Internationalizing the Internet

By its very nature, the Internet is a global medium that touches billions of individuals whose vocabulary does not derive from the Anglo-Saxon tradition, and whose alphabet is not that of the ancient Romans. The Internet Engineering Task Forceʹs recent approval of a standard for domain name internationalization. This means, in effect, that it will soon be possible to create domain names in non-ASCII characters, such as Chinese or Cyrillic script. The ability to create internationalized domain names speaks directly to the issue of localization – the ability to present a Web site using the target audienceʹs language, style, graphics, and such cultural conventions as currencies, dates, and units of measure. Unicode, by far the most powerful tool for globalizing Internet data, provides a unique number for every character, regardless of platform, program or language.