This is a significant development — particularly since China was one of the major forces pushing ICANN to support IDNs.

To give you an idea of how these new IDNs are poised to change the Internet as we know it, I’ve overlayed the approved IDNs onto my Country Codes of the World map.

You’ll notice both simplified and traditional script IDNs for both China and Taiwan.

Here’s my running list of all IDNs that have passed string evaluation stage.

Facebook has demonstrated that you can crowdsource translations with high quality and rapid turnaround, leading many other companies to ask how they too can leverage the crowd to translate their content.

Enter Adobe and Lingotek.

Adobe has recently begun leveraging Lingotek’s software platform to enable the crowdsourcing of translations within China. As of now, there are 40 volunteer translators in China translating documentation.

Keeping in mind that this is a new and ongoing effort, I recently conducted a Q&A with Lingotek’s CEO Rob Vandenberg.

Here is the interview:

Q: What incentives did Adobe use to get Chinese users interested in translating content?

Adobe takes a very user-centric approach to volunteer translation. Instead of asking users to translate certain material, Adobe provides the content and tools for users to translate what they are interested in. They went to their user groups, and offered community translation as an opportunity. This allowed them to find people who were already interested in translating – whether because they are a reseller of the software, they want to put Adobe’s name on their résumé, or they are end-users who just want Adobe content in their language.

Q: Does the Lingotek platform stand alone or is it integrated into existing Adobe translation systems?

We have worked with Adobe to provide a number of integration points, including:

1. Providing an API to allow community members to upload documents from an Adobe Flex application.
2. Providing a version of our leaderboard that could be placed on the Adobe Groups site, as well as an API to get leaderboard data.
3. Providing a version of our signup page that could be placed on the Adobe Groups site.

Q: How is quality managed with regard to the volunteers. Even Facebook relies on a vendor to ensure quality.

The primary means of producing quality translations in the Adobe communities is to limit who is allowed to participate. Adobe selects project managers who they can trust, and these people are in charge of determining which translators should be allowed to participate.

Q: Are the project managers Adobe employees in China? And are they effectively the gatekeepers for quality?

As I understand it, there is a Community Manager who is the interface between Adobe and the community, but the project management is all done by community members. The translated content is then given to the community, and they publish it.

In addition, the Lingotek platform allows for a number of tools which not only help translators to work faster, but improve the quality of the translations, including:

• Shared Translation Memories
• Translation Voting
• Notes on each segment
• Terminology tools

Q: How does Adobe get rapid turnaround using volunteers? Are deadlines used?

The speed of translation is affected most by letting volunteers translate the things that they want to translate. In addition, Adobe brings attention to the project managers and translators who have done the most work.

Q: How does Adobe deal with customers who assume that they should not be required to translate content themselves?

Adobe focuses on the users who are eager to help them to translate. They don’t try to recruit general end-users, and I think that is why they have avoided most of this criticism.

Q: Why is Adobe doing this exactly?

The main driving factor is Adobe’s community users are asking for translated content that isn’t in Adobe’s professional translation pipeline. By using Lingotek’s API’s and translation software and Adobe’s existing community to translate content were making new content available to Adobe users quicker and at a much lower price.

Q: How does Adobe license the Lingotek platform?

Lingotek is licensed on a concurrent user basis. We don’t share pricing information.

Q: Is this limited to only volunteers? That is, will the same platform be used not only for documentation but for product/software loc work?

The Lingotek platform is designed to support many different workflows. Some clients are using their communities to provide the initial translation, and then use internal reviewers to do the final review before publishing. Other clients use a traditional assigned workflow, without using community members.  In Adobe’s case, so far they are only using their community members.

For more information, here’s the Lingotek press release.

As Shanghai cleans up its more humorous Chinese to English mistranslations, some folks are feeling wistful.

Check out the NYT slideshow.

Also, I was just told that the Telegraph has quite a trove of mistranslated signage here.

In January of this year, ICANN announced that four fast-track IDNs had made it through linguistic approval — effectively clearing the way for commercialization.

Oddly missing from that list was China’s IDN.

One of the reasons ICANN initiated a fast-track process — if not the reason — was China.

China began putting pressure on ICANN a few years back by registering second-level IDNs and hinting that it would offer full-length IDNs if ICANN didn’t get moving. China’s Internet is essentially an intranet after all, so there is no reason the country couldn’t resolve full-length IDNs next week if it wanted.

Perhaps China’s IDN has already been approved ICANN has simply not gotten around to announcing it.

Still, I find the silence curious. Which is why I was interested to read that the president of ICANN, Rod Beckstrom, traveled to China recently.

