Internet domain names in languages other than English should be available within the next few weeks or months, the chairman of the international oversight body for Internet addresses said Wednesday.
Vincent Cerf said the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, was yesterday expected to approve technical standards that for the first time would allow for Internet domains names in languages other than English.
"A great deal of progress has been made this week and I hope we will see progress at the weeks go by," Cerf said. "The technical standards are ready. Now the policy work has to be done."
Cerf made his comments at a weeklong ICANN meeting in Rio ending today.
Founded in 1998 by the US Department of Commerce to control the Internet's addressing system, ICANN is often criticized for being US-centric. Before ICANN's creation Internet addresses or domains were the responsibility of several unconnected agencies and volunteers.
The ability to create domain names in other languages, especially those using non-Latin alphabets, would go a long way toward blunting some of that criticism.
Even with the changes, Cerf said, top-level domains -- the final part of any Internet address, like .com, .org or .net -- would remain in English for the time being.
Cerf said that how soon domains names in languages other than English were available depended to the end user depended largely on how much work the individual countries had done translating their alphabets into Internet protocol.
"The languages that are the most advanced are Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Those groups have done a tremendous amount of work to translate their scripts into domain names," said Cerf.
This week's meeting will also mark the first time a non-American CEO has assumed the helm of ICANN. Yesterday, Paul Twomey of Australia was to replace Stuart Lynn as ICANN's day-to-day manager.
Twomey said part of his mission as CEO would be to reach beyond the developed world to create a more inclusive Internet.
"We are entering a period where we need to be focussed on the fact that Internet is becoming more global and we need to focus on the global aspects particularly developing countries," Twomey said.
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