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ITU and UNESCO Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet |
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Abstracts |
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Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet
Geneva, 9-11 May 2006
Contact: multilingual@itu.int
Webcast (audio only): http://www.itu.int/ibs/ITU-T/200605multilingual/index.html
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DAY 1 - 9 MAY 2006
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Introduction |
Speaker:
Marcel Diki-Kidiri / LLACAN - CNRS
Title of Presentation: How to Include less resourced languages into
the Internet?
While it is rather easy to get a widespread standard language which
is spoken by hundreds of millions of people to actively occupy a
prominent position in the cyberspace, it is quite another matter to
bring a small language to take a place on that worldwide space of
communication, as such a language often lacks many of the essential
resources, e. g., elaborated linguistic description and reference
books, specific software tools, availability of cultural resources,
or even a sufficient number of native speakers!
If it is yet possible to do it in order to preserve the benefit of
the planet's language diversity, which steps could be taken to
develop less resourced languages so that they could safely access
the cyberspace and become living languages in it? It may turn out
that these steps are the same for any language as long as it is
strongly and consistently supported not only by a political will but
moreover by a budget will!
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Speaker:
John C KLENSIN, Ph.D. / ISOC
Title of Presentation: Culturally-appropriate Local Environments and
a Global Internet
Many of the discussions about making the Internet more hospitable to
local selections of language and culture – key to cultural
preservation and integrity – have focused on particular
technologies, particularly the Domain Name System, its root
structure, and internationalized domain names. This paper takes the
position that a different approach is more useful from the
standpoints both of cultural appropriateness and of making the best
technology choices. That approach is the obvious one: to look at
what is needed and then work backward to appropriate choices of
technology. The paper explores some requirements and how they might
be satisfied without compromising the global reach and utility of
the Internet. |
Speaker:
Cláudio Menezes, UNESCO
Title of Presentation: The UNESCO’s contribution to the inclusion of
languages and local content in cyberspace: from oral language to
digital objects
This paper presents a discussion on the presence and absence of
languages in the digital world and on the enabling environment for
making digital objects (text, image and sound) available in
cyberspace.
UNESCO concepts on inclusive and pluralistic knowledge societies
based on four principles (freedom of expression, education of
quality for all, cultural and linguistic diversity and universal
access to information and knowledge, especially of information in
the public domain) will be presented. Multilingualism in the
cyberspace and most particularly on the Internet will be considered
from the angle of access to quality education, freedom of expression
and linguistic diversity.
It also covers new planned and recent UNESCO’s initiatives to
contribute to multilingualism in the digital world. On the topic, it
is particularly relevant the ‘Recommendation Concerning the
Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to
Cyberspace” , an approved document by UNESCO General Conference
setting up the general UNESCO’s framework for action on this
component of knowledge societies.
Reference is also made to the follow up on the World Summit on
Information Society, Action Line C8. Cultural diversity and
identity, linguistic diversity and local content (Geneva Plan of
Action , Tunis Agenda for the Information Society ), which UNESCO
will be a possible moderator/facilitator. |
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Session 1 |
Speaker:
Andrzej Bartosiewicz
Head of DNS Division, NASK (Research and Academic Computer Network)
Title of Presentation: IDNs @ ITU-T Study Group 17
The World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (Florianópolis,
2004) in Resolution 48 instructed Study Group 17 (Security,
languages and telecommunication software) to study Internationalized
Domain Names (IDN). The belief is that IDN implementation will
contribute to easier and greater use of the Internet in those
countries where the native or official languages are not represented
in ASCII characters.
ITU-T Study Group 17 has been working on IDNs since Moscow meeting
in March 2005. SG17 received impressive number of contributions and
productive nature of discussions have been held during meetings in
Moscow (2005), Geneva (2005) and Jeju (2006). Study Group 17 meeting
in Korea, April 2006, gave final approval to the Question (“16”) on
Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) that provides direction and
focus to ongoing work.
Work on IDNs within “Question 16” includes inter alia multilingual
issues relevant to IDN, deployment scenarios for IDN, repository of
technical documentation stating the fundamentals of IDN, network
security risks accompanying the implementation of IDN, issues
regarding the use of regional language tables and web page open to
public dedicated to promote Internationalized Domain Names. |
Speaker:
Ms. Tina Dam, ICANN
Title of Presentation: ICANN’s IDN Activities
The single interoperable Internet is based on a shared namespace
originating in a single root. This ensures that all users of the
global Internet have a platform on which they can communicate with
each other. The geographic extent of the Internet is constantly
expanding, with a corresponding increase in its use by the diverse
linguistic groups of the world. There is a need to continue
supporting multilingual access to the Internet. This is a necessary
step in realizing the full potential of the Internet for serving as
a global communications platform.
ICANN takes all issues related to internationalization very
seriously. In relation to its mission, the implementation of
internationalized domain names ("IDNs") is of utmost importance.
ICANN has already established guidelines for the introduction of IDN
on the second level of the DNS. In addition, the Internet community
and ICANN have collaboratively appointed a group of leading experts
to a President's Advisory Committee on IDNs.
