[Ecommerce] : Web challenge to English supremacy

Tue Jun 21 13:36:00 2005

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go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

Web challenge to English supremacy
Richard Wray
Tuesday June 21 2005
The Guardian

The dominance of English on the internet is being challenged by the UK
organisation that maintains British website addresses, in a move designed
to reflect the country's multi-cultural mix.

Nominet, the not for profit company that registers internet addresses
ending in .uk, yesterday launched a three-month public consultation on
plans to introduce so-called international domain names (IDN).

Although internet browsers are already capable of reading text written in
languages from across the globe, until now the actual website address has
had to be written using the 26-letter Latin alphabet plus hyphens and the
digits 0 to 9.

But Nominet, which has 4.1m registered domain names under the .co.uk,
.org.uk, .me.uk, .plc.uk, .ltd.uk and .net.uk banners, is considering the
adoption of the internationally recognised IDN standard.

That would clear the way for websites with addresses which include
accents, as in www.caf&eacute;.co.uk, or use entirely different alphabets
such as Greek or Arabic.

Several countries have already made similar changes to their domestic
addresses, but the UK plans could go much further than merely adapting
website addresses to include the quirks of "native" languages.

"We are asking everyone in the UK what they want," explained Nominet's
head of regulation Edward Phillips. "We have Welsh and Gaelic, which
require some additional characters, but when you start looking across the
country you realise there is a huge range of languages spoken here. Should
we open it up to absolutely everybody?

"Given how multicultural the UK is, just saying that we are going to stick
with the Latin alphabet is not really a fair way to go about it."

Professor Susan Bassnett, of the University of Warwick, an expert on
intercultural studies, believes moves to use other languages in British
website addresses are part of a growing realisation that people in this
country can consider themselves to be both British and of a separate
ethnic background.

"People in the UK are much more conscious of their ethnic identities and
have a desire to inhabit more than just one world," she said.

It could also mark a significant weakening of the Anglo-Saxon dominance of
the world wide web. English owes its online status to the internet's
creation by English-speaking scientists and the strength of American
business online, although, in fact, the majority of the world's population
does not speak the language.

Paradoxically, the introduction of new characters and new languages into
very visible British website addresses could actually have a positive
influence on the country's native English speakers, she added, as it will
reinforce the message that English is not, after all, the only language in
the world.

"As English increases its power and more and more people learn it, native
English speakers have become less and less interested in learning another
language," she said. "This could be a very positive influence on that
trend."

Certainly the Nominet consultation includes moves far in excess of what
some other countries have made.

There are roughly 300 languages spoken in the UK, according to the
Department for Education and Skills, and opening up the internet to
different languages in addresses would allow language-based community
groups to have their own sites on the internet.

Plain names for ethnic sites

Just using western European languages, potential changes in the way
British internet addresses are compiled would allow websites that use
accents - such as caf&eacute;.co.uk, adi&oacute;s.co.uk,
apr&egrave;s-ski.co.uk etc - to be set up.

But if there is demand, any ethnic community in the UK - from Chinese and
Greek to Russian and Indian - could have .uk websites with addresses in
their own languages. The switch would not require heavy investment as
international domain names leave the underlying registration system
untouched. IDN involves an upgrade to the internet browser on a user's
computer, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, so it can
recognise website names written in nearly the full range of symbols.

When a user types into this browser, an address that contains characters
not in the 37 core symbols - the Latin 26-letter alphabet, numbers 0 to 9
and hyphens - the application converts it into a "plain" domain name which
can be understood by the English language-based fabric of the internet.

These plain names are prefixed xn--, so www.caf&eacute;.co.uk would become
www.xn--caf-fsa.co.uk, and that is where the site resides. But the user
will be taken straight to the website without knowing the address has been
translated back into English to find the right location on the web.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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