Reacts to Verisign’s .com transliteration selections — IDN community
The good, the bad, and the ugly of Verisign’s IDN plans.
Verisign applied for 12 internationalized top level domain names as part of the fresh TLD program.
These domain names are transliterations of .com and .net.
A transliteration is different from a translation. Transliteration maps the sounds of one language to the best matching script of another. For example, コム when stated aloud will sound like “com”, and is only possible since those two characters are phonetic sounds that construct the “com” sound.
Investors in internationalized domain names have been banking on Verisign’s applications for IDNs for years. Verisign plans to allow registrants of domain names in the IDN.com format to “unlock” IDN.IDN.
For example, let’s say a domain name right now has Hebrew text at the second level. It would look like [Hebrew].com. So someone typing in the domain has to switch scripts when they get to the top level. When unlocked, the domain could be [Hebrew].[.com-translisteration-in-Hebrew]. This would all be in one script.
IDN investors say that people have been typing in IDN.IDN-in-dot-com for years, and they point to data from the old Overture tool as well as Google as proof. They think this will expand greatly as IDN.com-transliteration is introduced.
Right now there are just under one million IDN.com domains registered. Many of these were registered by investors who think the domains will be valuable following they get access to IDN.IDN.
But now that Verisign’s applications are public, what do these investors think? Some say they were surprised by the results.
What follows was written by a collaboration of IDN investors, many of whom discuss IDNs on IDNForums.com. These opinions are not necessarily mine, and of course there may also be debate amongst IDN investors….
First the good news:
ком
* Transliteration of com in Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian etc) script
* This is what was expected, a thumbs up to Verisign
コム
* Transliteration of com in Japanese
* This is what was expected, a thumbs up to Verisign
คอม
* Transliteration of com in Thai
* This is what was expected, a thumbs up to Verisign
कॉम
* Transliteration of com in Devanagari (Hindi) script
* This is what was expected, a thumbs up to Verisign
This next application, while on the surface looks ok, may actually shut off a few hundred million target clients from Verisign’s reach
كوم
* Transliteration of com in Arabic script
* There is a debate raging as to whether the variant section ought to have been completed in the application, as Urdu/Farsi use a very similar if not the same looking string. If this is an error, then it cost verisign a few hundred million target clients
* But for the transliteration itself, it’s what was expected, so it’s a thumbs up for Verisign
This next application borders on the unbelievable
קוֹם
* Supposed to be the Transliteration of com in Hebrew
* The character with the little dot ought to be the same character without the dot (קום). In fact to type this character the user would first have to type the correct character, then switch to CAPS, Hit Shift, then the minus sign, then switch back from CAPS. It ought to be a 3 keystroke string, but now it’s 7, and native Hebrew speakers are saying they wouldn’t know even how to type it
* It’s a fail on this one, massive thumbs down
(Note: Verisign has acknowledged the error on the Hebrew IDN and is working to fix it.)
These next applications are questionable, and the jury is still out on them.
닷컴
* Supposed to be the equivalent of com in Hangul (Korean script)
* In the Korean language, the ideal way to say com would be a single character 컴, but ICANN disallowed single character gTLDs (even though in many languages a single character can represent a word or even a whole sentence)
* So Verisign has applied for “dotcom” and given the restrictions Verisign had to work with, it’s ok, but just ok
These next 2 applications open a huge can of worms.
点看 and 點看
* Supposed to represent com in Chinese
* Unlike most of the other languages above, Chinese doesn’t have transliteration, so there is no natural way to say “com”
* Still for many years, many people have assumed that Verisign would use this 公司 – it’s the translation for “firm”
* But verisign didn’t apply for 公司, in fact CNNIC (China’s internet body) did. Some of us saw this coming. Back in 2008, CNNIC split the root and resolved 公司 only within china by covertly mapping .公司 to 公司.cn and .com.cn
* Some people are crying foul play here, suggesting Verisign gave up intellectual property, gave in to the Chinese, and let registrants down.
* Ahead of we criticize the Chinese too much, lets remember why they split the root in the first place. It was out of pure frustration with ICANN for dragging its heels for over a decade on this, and now the problem has come full circle. ICANN, I expect, would like nothing more than to pretend this problem doesn’t exist, and simply award CNNIC their genuine extension and allow them to legitimize their alternate root. That sounds like a bad precedent to set.
* With regards the 2 Chinese gTLDs that verisign have applied for, they appear to be poor and a far distant 2nd choice, time will only tell how well they will be adopted
Editor’s note: Again, I’d like to stress that this analysis of VeriSign’s IDNs was prepared by a community of IDN experts. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with it.