This committee is preparing a proposal for a technical test of
internationalized top level domain labels. Representatives from all
regions of the world are taking part in the discussion of the
technical test and have agreed that the stability and security of
the DNS which supports the Internet as we know it today will have
the highest priority. It is for this reason that due diligence is
being applied and that technical testing is to take place.
The test procedure will ensure that enabling multiple languages at
the top level will not adversely affect users. It will also
establish the technical methods that are available for such
deployment and will enable ICANN's policy development bodies to move
forward with their ongoing work with regard to policy decisions
essential to a production environment in which users will be able to
access the Internet using their local languages.
ICANN has and will continue to run workshops on IDN topics to
facilitate sharing of knowledge and practical experience, as well as
gathering of community opinions regarding the continued development
of IDNs. The President’s committee for IDNs will use these forums to
recommend potential changes and work assignments to ICANN staff
regarding IDN implementation and policies related hereto.
More information about ICANN’s IDN program can be found at http://icann.org/topics/idn/ |
Speaker:
Cary Karp, Museum Domain Management Association
Title of Presentation: IDN and cultural institutions
Institutions such as archives, libraries, and museums act to
increase the public understanding of the diversity of human cultural
and scientific activity. The focus of this action is often assumed
to be maintaining a record of past productivity. Although this
indeed is a key part of the efforts of these institutions, they
devote significant further energy to contemporary creative work.
This will normally (but not exclusively) address the needs of the
community that an institution most immediately serves. Where that
environment is multicultural, it is likely also to be multilingual.
Attention to language diversity is therefore commonly required both
in metropolitan and rural institutional settings, and the breadth of
that concern may be considerable in both cases.
One component of this is the long-standing involvement cultural
institutions have in the preparation of multilingual content for
dissemination via the Internet. IDN has potential for significantly
enhancing the value of such action by identifying the content
repositories in a manner that reveals, rather than obscures, the
linguistic identities of the cultures within which they originated,
and of the audiences for which they are intended.
This presentation will discuss key issues as they are being
addressed in a coordinated action within the .se national domain and
the .museum international domain, as an activity of the Swedish Year
of Cultural Diversity 2006. There are seven languages with official
status in Sweden, and accommodating them in the domain name space
illustrates a wide range of concerns attaching to IDN. |
Speaker: Mr.
J-F C. MORFIN, Intlnet
Title of Presentation: The MDRS “langroot”
Analysis shows that the Internet is the multilateral,
multitechnology, multilingal concatenation of a global continuity,
and the partitioning of this continuity at each structural layer
into relational space diversity. These relational spaces also
originate from languages. They have a structural need of
empowerment, which they will address in controlling their own local
“IANA” (balkanization results from not helping this).
Intlnet was created to coordinate the mutually consistent reference
information that this requires. The MDRS project is its technology
transparent adaptation to the state of the art. It will allow each
relational space to maintain in its own language its own referential
system that is made of a forest of computable and interlinkable
ontologies. It starts with a open registry documenting every
language in every language.
The first requirement was to define human languages in a digital
network context. It was then required to address the bias of the
current internationalisation, major language modes born from
digitalisation, and interoperability issues resulting from the
number of language codes.
Two task forces will help in the completion and testing of the MDRS
open use multilingual Internet usage architecture, its ontology
metastructures, registry management tools and servers, as well as
interoperation solutions. |
Speaker: Tan
Tin Wee, Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC)
Title of Presentation: Global IDN Coordination – ICMC Initiative
When the late Internet Czar, Jon Postel, drove the coordination and
global introduction of Internet domain names, he laid the foundation
for the growth and proliferation of the Internet throughout the
world through simple principles of delegation, trust, legitimacy,
coordination and service to the people. The Internet has spread to
people who do not use the default language of ICT, and even though
we have had multilingual content on the web since 1995 and exchange
email in all sorts of languages and scripts, we cannot address them
except in ASCII characters. In 1998, I have implemented a proof of
concept and widely testbedded the idea of an internationalized
domain name system (IDN) that allows, among other things, the
facility to express the crucial web or email address in the native
script of end-users. Since then, we have seen the standardisation of
IDN through the IETF (2003), and the ICANN-authorised deployment of
mixed IDN.ASCII domain names. But IDN Top Level Domains (TLDs) still
remains elusive. In the past three years, we have seen many
authorities of different localities world wide implementing for
their own communities IDN TLDs, using various workarounds to bypass
the establishment which is too slow in meeting the needs of these
people. As a result, there has been a proliferation of disconnected
IDN islands worldwide, serving potentially more than a billion
persons speaking languages and writing scripts that are not
English-based as a recent analysis by the Multilingual Internet
Names Consortium (MINC) has shown. As more scripts join this growing
bandwagon, the Internet runs the risk of serious collisions of the
same IDN TLD labels used by different groups. To prevent this from
happening, MINC’s International Coordination Mechanism Council has
been formed to coordinate this process of deploying non-colliding
IDN TLD labels. At the same time, with globalization, the need to
access IDN TLDs across these local IDN islands is increasing. The
local resolution of locally enabled IDN TLDs needs to be
internationalized and supported by other localities for mutual
benefit. All local authorities and organisations responsible for
supporting local IDNs can have a voice and a vote in the ICMC.