This article posits that China’s IDN application was one of the issues behind his trip.

What do you think? Is China’s IDN being used as leverage by ICANN?

Here they are:

• Saudi Arabia (SA): السعودية
• Egypt (EG): مصر
• United Arab Emirates (AE): امارات
• Russian Federation (RU): рф

I’m surprised to see China absent from this list. But there are 12 other requests behind these four.

I know it’s way too early to start predicting the rise of the Arabic-language Internet, but it’s exciting to see such interest in the Middle East.

Here’s the ICANN press release.

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 browser’s language preference to Chinese and you’ll see it the next time you visit Google.

And had China not continually blocked this site from Chinese citizens years ago, perhaps Google would not have compromised so to enter the market.

But it did. Its services got blocked anyway. And Baidu is still number one.

Here’s a good article that posits that Google’s Korea strategy is what led to what is happening right now with China.

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:

1. Cameroon (.cm)
2. PR of China (.cn)
3. Samoa (.ws)
4. Philippines (.ph)
5. Former Soviet Union (.su)

Why is Camerooon at the top of the list?

Because .cm is a common typo by users who intended to type .com.

According to McAfee, more than 30% of all domains registered under .cm are up to no good.

I have a business idea for Verisign — why not license .cm and bundle it with .com registrations to give users a more secure domain package. I could see many companies paying for this.

China is number two. The country has made efforts recently to clean up its domain by requiring business licenses of its registrants. Some of the Western media have misinterpreted this as censorship. That’s one of the great ironies of managing top-level domains. You kinda have to keep a close eye on what the registrants are doing with these domains if you want to ensure a safer Internet.

But I digress.

And what are the safest ccTLDs? Here are the top five:

1. Japan (.jp)
2. Ireland (.ie)
3. Croatia (.hr)
4. Luxembourg (.lu)
5. Vanuatu (.vu)

You can view a larger map here.

Here it is in Spanish…

And Chinese…

And, my favorite, “pirate English”…

Thanks largely to volunteer translators, Facebook has localized from one to 70 languages in two years. (Personally, I think we need more of the goofy ones — I’d so much rather “Adjust me riggins” than “Change settings” or change the “Settins o’ me piracy” than my “Privacy Settings.” I’m thinking of volunteering to do “Snarky English” myself.)

If you’re a translator, there’s a link on Facebook (on the language setting page) where you can find out more. And if you’re interested in more where this came from, check out our new report, coming in 2010.

And TED, which has been using the crowd to provide translation of its videos, is looking for a few more participants. Here’s a recent blog posting:

Wanted: Translators
The goal of TED’s Open Translation Project is to bring ideas worth spreading to the wider world by offering TEDTalks with subtitles in as many languages as possible. Still, many of the world’s languages aren’t yet represented in the project, and we want to fill those gaps. Today, we’re putting out a call to translators worldwide to help us translate the languages that the project hasn’t yet covered.

We’re looking for translators who speak these languages, in particular:

• Akan
• Assamese
• Filipino
• Galician
• Gujarati
• Icelandic
• Khmer
• Maltese
• Marathi
• Mongolian
• Nepali
• Panjabi
• Sinhala
• Tagalog
• Tibetan
• Tswana
• Yoruba
• Zulu

In some cases, translations in the languages above have already been completed, but remain unpublished because they still need to be reviewed. (Some of the languages only have one translator.)

These languages aren’t exactly what the translation industry would call Tier 1. That is, there simply isn’t as deep pool of translators to draw from. Which is why any crowdsourcing strategy must take into account the size of the potential crowd.

So how is TED doing so far with its crowdsourcing project?

This menu should give you an idea of what languages are covered and to what extent. Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese are doing best by far.

For roughly six months of work, TED appears to be doing quite well.

According to ICANN, 10 applications (representing five languages) were submitted over the first four days.

ICANN won’t announce exactly who applied and for what until each application is successful — which pushes us well into 2010.

So I’ve had to turn to press reports from the registries to piece together the data.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

• Egypt (Was the first country to apply)
• Saudi Arabia
• UAE
• Russia
• China
• Bulgaria
• Israel

Unless a country made more than one application (which I don’t believe is allowed under fast track protocol) I’m still missing three countries. I’m guessing there could be one or more additional Middle East countries. And perhaps Taiwan.

What do you think? What countries/languages am I missing?

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 about to see the non-Latin equivalent of .com anytime soon. Certainly not next year. There are several reason for this which I will cover in a later post.

