Sri Lankan community preparing for multilingual internet using local scripts

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and local experts in policy, technical and linguistic fields convened in Colombo recently to introduce the Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) programme and launch the Sinhala Generation Panel (GP).

The launch signifies an exciting future where the local community contributes towards developing secure and stable access to the internet in Sinhala.

The Asia Pacific region is linguistically diverse. Of the 6,800 languages in the world, about half of them or 3,500 are spoken in APAC. 21 of the top 30 most spoken languages in the world are used in the region. This diversity adds challenges to the internet domain name space.

“IDNs are domain names represented by letters or characters from different scripts and writing systems. They offer the possibility of using the domain names in languages across the globe, including Sinhala, Tamil, Thai, Chinese, Hindi, and others. Thus, providing a truly multilingual internet with greater flexibility and opportunities for billions of users,” said ICANN IDN Programmes Director Sarmad Hussain. “The ability for internet users to come online in their native languages and scripts is a significant development for the internet. As Sinhala is a commonly used language in Sri Lanka, the work by the Sinhala GP will lay the groundwork for allowing complete domain names in the Sinhalese language,” added Hussain.

The Sinhala GP comprises two Co-Chairs and a number of local community representatives from the policy, linguistic fields, as well as members with technical expertise in Sinhala language computing, Unicode and the internet’s domain name system.

Sinhala GP Co-Chair Harsha Wijayawardhana said: “We are all extremely excited about this new development. The Sinhala GP will work on developing root zone label generation rules for the Sinhala script. There will be significant technical work involved, such as developing the rules for computers to understand how to form correct top-level domain names in Sinhala script. Our efforts will help to form the basis for allowing complete domain names in the Sinhala language.”

Earlier this week, members of the Sinhala GP attended a workshop to discuss the work plan and next steps. The Neo-Brahmi GP is also in Colombo this week. They are developing label generation rules for nine Neo-Brahmi scripts including Tamil, the other commonly used language in Sri Lanka. When both the Sinhala and Neo-Brahmi GP’s work are completed, Sri Lankans can look forward to accessing the internet’s domain name system using domain names in their scripts 
and languages.

Work has been completed by the respective GPs for the Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Khmer, Lao and Thai scripts, and is underway for many more, including Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Korean, and Latin scripts. ICANN is currently calling for volunteers to form GPs for these four scripts: Hebrew, Myanmar, Tibetan and Thaana.

Enabling a Multilingual Internet – Additional Information

In addition to developing rules to form valid top-level domains (TLDs) in the local script, many computing systems need to be upgraded as they do not recognise or appropriately process new domain names, primarily because the TLD or IDN may be more than three characters in length or in an alternate format. The same is true for email addresses that incorporate these new extensions.

The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), supported by ICANN, is a community-led, internet industry-wide initiative working on creating awareness and identifying and resolving problems associated with the universal acceptance of domain names.