Participation in the open processes of ICMC is guaranteed whether
one has already implemented IDNs or intends to deploy IDNs in the
future. MINC ICMC has established a coordination table of all known
existing IDN islands and their deployment method, script coverage
and resolution system. Everyone will thus be able to know who is
deploying what IDN labels in which namespace. Anyone missed in this
initial survey is urged to join and share with others their
deployment and resolution system. A toolkit for rapid patching of an
ISP’s DNS server for IDN-enabling distributed by MINC will enable
resolution of IDNs of all localities in all locations on the
Internet. This effort will also ensure that the existing ASCII
domain names will continue to interoperate with the growing number
of IDN domain names so as to avoid the fragmentation of the
Internet. |
Speaker:
Kangsik Cheon, Tongwoo (Richard) Kim (NLI Consortium)
Title of Presentation: Internet Keyword Lookup
Both IDN and Keyword Lookup come with pros and cons. Examples show
that keywords in native language are preferred from a user
perspective. Rather than opposing each other these techniques are
successive steps in the evolution toward true multilingualism. The
internet root structure is biased to English and top down
management. A bottom up structure is more efficient and respectful
of countries sovereignty. Statistics on Korean and Chinese
developments confirm user’s preferences. A survey issued at IETF 59
in Seoul shows a dominant response in favour of Multilingual Keyword
Lookup. |
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Session 2 |
Speaker: Fay
Howard, CENTR, & Marcel Schneider, SWITCH
Title of Presentation: Internationalized Domain Names in Europe.
A contribution to the exchange of information and know-how in
multiple languages.
After a short introduction of CENTR, an association of Internet
Country Code Top-Level Domain Registries such as .uk in the United
Kingdom and .es in Spain, CENTR’s membership structure and its
mission and activities, the presentation discusses the basic
principles for the introduction of Internationalized Domain Names,
the concept of information culture and the strategic framework
outlined in the WSIS action plan and in the UNESCO IFAP
recommendation. The third part of the presentation provides
statistical data on the current use, registration and introduction
of IDN’s within the CENTR community. Objectives of the presentation
are to emphasize the importance of supporting multiple languages in
the Internet and to outline the current state-of-the-art in Europe
as represented by CENTR domain name registry members. |
Speaker:
Wang Feng, CNNIC, China
Title of Presentation: CJK Experiences and CNNIC’s Contribution to
the Multilingual Internet
Firstly this presentation introduces CJK experiences in Multilingual
Internet. Then after a brief introduction of CNNIC, is describes
that there is great need of Multilingual Internet in China,
according to the newest statistical survey report of CNNIC. It gives
a detailed introduction of what CNNIC has done to push Multilingual
Internet, including cooperation, technical proposal, application
implementation and standardization on several key Multilingual
technologies, especially on Internationalized Domain Name and Email
Address Internationalization. In last part, this presentation
analyzes the future direction of Multilingual Internet in China. |
Speaker:
Imad Al-SABOUNI
Advisor to the Minister of Communications and Technology, Syria
Vice Chairman, Syrian Computer Society
Title of Presentation: Arabic Domain Name System (ADNS) – Status and
Issues
Domain name System (DNS) is a crucial part for using Internet
technology. Domain names are still written using Roman characters
regardless of the worldwide spread of the Internet. Other languages
are not yet fully supported to locate resources and sites on the
network.
Supporting the Arabic language in domain names calls for
investigating and addressing a number of questions related to Arabic
linguistics and the domain name tree structure. The goal of this
presentation is to give an overview of such “ingredients” required
to design and implement a successful, workable Arabic Domain Name
System (ADNS), to be adopted by the Arab and Arabic-speaking
countries. The presentation contains a list of issues to be
addressed, with possible approaches and solutions. It also
highlights the experiences of The Arabic Domain Names Pilot Project
(ADNPP) on supporting fully internationalized domain name (i.e.,
Arabic.Arabic) and offers some recommendations regarding the
implementation of idn.idn.
Needless to say, any suggested solution should be compatible with
international standards and rules adopted by the IETF, and in
particular the set of IDN standards as defined in RFC 3490, 3491,
and 3492. |
Speaker:
Ayman El-Sherbiny
First ICT Officer
ICT Division
United Nations, ESCWA
Riad El-Solh
Beirut, Lebanon
Session: Operational experiences
Title of Presentation: Development of the Arabic Domain Names
System: UN - ESCWA perspective
In the Arab region, language has been identified as one of the
principal barriers to widespread Internet usage; hence there is a
substantial market and a latent demand for using the Arabic language
on the Internet.
The global undertaking to render the Internet more multilingual
began in 1998. Within that context, the Economic and Social
Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) joined other national, regional
and international entities in developing Internet domain names in
Arabic. Currently and at a regional level, ESCWA, the League of Arab
States (LAS) and all Arab countries are striving towards that goal.
Since 2003, ESCWA has envisioned that an entire environment needs to
be developed to satisfy the latent demand for Arabic content. The
strategy adopted by ESCWA is based on a full-fledged approach that
takes into account technology standardization, policy and
administrative arrangements, and new applications.