What we should see next year are the non-Latin equivalents of country code top-level domains, such as .ru, .cn, .sa. It just so happens that I’ve got a handy map of all ccTLDs here.

Not all ccTLDs will be eligible for a “fast track” ccTLD, just those from countries that have official non-Latin languages.

The two largest countries I would expect to launch IDNs in 2010 are China and Russia.

China has had its IDN ready to go for some time now; the traditional Chinese character version is shown above. The simplified character version is below. The assumption is that both versions will be bundled together.

Below is a screen grab from China’s government web site. Perhaps in 2010 we’ll see “GOV.cn” replaced.

Russia will likely be using this IDN next year:

This IDN is short for “Russian Federation.” Why not just use the equivalent of .RU, you ask? Well, that would give us .ру, which looks entirely too similar to .py (Paraguay).

So there you have it — IDNs for China and Russia, with many more to follow.

And perhaps I was right in more ways than one.

Because now it appears that .CN is experiencing its very own .COM bust.

Just a year ago Chinese domain registrations were booming, so quickly in fact that .CN had surpassed .DE to become the most-registered ccTLD.

Of course, registrations were cheap, really cheap.

A year later, those domains have come up for renewal. And, according to Domain Pulse, more than a million of those domains have not been renewed:

Registrations for .CN have declined from an end-of-month peak of 14,082,553 in February 2009 to 12,545,589, a decline of approximately 1.5 million

Which means Germany (.DE), at just under 13 million registrations, has regained the top spot as the number one ccTLD.

Even with ccTLDs, there are peaks and troughs, as illustrated here:

I’m still confident that .CN will reign supreme (perhaps until .IN gives it some competition).

But first it must recover from this little bubble.

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 character — the DNS is still ASCII-only.

In China, the number 8 one of the best numbers to have on your license plate, phone number, etc — because of the way it’s pronounced. But this particular domain is attached to the .WS ccTLD, which is Western Samoa. As ccTLDs go, .WS is not exactly up there with .COM or .CN. So maybe that’s why the owner is promoting it so heavily — I came across this sale via a press release.

This photo arrived courtesy of Gareth Morgan at Neovia Financial.

Apparently the proprietor of this restaurant in China decided to create an English-language sign using machine translation (MT) software and, apparently, the MT engine wasn’t working all that well.

So instead of “restaurant” we have “translate server error.”

It’s certainly one of the more memorable restaurant names I’ve come across. I’ll be sure to look out for it when I visit!

And I’ve love to know which MT engine delivered this message.

As I noted then, the company utilized crowdsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though volunteers aren’t the only people translating content, a year later, Facebook has done an impressive job of going global.

Om Malik recently reported some key stats from Facebook’s global expansion efforts. Among them:

• Facebook is available in 43 languages and is in the process of being translated into another 60 languages.
• 40 percent of Facebook users are not using English.
• 25,000 volunteers helped translate Facebook into Turkish last year, and there are now 9 million Turkish-language users signed up for Facebook.

Even though only 43 languages are available now, if you add the Facebook Translations application (which i really recommend doing if you’re into this sort of thing), you’ll see the other 60 languages in the pipeline — many of which look pretty much good to go.

Here’s what the Translations pull-down menu looks like:

So many languages my computer is lacking for fonts.

It’s a very safe bet to say that Facebook will support more than 100 languages a year from now.

You can learn more at www.globalizationexecutive.com.

But there is a different type of gateway out there that is worth mentioning — a gateway unique to the Web sites of alcoholic beverages: the age gateway.

Here is the age gateway of Budweiser:

The age gateway has to be one of the most useless gateways ever devised — and certainly one of the most frustrating to use.

For starters, every beer maker seems to have its own take on how best to design the gateway. The gateways are usually Flash-based and typically difficult to use. What I end up doing is simply entering 01/01/1971 just to get through it as quickly as possible.

I would predict that the logs of Budweiser feature an inordinately high number of people born on the first day of the year.

But the reason why I’m mentioning the age gateway here is two-fold. In the case of Budweiser (and most competitive Web sites), the age gateway comes before the global gateway.

Once you get past the “virtual bouncer” and into the Budweiser site, in order to find your specific country or language Web site, you must do a bit of searching. Here is the buried link:

This link takes you to this page:

According to Budweiser, “great taste knows no boundaries.” But great global design apparently does run up against a few boundaries. For a non-English speaker, getting to this gateway is no trivial task.

What’s the lesson here?

Don’t place the age gateway before the global gateway.

Let the Web user find his or her localized Web site before you present your virtual bouncer. This is particularly important because dates are not presented in the same format in all countries. By directing the user to his or her local site first, you can then present your age gateway in the correct date format.

