The first of the fast-track IDNs
ICANN shed some light on its fast-track application process today, announcing the first four countries to pass the string evaluation of the process. Here they are: Saudi Arabia (SA): السعودية …
Countries
Google may leave China, but don’t expect it to leave Chinese
Long before Google launched Google.cn, it launched the Chinese localized version of Google.com. And this site is alive and well and hosted outside of China’s great firewall. Just change your …
The world’s most dangerous country codes
If you want to know the world’s most dangersous ccTLDs, ask an anti-virus software company. McAfee has released its list of most dangerous country codes. Here are the top five: …
Forgetting English (literally)
I’m working on the Web Globalization Report Card, and this, plus my fascination with Facebook, inspired me to check out my Forgetting English page in several different languages. Here it …
TED is looking for a few good translators
For translation crowdsourcing to work, first you need crowds. And TED, which has been using the crowd to provide translation of its videos, is looking for a few more participants. …
IDN application update: Egypt, Russia, China…
So who’s applied for IDNs so far? According to ICANN, 10 applications (representing five languages) were submitted over the first four days. ICANN won’t announce exactly who applied and for …
Meet the next generation of country codes
So now that the media hype over internationalized domain names (IDNs) has died down, let’s focus on the messy details of what this all means. First of all, we’re not …
The Chinese domain name bubble bursts
Nearly one year ago, I asked Will .CN become the next .COM? And perhaps I was right in more ways than one. Because now it appears that .CN is experiencing …
Want to buy the number 8?
Someone is promoting the sale of a Chinese domain name, shown here. Technically, this domain is represented over the Internet as http://www.xn--45q.ws, which is the ASCII equivalent of the Chinese …
Have you dined at the Translate Server Error lately?
File this post under Lost in (Machine) Translation. This photo arrived courtesy of Gareth Morgan at Neovia Financial. Apparently the proprietor of this restaurant in China decided to create an …
Facebook: From 1 to 100 languages in two years
It was just over a year ago that Facebook started localizing itself for the world. As I noted then, the company utilized crowdsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though …
Web Globalization Certificate Program at St. Louis University
Professor Nitish Singh, author of The Culturally Customized Web Site, has just launched a certificate program in Web globalization management through St. Louis University. You can learn more at www.globalizationexecutive.com.
The “age gateway” comes of age
For years I’ve been preaching the importance of the “global gateway” — the elements that Web sites use to seamlessly direct Web users to their localized Web sites and content, …
Will .cn become the new .com?
I recently came across a chart of the most popular domain extensions, compiled by Stephane Van Gelder. Although I keep track of ccTLD registrations for the Country Codes of the …
Olympics Web site adds two languages (at the wire)
A commenter on my post on the stunning lack of languages on the Olympics Web site (particularly when compared with Euro 2008) notes that two more languages were added recently: …
English