Choosing a domain name for your site is a difficult choice and Internet regulator ICANN’s (www.icann.org) recent plans to introduce Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) in different languages makes it even harder. When the Domain Name System (DNS) was designed, its purpose was to be able to translate human readable words, characters, numbers into IP addresses that are used to route your request to the correct computer on the other side. Conveniently, all individual and Top Level Domain names (.com, .org, .net etc.) use ASCII encoding for storage, processing, registration, thus forcing international users to convert their local names into:
a) Phonetic conversions of a local name. For example, China’s largest search engine provider 百度 => baidu.com
b) Acronyms of a company’s English translation, China Internet Network Information Center => cnnic.net.cn
c) Use their company’s English brand identity -> 联想(Lian-Xiang) => Lenovo
This is just a short list of ways for name conversion, whereas if the DNS could handle Unicode encoded IDNs, that could make it easier for people who only speak local language to access a website.
From a company’s perspective this can pose several challenges:
1) Cost Domain registration costs money. For example, if you had a corporate site with a .co.uk domain serving UK customers and would like to expand to China, is it better to register just a .com.cn domain or an additional .公司 (company) domain with the entire company name translated. Depending on the top level domain, the subscription fees can vary by a certain degree, on top of the costs for providing localised content.
2) What content will you provide when a user accesses an IDN? Although not directly related to IDNs, once the request for the website resolves into an IP address, do you serve the users through a local server in the target country, or switch the language to the one desired if you are using a Content Management system? There are many options available that vary in budget and complexity, affecting access speed, usability etc. and should be taken into account when extending your online presence.
3) Protecting your Brand, Trademarks and Intellectual Property Translating is a difficult task and in China for example, translating your company name into Chinese needs to sound right and be meaningful. Even using English domain names, you will find that the domain you want might already have been registered by someone else. With IDNs, people could register a domain using your local language name and it will be difficult to recover that one.
The team at Line Industries is here to assist you with your domain name strategy and to plan and realise your international website aspirations.
PubliSite, our Content Management System already provides editors with an easy way to manage international content and several sites already use it to deliver multilingual content across the world.
Resources:
http://www.icann.org/en/faq/#dns