From 2003-2005, most of the work, led by ESCW in this area, was
mainly related to the linguistic aspects of the intended Arabic
Domain Names System (ADNS). In addition to linguistic aspects, in
2005, ESCWA studied the technical and operational aspects of ADNS
for the first time, aspiring to present a more complete description
of the different aspects of ADNS with the aim of providing the basis
for the full-fledged set of interoperable standards. |
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Session 3 |
Speaker: Michael Everson, Evertype
Title of Presentation: Encoding Diversity for Asian and African
Languages – The Script Encoding Initiative
Access to the Internet or to computing in general for the writing
systems of the world is entirely dependent on those scripts being
encoded in Unicode and its International Standard counterpart ISO/IEC
10646. Those standards are the solution to the problem of
representing all of the world's languages on computers but the
problem is that all of the "wealthy" scripts have already been
encoded, and the resources (i.e., the money) needed to do the work
of encoding what remains is very hard to come by. The challenge for
international organizations is to move beyond "policy statements"
and to make real contributions to the few people who are trying to
get this work done. The Script Encoding Initiative is one vehicle
for channelling funding to those proposal writers. |
Speaker:
Iván Guzmán de Rojas (IGRAL)
Title of Presentation: Experience with language implementations in
ATAMIRI
ATAMIRI is a non-commercial system that operates in the Web as a
truly multilingual machine translator, i.e. one program, one lexical
and grammatical data base, supporting various languages capable of
operating either as source or target language, with simultaneous
translation from any source language to various target languages.
The key aspect of this MT technology is its genuinely multilingual
property. When a N-th language is implemented, this will immediately
be related with the rest of the (N-1) languages in the system.
Therefore, implementation costs are only proportional to N. This is
an economically significant difference with other systems that try
to cover the multilingual demand with multiple programs and
dictionaries developed by language pairs therefore with
implementation costs proportional to the N(N-1) translation
directions in the language set.
This paper describes our operational experience with nine language
implementations in ATAMIRI’s translator engine: the Latin languages
Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian and Catalan and also
English, German and Dutch. The resulting 72 language translation
directions show various translation quality levels. Both language
engineering and economical aspects are discussed. A project plan is
suggested in order that ATAMIRI technology can be exploited in its
full potential. |
Speaker:
Nimaan Abdillahi, Université d’Avignon
Title of Presentation: Speech mining to make African oral patrimony
accessible
Most African countries follow an oral tradition system to transmit
their cultural, scientific and historic heritage through
generations. This ancestral knowledge accumulated during centuries
is today threatened of disappearing. This paper presents the first
steps for automatic transcription and indexing of African oral
tradition heritage, particularly the Djibouti cultural heritage. |
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DAY 2 - 10 MAY 2006
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Session 4 |
Speaker:
Hiro Hotta, Japan Registry Services (JPRS)
Title of Presentation: IDN situation in Japan
The goal of this presentation is to share the IDN experience in .JP
domain name registration services with the audience and readers.
JPRS, .JP ccTLD registry, launched its IDN registration service in
2001. IDNs registered and managed under .JP consist of only Japanese
language scripts and are called Japanese JP Domain Names. This
presentation briefs the history and the growth of the IDN services
and related activities in Japan. It especially describes the demand
for IDNs, how IDN registration services were launched, perception of
IDNs by the market, efforts in Chinese-Japanese-Korean region, and
some measures to promote IDNs. |
Speaker:
Johannes Christian Wichard
Deputy Director, WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center
Title of Presentation: Multilingualism and IPR Issues
The importance of trademarks as commercial identifiers extends to
the Internet, which has become one of the most important channels
for commercial communication and marketing. On the Internet,
trademarks have, however, come in contact, and conflict, with domain
names, a different system of (technical) identifiers. The abusive
registration and use of trademarks as domain names (“cybersquatting”)
constitutes a serious threat to both identification systems. This
threat has been addressed, since December 1999, by the Uniform
Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
The introduction of multi-lingual domain names may have additional
intellectual property implications. While the problem of protecting
trademarks across different languages and different scripts is
already well known to the trademark community, the introduction of
internationalized domain names (IDNs) will introduce added
dimensions.
The presentation will explore whether the current mechanisms of
dealing with conflicts between trademarks and domain names, in
particular the UDRP, are sufficient to address these issues, or
whether additional mechanisms may be required in certain situation
to address the intellectual property dimension of multi-lingual
domain names. |
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Session 5 |
Speaker: Mr.
Désiré KARYABWITE / ITU-BDT
Title of Presentation: Development programmes for universal access
to ICTs
Achievements aimed at universal access leading to the creation of an
information society have been accomplished in the telecommunication
sector since the first World Telecommunication Development
Conference in 1994.
Opportunities offered by new information and communication
technologies (ICTs) should be fully exploited with the aim of
fostering sustainable development and technology transfer consistent
with national laws, through research and development and innovative
technological applications, as well as development assistance for
the promotion of quality of life and a higher standard of living.
