IDN.NET being more popular that idn.com (according to local domainers in Finland).

China is already resolving .cn to Chinese inside China. Russia is probably the most aggressive to be the first to move on idn.рф (.RF) for Russian Federation which will join idn.com, idn.net, idn.tv etc. already in use. Now waiting to see if Verisign will use dname or equivalent to translate .com, .net etc. to local language equivalents effectively making them idn.idn as well. They seem to be following a soft agreement not to upstage idn.idn but hopefully they will offer this option...or choice of BOTH .com AND .idn(com translated) into local languages to customers as idn.idn make their debut.

Verisign's plan was called DNAME equivalent mapping (aliasing), but now that titile seems to be giving way to a blanket term of just "aliasing". Some of the technical stuff appears not yet to be agreed to by all parties, but "tests" have been done that the systems are sound and they aren't going to "break" the internet. lol

http://www.icann.org/en/announcement...ld-12dec05.pdf

.jp is looking at aliasing to Japanese characters as well. Recent public documents by the JPRS detail their studies and direction they are heading. The DNAME word pops back up here again, but ICANN only refer to aliasing. Here is part of their papers....maybe some opportunities in these IDNs after all. As they say, follow the money.

https://www.centr.org/main/4329-CTR/...hmentData/data

[phio]

Originally Posted by Doc Com

The only way I see all of this working seemlessly is via browser.

As far as I know the RTL and LTR issues have been worked out by all major browsers for years. Arabic, Urdu, Hebrew etc work with the new release of most major software, even Google Translator tools.

Originally Posted by Doc Com

I think browsers have to be intuitive enough, somehow, to allow someone in Greece (say a member of this forum) to go ahead and enter everything according to the Greek language and characters but I read it in English as I see it right now because that is the default language I have set.

Maybe some day. But for now, most Italians like to go to Italian sites. Same with all nationalities.

Originally Posted by Doc Com

It is going to be a nightmare.

IDNs with gtld and cctld extensions have been working for 10 years. For example in Germany with .de. They have been registering IDNs with the
.de extension for quite some time. It's a no brainer to them.

Originally Posted by Doc Com

I fully understand and can appreciate the billions of non-english speakers using the internet.

yes, and what a pain it's been for them to have to use a foreign language for so long.

Originally Posted by Doc Com

And I realize that the ability to communicate in Hindi, Bengali, and Mandaran is great.

Actually there many other languages than that, and I don't think 'english content' is number one any more.

Originally Posted by Doc Com

But if the internet becomes hundreds of pieces of of languages and the only ones who use these IDN's are member of and within that country, then this may create some virtual closed societies within those borders.

The beauty of it is that it is not broken up into hundres of pieces yet. I've been on pages in about 50 languages during the last week. Also, by not incorporating IDN.IDN into the mix, you will be splitting off the internet, because countries that want IDN.IDN will make their own. Wow, think of all the PPC and ad revenue that will be lost if this ever happens. IDN.com and IDN.IDN will allow google and yahoo etc to continue to display ads on foreign websites. If countries create their own internet with huge firewalls, no one can make a dime on a sale there.

This is a huge opportunity for current internet developers. Why just today, I met a woman who will to portuguese translation for me. There are tons of internet user in Brasil.

I realize that some here on this forum have loads of experience with the english (ascii) domains. Why not expand your expertise into other languages? For spanish help, check out dominiosmultilingue . com *

*Translation has not been double checked, but you can see the IDN in the browser bar will resolve if you have a current browser.

[dn-101]

How about Martian language? Or Klingon?

[Doc Com]

Originally Posted by phio

As far as I know the RTL and LTR issues have been worked out by all major browsers for years.

Sorry for the confusion but I am aware of this.

I was basically referring to a literal translation of the language via browser detection.

If someone (like right now) types on this very forum in Chinese (there native language and script) I see it in English (my native language).

That was basically what I was talking about regarding browser detection. The browser intuitively recognizes the original in Chinese but I see it in English as that is how I have set my default.

I know it will never be perfect and I am not talking about artificial intelligence like Hal.

This is where I think the internet is heading within perhaps 5-7 years.

Originally Posted by Carter

Italian not
We don't have a language lol

The Italian body over this IDN may not have responded to the survey.

Besides, you know Italy.

They welcome everyone.

Here.

Drink wine.

Forget about it.

Have some more wine.

[phio]

Originally Posted by Doc Com

That was basically what I was talking about regarding browser detection. The browser intuitively recognizes the original in Chinese but I see it in English as that is how I have set my default.

When browsers can do this properly it will be fantastic.

[Doc Com]

Originally Posted by phio

When browsers can do this properly it will be fantastic.

I have no doubt it is being developed and tested.

It will not be a perfect translation but good.

