QBlog | International Domain Names - uniQode

Localization Testing

Internationalized Domain Names

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are domain names denoted by local language characters. These domain names can use non-ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters such as Japanese or Arabic. Localized domain names were originally proposed in 1996 by Martin Dürst at the University of Zürich.

They allow for a truly global, multi-lingual internet where people can search the web with their own native characters. Why is this so important? Two-thirds of the content on the Internet is in English but only a third of Internet users are native English speakers. With IDNs, local audiences are more easily reached, brand recognition is strengthened, and overall user experience is improved.

If nearly ten years ago, the technology existed for IDNs, why are they not already in place? There is widespread fear that the use of non-Roman characters would destabilize the Internet and cause it to crash. There is also the dilemma that different countries using the same script use slightly different spellings. An agreement needs to be made between those countries to standardize the language. Also, who gets control of these domain names? Does control go to the country whose language is being used? In which case, what about a language such as Arabic spoken in several countries?

In the meantime, while companies and countries are hashing out these difficulties, some countries are creating their own domain names with their own alphabet on their own Internets to support these domains. But, progress is being made. Users are now able to type in an IDN at this time which then is converted to Punycode (taken care of by supporting browsers) in order to read properly. The latest versions of most browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, currently support IDNs.