World Telecommunication Development Conference, 7 to 15 March 2006
(Doha, Qatar) calls upon all ITU Member States and Sector Members to
contribute towards the successful implementation of the outcomes of
the two phases of the World Summit on the Information Society held
in 2003 (Geneva, Switzerland) and 2005 (Tunis, Tunisia). In this
regard, the Doha Action Plan will be an important tool for the
implementation of the Summit outcomes. The Doha Action Plan is
designed to reflect the WSIS goals, particularly the target to
extend the Internet to all the world’s villages by 2015 as the
foundation for building the information society." Illiteracy and
ICTs inaccessibility are challenges to be overcome. The use of local
languages in e-learning and Internet access is one of the solutions. |
Speaker:
Tarcisio G. Della Senta, President, UNDL Foundation
Title of Presentation: A DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE ENABLING
MULTILINGUAL INTERNET
Implementing WSIS agenda on promoting multilingual Internet requires
enabling tools. As these are not ready available, ITU and UNESCO, in
their respective and joint roles, are engaged in exploring means of
implementing an information and communication infrastructure that
would (a) support multilingual access to information and knowledge;
and (b) promote linguistic diversity, cultural identity and local
contents.
Our presentation will offer, as empowering tools for meeting this
double objective, a digital system that is now emerging from
convergence of Artificial Intelligence, Computational Linguistics
and Knowledge Engineering. The result is a digital linguistic
infrastructure called UNL (from Universal Networking Language). It
is an electronic language that empowers computers to
intercommunicate and to process information and knowledge written in
natural languages, across language barriers. The UNL System,
therefore, provides peoples with a multilingual infrastructure that
enables them to understand, distribute, receive, and exchange
information and knowledge in their mother languages.
The presentation will initiate with brief description the structure
of the UNL System, its functions and applications and its current
stage of development. It will describe in more detail how the UNL
digital linguistic infrastructure facilitates access to information
and knowledge imbedded in natural languages, and how it empowers the
promotion of cultural identity, language diversity and local
contents. |
Speaker:
Christian GALINSKI, Infoterm
Title of Presentation: UNESCO Guidelines for Terminology Policies
There are several legal and other policy frameworks into which the
Guidelines fit. In the United Nations, we have the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). In Europe, the European Charter
for Regional or Minority Languages (1992), which covers terminology
aspects, the value of multiculturalism and multilingualism, and the
protection and encouragement of minority languages (compatible with
maintaining the status of official languages). At UNESCO one finds
the intersectional programme Initiative B@bel (importance of
multilingualism and multiculturalism in the Internet; 1998-1999) and
a recommendation on the promotion and use of multilingualism and
universal access to Cyberspace (2003).
The digital divide almost invariably co-occurs with inequality of
access to information and knowledge, which is in turn associated
with inequality in linguistic access. Inadequate terminology is one
key factor in the inequality of linguistic access, and it results in
‘functional illiteracy’ in the contexts of accessing information and
using computers. While it is emphasized that language is and remains
the primary means of inter-human communication, the Recommendation
also covers terminology aspects in conjunction with domain-specific
communication, information and knowledge.
People whose mother-tongue is not (or not sufficiently) developed
from the point of view of terminology and special purpose languages
(SPL) or who are denied the use of their mother-tongue in education
and training, for accessing information, or interacting in their
work places tend to be disadvantaged.
In most cases limitation in the use of a language to folklore or to
the family sphere means that such a language can hardly support
professional communication. Similarly, a language that lags behind
in its terminology for a given domain risks losing the ability to
communicate in that subject in its language over time.
In order to enable in a systematic way language communities with
less developed special purpose languages (SPLs, comprising the
respective specialized terminologies) to actively use the Internet,
the UNESCO Guidelines for Terminology Policies have been conceived. |
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Session 6 |
Speaker:
Subramanian Subbiah, Chairman, i-DNS.net
Title of Presentation: IDN Global Deployment – The Wider History and
Status
Since the invention and pioneering work done on IDN at the National
University of Singapore by a team including the author in 1997/8,
IDN has been the subject of many test beds and commercial
deployments the world-over – many of which may not have been widely
known or simply overshadowed by some more visible test
beds/deployments. The goal of the current talk is to consider the
two forms of IDN that have sprung up – the somewhat unnatural and
contrived “two-language” hybrid domains championed by ICANN and
related bodies of the form non-ASCII.ASCII (or known as IDN.ASCII)
and the more useful single language domains that have the entire
domain in a single non-ASCII script throughout (known as IDN.IDN) –
and their systematic introduction in various locales over the years
in a strictly chronological fashion. The goal is to historically
showcase a complete and comprehensive as possible list of all such
significant tested and commercial deployment to date. From this
exercise it is evident that after almost a decade of activity, no
matter what the reasons, the record is mostly of failure in reaching
the much-needed and much-awaited widespread use of this technology.
However, despite a key reason for failure thus far being the
inability to bring coherent policy and necessary coordination
between the various parties who have the keys to control such
widespread use, the evidence also suggest there has been growth –
painfully slow as it maybe, particularly in recent years. In fact,
measured in terms of the two key indicators of success – the number
of users who have the necessary software to use registered IDNs
(i.e. Resolution base) and the numbers of registered names - a few
smaller regional sub-sets who have had the will and interest to push
ahead are showing the way ahead despite the near-decade-long,
near-paralysis at the global level. Since some of these larger
sub-sets form significant chunks of the global Internet users and an
estimate made shows that the current piece-meal resolution-base may
collectively already approach 200M users with over a 1M names
collectively registered. |
Speaker:
Krzysztof Olesik NASK
Title of Presentation: Experiences on implementation of
Internationalised Domain Names under .pl
This presentation is intended to present the way the
Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) has been introduced under .pl
- polish ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) governed by NASK
(Research and Academic Computer Network). The presentation gives an
overview of actions taken in a preparation period before an IDN
launch at NASK, first assumptions and rules of IDN registrations,
development of an IDN registration policy and statistics.
