It will soon be possible to register domain names in all 22 of Indiaâs scheduled languages, including 9 Indian scripts.
âWork is on for nine Indian scripts â Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu. These scripts are expected to cover many different local languages,â ICANN India head Samiran Gupta told PTI.
Currently just over half (52%) of the worldâs population has access to the internet. One of the means of bridging the digital divide is to enable domain names in as many language scripts, known as internationalised domain names, as possible around the world to allow internet users to type in and read internet addresses in their own languages.
âMany of the remaining 48% are non-English speaking people and those who do not have the ability to type in English. The work will allow domain names to be available for these people in their languages,â the ICANN India head said in the PTI article.
There is currently a community-based panel in India to allow the domain names in regional languages, which in turn would enable the system to publish local language content being searched.
âThis work for defining rules for the domain names for languages spoken in India is underway with a dedicated community based panel,â Gupta said.
According to PTI, the Neo-Brahmi Generation Panel, as it is called, consists of more than 60 technical experts and linguists from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Singapore, where these languages and scripts are used, Gupta said.
The proposals for six scripts â Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Oriya and Telugu â are already released for public comment. âOne can review these proposals and provide comments by visiting icann.org/idn,â he said. Currently there are 4.2 billion Internet users globally which may rise to 5 billion by 2022, Gupta said.
For more information on internationalised domain names, see
https://uasg.tech/