And, as my brother pointed out, different countries have different drinking ages — yet another reason to put the global gateway before the age gateway.

Now for the second point I wanted to make regarding age gateways.

Not long ago I came across a new product known as the Beertender. It’s a sort of mini-keg fridge designed specifically for Heineken.

Take a moment to visit www.beertender.com and you’ll first encounter this splash global gateway:

It is not until you select a country that you arrive at an age gateway.To my knowledge, Heineken is the first company to place its global gateway ahead of the age gateway!

If you select the French site, you’ll arrive at a very simple yes/no age gateway:

But because American lawyers are not as freewheeling as the French in regards to underage drinking, here is the American age gateway:

But even here you’ll find that Beertender makes significant usability improvements. Instead of asking the user to input dates, you simply select the dates displayed on the screen. It’s remarkably faster to get through.

So it’s nice to see Beertender not only put its global gateway ahead of its age gateway, but also support localized and user-friendly age gateways. I hope the other beer makers of the world take notice.

Here’s a screen grab of the figures I want to focus on:

What makes this chart so interesting are the growth rates — .com is growing at 5% and .cn is growing at 18%. Granted, it’s easier to grow at 18% when you’ve only got 12 million registrations, compared with growing at 5% when you’ve got 76 million registrations.

But growth is growth and .cn is clearly on a roll.

And China has a lot of headroom for growth in terms of Web users and potential domain registrants. I am confident that .cn will reach 50 million registrations over the next 3 years.

At about that point in time, .com should be around 100 million registrants — in no danger of losing its number one status.

However, if the rate of growth of .com registrations were to decrease while .cn rate of growth continues to increase, it’s reasonable to wonder if we will one day see the number of .cn registrations surpass .com registrations?

I realize this is a far-fetched scenario.

After all, it’s reasonable to assume that companies that register .cn may also register .com — and the majority do just that.

But it’s certainly something to contemplate. And even if .cn never comes close to surpassing .com, the overall point I’d like to emphasize here is that .cn is now the world’s second most popular domain extention — and likely to remain that way for many years.

What do you think?

Here are before and after shots of the language gateway.

August 6th:

August 14th:

What I find interesting is that these two languages were either added right when the Olympics began or possibly even a few days later.

United States

220 million Internet users

70% penetration

China

253 million Internet users

19% penetration

For readers of this blog, this development is hardly news. But it’s significant nonetheless. After all, the US isn’t exactly going to catch back up in this regard. China wins the numbers game, at least when it comes to people.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from the article:

Baidu, for instance, said on Thursday that its second-quarter net profit had jumped 81 percent. During that period, Baidu had a 63 percent share of China’s search engine market, while Google had about 26 percent, with Yahoo trailing far behind, according to iResearch, a market research firm based in Beijing.

Tencent, a popular site for social networking and gaming, now has a stock market value of $15 billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable Internet companies. In comparison, Amazon.com is valued at about $30 billion.

China also leads in having the world’s most popular country code (.cn).

Being the globalization geek that I am, I couldn’t help but check out the home page of Yahoo! Spain, which features a localized header, shown here:

And then I noticed that the home page of Yahoo! Germany was also localized for the home team.

So who the heck was Yahoo! rooting for?

Everyone, it seems.

Which highlights a delicate issue for multinational Web sites — that of not appearing to root for one country over another. The golden rule of course is to simply treat each country equally. This is easy to do when it comes to localizing headers, but not so easy when it comes to providing equal levels of customer support, product documentation, and so on.

Yahoo! is not alone in navigating these waters. Here is Google Germany:

Interestingly, you can’t view this German page by simply entering google.de. You need to use a German-based IP proxy.

And now here’s my second Web globalization thought: Why does the Euro 2008 Web site support vastly more languages than the Beijing Olympics Web site?

Here is the Euro site, with support for 9 languages.

And here is the Olympics site, with support for just English, French, and Chinese.

I find it ironic that an event that is billed as a global event supports fewer languages than an event that has Euro in its title. Euro 2008 even supports Japanese, Chinese, and Korean even though these countries don’t have participating teams.

I realize that the Olympic Charter specifies just two official languages: English and French. And the host country generally adds its local language to the mix as well. This rule makes sense for signage, announcements, etc. But I don’t see why the Web site should support only three languages.

The argument can be made by the Olympics that they simply cannot justify financially supporting every language of every participating country. But I still don’t buy it. If Euro2008 can support 9 languages, the Olympics can and should do better than three.