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Speaker:
Yoav Keren
Title of Presentation: Hebrew Internationalized Top Level Domain
Names – It's Time to resolve
Hebrew is an ancient language, revived in the 19th century and today
spoken by about six million people, most of them in Israel. Domain
The Net launched Hebrew domain names with Hebrew TLDs on December
2000, with the support of Israel’s Communication Ministry, for the
Hebrew TLDs equivalents of .com, .net and .org. IDN.ascii domains
for languages (such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and
Hebrew) are not sufficient as they are a partial solution that
doesn't eliminate the language barrier, do not allow a full and free
cultural expression, for which every country and culture is
entitled. ICANN offered to test NS-records, a proven technology, and
DNAMEs – which were meant for something else. DNAMEs explicitly
dictate policy - only incumbent registries will offer IDN TLDs,
equivalent to their current TLDs, and in all languages/scripts – a
source for major political problems and disputes. Furthermore, each
registry could have different policies for each language/script – a
source for cultural and political problems and of customer
confusion. DNAMEs raise great mapping problems: who decides what
would be the equivalent TLD in other languages, out of the many
possible translations? Usually a domain in one language would have
many equivalents in English and vice versa: who decides which
registrant will get the IDN out of the many English equivalent
domains? These are just a few issues. The only solution to these
problems is implementing IDN using NS-records, and a standardization
that enables resolving Hebrew and other languages’ TLDs. |
Speaker:
Koan Cho, CEO, Digital Names, Korea
Title of Presentation: Korean Language Internet Names
A background introduction is given to the Internet landscape in
South Korea, with emphasis on the Korean language. In particular it
describes the widely deployed status of two different related but
different technologies that address the Internet Naming concerns
within the Korean language. The first of these – Korean language
Keywords – was invented and patented in Korea by the author himself
and was the first such concept in non-English languages. The market
for these keywords has been vibrant with two competing companies in
Korea – one run by the author. Examples and details of the current
state of Korean keywords is given. The second of these – Korean
language domain names - comes in two varieties – one the Korean.
ASCII two-language hybrid promoted by KRNIC in recent years and the
second – all-Korean domain names promoted for several years by a
private consortium that includes most of the major domain name
registrars in Korea, a keyword player and many of the key ISPs in
Korea. Examples of and details of the current state of these domains
is also given. |
Speaker:
Kyung Il Kim / Netpia.com, Inc.
Title of Presentation: Global Architecture for Multilingual Keyword
Lookup
For a decade in real business world, keyword lookup services have
been supporting local characters only. However, to contribute to the
multilingualization of the Internet and bridging the digital divide,
keyword lookup services essentially need standardized, unified, and
interoperable systems with simultaneous supports for multiple
languages and countries.
In this presentation, we will introduce our approach to global
architecture for the multilingualization of keyword lookup service,
address issues in global uniqueness, and present the options to
handle those issues. Also, demonstration of real service for
multilingual keyword lookup in three languages (Korean, Japanese,
and Turkish) will be provided. |
Speaker: Mr.
Sergey Sharikov, Regtime.net Ltd / MINC
Title of Presentation: Status of full Russian and Cyrillic language
Internet names in Russia
Our company Regtime.net initiated of IDN process in Russia since
2000 year.
We are running IDN.IDN domain name within Russia (Cyrillic
languages). We deployed fully Russian (Cyrillic languages) IDN.IDN (Russian.Russian)
domain names in ".КОМ .НЕТ .ОРГ .РУ" TLDs in Russian (loosely
equivalent to".COM .NET .ORG .RU" TLDs in English). Over the years
we have attract several thousand customers.
To cater to public policy issues, we at Regtime initiated Russian
Language
Working Group of MINC together with Russian language experts,
representatives of the President of Russia Executive Office, The
Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Institute of Public Networks
and Cyrillic Script Working Group. And this has allowed us to
coordinate amongst Russians and others in the Cyrillic language
community.
We have helped obtain consensus on the cyrillic language tables
amongst Russian, Belarus, Ukraine and Bulgaria. This tables was
approved as MINC draft.
There are some issues on IDN.IDN deployment in Russia. The main of
its:
- It needs support by most popular browser (expecting at 2007)
- It needs IDN.IDN support by authority roots .
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Speaker: S.
