A joint study by Eurid and focuses on internationalized (nation language-based) national domains (IDNs) and the diversity of languages in the global network. The study tracks back the background of the domains in national scripts, the current state of this particular area of the domain industry, as well as pending problems facing IDNs. Plus, the study cites two examples of a successful launch of national domains in Saudi Arabia and Russia.
As of today, there are several dozens domains in national languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Indian, as well as two Cyrillic ones – namely, рф and срб. According to the Eurid’s report, 82% of surveyed registries believe that adding the function of support of e-mail addresses for IDN domains is a measure that will significantly increase the already high popularity of domains in national languages.
The reported UNESCO’s findings exhibit that out of approximately 6,000 languages spoken on the planet, only 12 ones are adequately represented on the Internet, and they account for most (up to 98%) of the content posted on the Internet. That said, as many as 72% of all pages posted on the Internet are in English. At the moment, the Internet sees s a tendency to increasing Chinese presence on the network, which should largely be ascribed to the launch of the national Chinese hieroglyphic domain spaces.
The study deals with the pioneer non-Latin domains including, specifically, domain .рф, whose launch has formed a groundbreaking development in the history of IDNs, and domain سعودية. (Saudi Arabia). As to the Arabic domain, since its launch on 27 September 2010 and through the end of the year users have registered 1,441 domains, or 35% of all domain names registered in the national domain .sa over the year year. Meanwhile, .рф boasts of far more impressive results. According to the study, "the open registration period surpassed even the most optimistic expectations”: at the time, during the first weeks of registration, users registered 600,000-plus domain names, and by the end of the year, the number of domain names in .рф had hit 700,000-plus.
Eurid also notes that the number of delegated domain names serves as an indicator of the genuine popularity of the domain. For .рф, this indicator is rather high – as of May 2011 about 60% of domain names were delegated (as compared to 70% for domain RU); meanwhile Eurid quotes the rate of 50% as "a high level of domain names usage”, especially taking into account the impossibility to use e-mail address for internationalized domains.
The unabridged texts of the Eurid and UNESCO study can be found on the Eurid website.
