Web addresses may adopt non-English characters [CNET News]
The fact that all web addresses today are in characters that speakers of English are familiar with is something that many of us take for granted. But in countries with predominant languages that don't use Latin characters - like Chinese and Arabic - keying in a web site's URL involves the use of a foreign language. That may change if a proposal that currently sits before the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is approved. ICANN is the international organization that sets the rules for Internet domain names.
Called Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), the proposal would allow domain names to be constructed with non-Latin characters - like Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Korean. IDNs would have the ability to be translated into Latin characters in a process that is invisible to the user, allowing Internet infrastructure to properly route the user's web request. Proponents of IDNs have been testing these translations, and have confidence that if ICANN approves the proposal, IDNs can be deployed as early as next year.
IDNs have the potential of growing Internet usage in many countries where non-Latin languages are predominant by making the web syntax familiar to users.
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