Maniam / IDN working Group INFITT)
Title of Presentation: Tamil Language Computing and IDN
Since inception in 2001, INFITT - The International Forum for
Information Technology in Tamil – has been very active for the past
several years in advancing the cause of 4000+ yr old Tamil language
in computing and the Internet. Tamil spoken by some 70M+ people is
amongst the top 10 languages in the world when measured by the
number of speakers. There is a significant group of speakers – over
100 000 – in several countries around the world. Over the past few
years, INFITT has brought together computing experts and linguists
in annual conferences around the world that have boasted as many as
100 000 attendees and over 500 delegates per conference presenting
research and other material. Such gatherings have resulted in the
following notable accomplishments – the Introduction of Tamil as the
first Indian language to be supported by Microsoft’s windows, the
standardization and selection of a Tamil encoding standard and
keyboard from the previous 30+ disparate ones, the sharp increase in
Tamil content on the Internet thru outreach to hundreds of thousand
of Tamil school-children via competitions etc, the selection and
championing of Tamil language Internet domain names and providing
stimulus for the development of Tamil software – Internet browsers,
email applications, search tools and document creating software etc.
In particular the talk elaborates on the INFITT’s successful efforts
in partnership with MINC to standardize the Tamil Unicode encoding
and their subsequent use in Tamil IDNs. |
Speaker:
Alireza Saleh, IPM/IRNIC, .ir ccTLD
Title of Presentation: Persian IDN at .IR ccTLD Registry
This is a report on IDN development in Persian (Farsi) language at
IRNIC, the .ir ccTLD Registry. This presentation reviews technical
aspects and problems of developing IDN for right-to-left scripts. It
also describes how we resolved a major potential phishing problem.
This presentation includes reports about statistics and policies
during the development and registration of .ایران (.IRAN) the top
level domain. |
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DAY 3 - 11 MAY 2006
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Session 7 |
Speaker:
Seleman S. Sewangi / University od Dar-el-Salaam, Tanzania
Tile of Presentation: Challenges of creating terms for localisation
into Developing Languages: the Case of Kiswahili terms for the
KiLinux Project:
Communication on the Internet involves interacting with a computer,
as well as with other people across the globe. Interaction with each
other is possible only where there is a language of interaction. One
person can interact with another only when they have a language in a
common. Unfortunately most of our computers programs today can only
interact in English, the ‘global language’. This has become a big
obstacle in the promotion of communication on the Internet. Making
computer programs interact in different languages, i.e.,
localization of the programs, is one of the big challenges in the
promotion of multilingual Internet. This papers focuses on
localization of computer programs especially on the aspect of
terminology. It highlights the challenges of creating terms for the
localization process as experienced in the project for localization
of Open Source (Linux) programs into Kiswahili ( the KiLinux
Project). |
Speaker:
Dawit Bekele, Addis Ababa University
Title of Presentation: Free Open Source Software for facilitating
language flows
Internet has been dominated by too few languages, for too long, in
contrast with the real world where there is high language diversity
and effective multilingualism. There are many causes for that.
Moreover, the limitation of software products with interfaces in
languages not considered as “major” by proprietary software
producers had considerable impact on the content availability growth
for languages that are not considered as “major”. Free and Open
Source Software (FOSS) has developed at great pace during the last
decade. What attracts more and more people and organizations is the
freedom that are associated with FOSS products, in particular the
freedom to copy, distribute and modify the software. Nowadays, FOSS
is also increasingly used by people and organizations who want
software products in their local languages, especially if those
languages that are not considered as “major”. The considerable
advantage of FOSS over proprietary software with regards to
localization is the fact that the localization of FOSS can be
initiated and implemented by anybody, even without the involvement
of the initial developers. However, for proprietary software, the
developer should be willing to do the localization before the
localization project can start. By promoting localization, FOSS
promotes the development of local content that can be put on the
internet; this promotes in turn multilingualism on the cyberspace. |
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Session 8 |
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Ahmad Zaki Abu Bakar, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Title of Presentation: Measuring Linguistic Diversity Through The
Language Observatory
It is estimated that over 6,000 languages are currently being spoken
all over the world. The "Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of
Disappearing", also defines five levels for endangerment of
languages. Basically, the language of any community that is no
longer learned by a larger part of the children of that community is
regarded as potentially endangered. What then, is the level of
endangerment of a language on the Internet? At the moment, only a
small percentage of spoken languages have been properly represented
on the Internet. A language may disappear from cyberspace even when
many speakers use it as means of communication in daily life. Aging
speakers is an important factor, but the disappearance of a language
on the Internet happens far before the point when the last speaker
dies or ceases to use it because in reality, many languages on the
globe are not even born on the Internet. This gave rise to the term
"Digital Language Divide". This paper presents the effort made by a
consortium of universities and research centers around the world to
address this problem by establishing a Language Observatory based at
Nagaoka University of Technology in Japan and conducting automatic
surveys on the Internet to measure the language presence and
diversity on the Internet. |
Speaker:
Daniel PIMIENTA / Networks and Development Foundation (FUNREDES)
Title of Presentation: Measuring Linguistic Diversity on the
Internet: Models for development and measurement
The presentation includes 3 parts:
- A framework to understand the complexity of the digital divide.
