Domain Names in Hindi by June 2010
Now that ICANN has approved International Domain names, India will be ready to to have internationalized domain names in Hindi by June 2010 (source) and will expand to other languages in a phased manner.
ICANN launched Fast Track process on November 16th, enabling countries to apply for Internet extensions reflecting their name – and made up of characters from their national languages.
Can this help penetrate rural Internet?
Hindi (ranked 3rd) and Bengali (ranked 8th) are among the top 10 language spoken across the world- but, no Indian language is in the top 10 languages used in the Internet.
Few Reasons/Barriers for local language adoption
- The PC literate population is only 62 Mn which is 26% of the entire urban population.
Top 4 metros – 21%, Next 4 metros – 21%, Non Metros – 23%, 5-10L population – 16%, <5L population towns – 4% - The discomfort cycle, i.e. non-familiarity with English distances individuals from learning to operate computers.
- Extent of localisation China, Japan and Korea are the most matured markets in terms of localisation. These countries have been very active in their efforts towards standardized localisation. The result of this is that most of the software is already localized in these languages
and now these countries are moving towards localizing cutting edge technology applications such as OCR and Text to Speech. - Low awareness level for availability of content in local language
As per I-Cube 2007 data, almost 35% of the Internet users are not aware of the availability of content in the Indian
languages online. This number increases to 53% for Internet users in Non-Metros [From: Rural Internet Users/State of Vernacular Content in India]
What’s your take on localized domain names? Are we prepared for localized content play?
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Related posts:
- Rural Internet Users/State of Vernacular Content in India
- Interesting facts on domain names
- Weekly Recap – 2009 in Focus, Google Ban, Uninor Launch, Domain names in Hindi..and more
- Local Language Support – Department of Information Technology to Launch Software Tools and Fonts
- Exclusive: OneIndia launches Hindi portal, ThatsHindi
It must be in all the Indian languages including Sanskrit. which is said to be most suitable language to computer.
But how will others read it. If the person is in other language what should they do to determine the domain if it is writen in HINDI?
Ashish,
I think “internationalized domain names in Hindi” should read
“internationalized domain names in Devanagari script”
Otherwise, how could one differentiate between Hindi and Marathi cctld.
Example: If they go with .???? extension will it be Hindi or Marathi cctld
Hindi, Marathi, and other Indian scripts, for domain names have been available since 2001, in the .com/net/tv extentions, and will soon be aliased into their native language script equivalents…however, they have only been publicized recently, as being available.
Very soon they will be available, in cctld (country code) extentions as well.
For more info, check out: http://HindiDomain Names.com