Archive for March 30, 2008

Domain names in Arabic soon online

Posted on March 30, 2008, 9:25 am, by Editor, under IDN Industry.
The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said it is co-hosting the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Regional Meeting in cooperation with ICANN.

ICANN is an internationally organized, public benefit non-profit company responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers like domain names and the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols that help computers reach each other over the Internet.

A key topic to be discussed at the meeting which will take place in Dubai, on 1 – 3 April 2008 is the possibility of getting domain names in Arabic online and making them available to the public.

Participants will also discuss “finding ways to use Arabic for domain names as well as the use of Arabic invisible characters”, said RTA.

The ICANN community has been working on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) to make close to 100,000 characters from the scripts and languages of the world available for domain names.

Right now ICANN is in the midst of a technical evaluation of IDNs, which is one of the most significant steps towards a multilingual Internet. This evaluation is being done through wiki sites with the domain name example.test, but represented in 11 languages; including Arabic. They can all be accessed at idn.icann.org.

Other important topics at the Dubai Meeting include how ICANN works and what it does to coordinate the Internet’s unique identifiers, as well as updates on what is happening in developing an application and approval process for new top level domains; the part of the domain name after the dot.

“ICANN had incredibly productive discussions at its recent meeting in India on work being done to get the languages and scripts of that country available for domain names from beginning to end,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “At this Dubai meeting, we’re hoping to have similar discussions, and get similar insights into the challenges and solutions being worked on at the local level from the people doing the work in the Arab world – and help us move toward the goal of having domain names in scripts like Arabic from start to finish.”

“The move to Internationalized Domain Names is a complex new environment when it comes to technical consideration, as well as policy decisions,” Dr Twomey added. “The ICANN community is working on how these characters will be able to be implemented after the dot in domain names. There also is a process being discussed among our communities about whether there could be a fast track for a group of countries or territories that have a need for IDNs earlier than the others.”
For his part, Mohamed Al Ghanim, TRA Board Member and Director General said: “Being the legal registry of the UAE Top Level Domain Name (.ae), the TRA is keen on working to enhance the statues of the national domain name in the IDN registry structure. Therefore, we strongly believe that this ICANN Regional Meeting is going to help all of us share experiences and work together to make that happen. We do know that cooperation on the regional level is a key factor in integrating the Arabic language into the domain name field. This is becoming an essential requirement to the development of the Arab communities with respect to the ICT sector.”
“Internet penetration in the Arab world is considered very low in comparison to the English speaking societies. One of the obstacles facing the growth of this penetration is the language barrier. The TRA evaluates the importance of the Meeting’s objectives on IDNs as the best scientific way to provide the technological means to the UAE and the Arab countries to share an easy, available and vast source of knowledge with the goal of bringing Arabic to domain names,” Mr. Al Ghanim concluded. WAM

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