- Its application to the understanding of the diversity issue
- Some fresh figures about some languages in the Internet
The framework explains the 10 obstacles to overcome, above the
existence of an infrastructure, in order to move from ICT to Human
Development thus demonstrating that the question of access is just a
small part of the problem. The framework is then used as a
methodological basis for the systematic identification of the issues
which are faced by languages (and cultures) in cyberspace. Some
figures about the current state of linguistic diversity in the
Internet are provided from the observatory if FUNREDES (http://funredes.org/lc)
and some indicators are derived which allow to better understand the
actual trends. The figure shows a constant decrease of the (still
pending) dominance of English in the Internet (in terms of number of
users as well as percentage of web pages). The situation of minority
languages is critical and some paradoxical about languages are
exposed leading to a conclusion in favor of multilingualism.
The presentation is a report of one the text published by UNESCO (in
French and English): "Measuring Linguistic Diversity on the
Internet, 2005", see
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=20804&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html |
Speaker:
Daniel Prado – Directeur de la Terminologie et les Industries de la
langue – Union latine
Title of Presentation: Présence des langues dans la Société de la
Connaissance.
Toutes les grandes langues internationales de communication
souffrent un recul important dans la communication spécialisée, que
ce soit dans la publication scientifique et technique, dans les
négociations internationales, dans les organisations internationales,
dans le commerce international, dans les normes et brevets, dans
l’Internet ou dans les TICs. Des efforts sont faits pour réduire les
effets néfastes de cett situation, mais il ne sont pas suffisants et
des alliances linguistiques doivent se nouer afin de rendre la place
que mérite chaque langue dans la communication spécialisée et
notamment dans le cyberespace. Sera évoquée la situation
particulière des langues néolatines. |
Speaker:
Viola Krebs, Secretary-General, ICVolunteers
Title of Presentation: World Network for Linguistic Diversity
This presentation will outline the history, aims and objectives of
the recently launched World Network for Linguistic Diversity (WNLD).
This new world-wide Network was created in Tunis in November 2005 in
the context of the second phase of the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) and later launched in Paris at the
celebration of the International Mother Language Day on 21st
February 2006.
The Network proposes concrete solutions to the priorities identified
by WSIS around linguistic and cultural diversity in cyberspace. Its
mission is to value and promote linguistic diversity as the
foundation of meaningful human communication.
Based on a multi-stakeholder approach, it brings together
representatives from all sectors including civil society,
governments, international organizations, research centers and
universities, media, the private sector and individuals.
While the initiative started in the context of the WSIS, it is also
planning to associate organizations not solely focusing on cyber
issues, such as associations of writers, poets, researchers,
designers, media, translators and interpreters. |
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Session 9 |
Speaker: Tan
Tin Wee, Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC)
Title of Presentation: Toolkit for Global IDN Deployment
The critical need for end-users in a post-IDN era is to be able to
resolve IDN TLDs in full IDN domain names. Service providers
supporting these users need to rapidly deploy IDN resolution systems
to meet these needs. At the same time, the demand for new IDNs in
scripts of native speakers is also increasing and the technology
needed to facilitate these usage of TLDs in native languages and
scripts is a much felt need. MINC is progressively assembling a
comprehensive toolkit comprising a set of tools and processes for
the following:
- A working system for querying IDNs including plug-ins and helper
applications
- Patches to DNS servers for enabling IDNs.
- Database of IDN deployments and detail technical data for mutual
resolution of IDN TLDs.
- List of all known IDN-enabled servers which end-users can point
to for universal IDN-ASCII TLD resolution.
- LiveCDs for rapid set-up of IDNTLD-enabled DNS servers (less than
an hour)
- Submission system for reporting new IDN TLD deployments
- Coordination system for preventing, detecting and dispute
resolution of IDN TLD collisions
- Easy system for Deployment of new IDN TLDs
- Reporting mechanism for homographic and homoglyphic collisions
- Tools for solving keyboard input and screen display peculiar to
certain scripts
Each tool in this arsenal will gradually be rolled out over the next
two years, and will create the Open ICT ecosystem that will
facilitate multilingual innovation and wider penetration of the
Internet to communities that do not speak English or are not
familiar with the ASCII character set. |
Speaker: Dr.
Gautam Sengupta, Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of
Hyderabad, India
Title of Presentation: Multilingualism on the Internet: an Indian
Perspective
In India multilingualism is the norm rather than exception. Indian
language content on the internet is however quite sparse. This is
more due to socio-economic factors, than technical limitations. Low
literacy, inequitable distribution of wealth, the urban-rural divide
and globalization have all taken their toll on the indigenous
languages and scripts of India. In this paper I discuss some of
these issues as well as a few technical ones pertaining to script
encoding that need to be addressed in order to facilitate the growth
of multilingual internet content in India. |
Speaker:
Koray Kocagöncü, CEO, Netpia Turkey
Title of Presentation: The Turkish NLIA Experience
In Turkey the Native Language Internet Address (NLIA) project
started in April 2005,and developed over the next 10 months into a
fully operational service. The paper presents an overview of the
Turkish demography and market, and casts the keyword lookup approach
in the context of other multilingualization methods attempted in
Turkey. Native names open the net to a larger population and
energize e-commerce and e-government. From this experience the
author proposes a thorough guide on critical success factors.
Communication is essential because confusion is frequent in people's
minds with other concepts such as search engines and private
domains. Finally, suggestions are offered for the creation of vendor
neutral institutions in charge of service definition, dispute
resolutions, and cooperation with other bodies. |
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Session 10 |
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Session 11 |
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