On March 7, ICANN67 will open as a virtual meeting for the first time in its history. The meeting in Cancun, Mexico, was canceled over the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus, as previously reported. Observers have predicted that holding an online forum on this scale would inevitably involve technical difficulties. And the first one didn’t take long: the official ICANN website said organizers would only be able to provide live interpretation in two languages, Spanish and French.
ICANN events are traditionally held in English, while providing real-time interpretation and translation in the six United Nations languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish – as well as Portuguese when needed. But not in this case: the ICANN headquarters in Los Angeles, which will be used as an online broadcasting hub during the forum, does not have the physical space to hold all simultaneous interpreters. To make up for the inconvenience, ICANN representatives said translations of transcripts for all meetings would be published more quickly than usual. But, it appears there is no reason for representatives of the domain community who do not speak English, French or Spanish to even participate in the ICANN online forum.