When this is released to the public it could make the need for IDN obsolete.

I look for FireFox and Google to team up and put this out there as a new hybrid browser.

Yes, it will be cool and fantastic.

[Credit]

Wait,

So if I own "models.ru" in russian - the russian word for "models" and the english .ru extension, it's pretty much useless, right?

[Doc Com]

Originally Posted by RichInCollege

Wait,

So if I own "models.ru" in russian - the russian word for "models" and the english .ru extension, it's pretty much useless, right?

No.

I would not say useless.

But if you owned the IDN equivalent to модель.ru, it may be worth more to russian businesses or ventures.

[aZooZa]

It's only 'Babel' technology, and is an easy answer to a complex problem.

Agree - we'll see it happen.

No rocket science for a browser plug-in.

[Commerce]

I'm not so sure about some of the speculation about browsers being able to translate effectively - they still have their share of difficulties getting things like basic rendering and wild card SSL to work in the same way over the variety of browsers out there.

I have been having considering ways to handle native language support for quite a while. IDNs have been supported in DNS for a long time as we know, and some of the domains I still have lend themselves well to country.domain.tld sub domains. So, what I think might be useful for my own case is to have localidn.domain.tld variations to support native languages as a standard.

What I mean is something like having French.Companies.tld as an English language version of a listing of companies in France, while Français.Companies.tld might be the French language version.

That logic could be extended to function as well. For example, Computer.Companies.tld for English and Ordinateur.Companies.tld for French. Of course, there is still the matter of how one would handle multilingual nations... In the above example, would Ordinateur.Companies.tld be for global Computer companies for people who read French or would it be for French computer companies but then, how would you handle Canadians who prefer to read in French?

Does that mean Ordinateur.Companies.tld really should be Ordinateur.français.Companies.tld and Ordinateur.canadien.Companies.tld perhaps?

Now couple what I just suggested to the idea of internationalized native character set TLDs and you really have some pain. Can I blame Al Gore for inventing all of this?

These are things that actually keep me awake at night - I must have no life!

FWIW, if anyone here is actually interested in testing a native language structure for their country, PM me and let's talk about that.

Now, if they ever get PHP 6.0 out the door, we get native character set support, which can be a bit painful in PHP 5.x, but nevertheless obviously doable.

[mkellerman]

most browsers already support this. For instance inside China this is already live for .cn and typing .cn in Chinese in IE or Firefox works perfectly today.

[dn-101]

The natives' resistance to use urls in their native languages is formidable.
Technical issues can be addressed. But what about psychological?

[phio]

Originally Posted by Commerce

Now, if they ever get PHP 6.0 out the door, we get native character set support, which can be a bit painful in PHP 5.x, but nevertheless obviously doable.

Internationalization of the internet has been pretty slow and sticky in UK, US and Canada. But workarounds for scripting, blogs, basically everything state of the art on the internet has already been modified, hacked, enabled, and implemented for foreign languages. There's been a lot of stickiness over here, but things are moving full force in asia, etc.


The native resistance to typing in accents in URLs is pretty much the result of that great 404 popup. With the new browsers, all the accents work fine. As far as psychological, there was some damage done by the slow release of IE7, and it continues today, but with the huge amount of people that downloaded Firefox last year, things continue to look positive for a continued increase of IDN type in traffic.

Also, more and more mobile browsers and near computers are becoming multilanguage compatable.

Each browser has it's own way of dealing with IDNs. Firefox and Opera seem to be the most friendly at this time.

Another note on the psychological aspect. I think it is a matter of national pride. As has been mentioned by many before. Just imagine if the internet was invented by the greeks or the russians, and all the addresses were typed in in that particular language.

10 or 15 years go by and now we can type in english...wow that's pretty cool...some people may want to stick with the russian, but most english speakers will want to type in english urls.

The same holds true for most non-english languages, especially non-latin based languages.

[Doc Com]

Originally Posted by phio

Also, more and more mobile browsers and near computers are becoming multilanguage compatable.

Each browser has it's own way of dealing with IDNs. Firefox and Opera seem to be the most friendly at this time.
.

Good point.

Technological advances and consumer demand are pushing this. I have seen images of some phones that have no english characters at all on the keypad. I believe these were japanese and perhaps korean models.

I have also seen images of hardline "islamic approved" phones that also have no english (roman) characters.

And I am aware of at least one company that makes a killing taking any mobile device on the market and converting them to such - along with really pimping them out in gold, diamonds, platinum etc.

Any company creating electronic devices based on today's technology is obsolete out the door.

With the mobile market exploding and the realization that everyone is on the mobile internet all these devices are being prepped to easily adapt to anything coming down the pipeline in terms of connectivity and browsing.

Phones are becoming much more advanced than most computers in their abilities, capabilities, and expandability.