And for the IDN doubting Thomases.

[Rubber Duck]

"Opportunities for Growth" from Versign

Read Section on "Opportunities for Growth" from the Versign's August 2006 Domain Industry Brief:

http://www.verisign.com/static/039111.pdf

 

[rhys]

Very cool. Such IDN bullishness is a nice affirmation of what many of us have believed in for months (in some cases years) laying down greenbacks to prove the point. Finally, the future of the internet begins to emerge before us and it is IDN!

Is there anyone out there that would still like to argue that everyone on the net likes to speak English? Or that Japanese and Chinese people prefer typing English to their own language?

 

[RJ]

Is there anyone out there that would still like to argue that everyone on the net likes to speak English? Or that Japanese and Chinese people prefer typing English to their own language?

Did anyone ever argue that?

 

[DNWizardX9]

Did anyone ever argue that?

yes tons

 

[RJ]

Did anyone ever argue that?

yes tons

Tons? I've never heard it. Thread links would be helpful.

 

[DNWizardX9]

Talk about censorship from the Namepros staff. Why did Mark change the thread title? While a battle can range on in the .tv section it seems that the mods want to keep the mood on IDN neutral.

Thread links will come soon.

 

[RJ]

Rubber Duck entitled this thread "And for the IDN doubting Thomases.", not Mark.

 

[Ben]

Rubber Duck entitled this thread "And for the IDN doubting Thomases.", not Mark.

The title is now, "'Opportunities for Growth' from Versign".

 

[rhys]

Did anyone ever argue that?

Most commonly, people without knowledge make quick but faulty assessments like "Interesting but this is dangerous for the internet as everything will stop being in English". These simple arguments are easy to dismiss.

The funnier ones are the so-called "foreigner experts". Yes, even within the last month at IDNForums we have had people argue this for Hindi IDNs and Chinese/Japanese IDNs. In the latter case, it turned out to be a Chinese American with imperfect written knowledge of Chinese whose last experience using a word-processing program was on Windows 95. His views on the imperfections of the interface were understandable but as he later admitted somewhat dated and clouded by his lack of mastery of the written language.

Two months ago, we had a foreigner living in Japan argue that it is too hard for him to type in Japanese despite his "fluency", and therefore, must be too hard for native Japanese to type too. Uh yeah. That's why all those books and magazines get typed in English instead of Japanese over there, right?

We've also had someone make the point that since very few people in Japan had downloaded Firefox with its support for IDNs that Japanese people must not want IDNs. Uh right. Sure. Nice try, but go back to 9th grade debate class and try again.

 

[Mark]

Yes - I changed the title - Why start a thread in the Negative sense to begin with ?

The title I changed it too actually had something to do with the "Content" - which would better serve any person who browses the forum ..... To each his own I guess.

The title has been replaced - though I doubt many will read it this way and take it as serious.

 

[Rubber Duck]

Yes - I changed the title - Why start a thread in the Negative sense to begin with ?

The title I changed it too actually had something to do with the "Content" - which would better serve any person who browses the forum ..... To each his own I guess.

The title has been replaced - though I doubt many will read it this way and take it as serious.

No worries good job!

 

[Charley]

very nice link ..... I have learnt a lot reading this ......

Read Section on "Opportunities for Growth" from the Versign's August 2006 Domain Industry Brief:

http://www.verisign.com/static/039111.pdf

 

[SEO Montreal]

you'd ex[pect them to say it though. they want people buying and speculating more.

 

[Rubber Duck]

you'd ex[pect them to say it though. they want people buying and speculating more.

Why bother when most people are prepared to buy domains that make no sense.

This week Chinachat.com $2,800. To whom is that ever going to be relevant?

 

[sanatana]

Rhys:

I'm sure that all other things being equal, the Chinese would prefer to type in their own characters.

However, the reality is that isn't an option for them.

Firstly, the QWERTY is commonplace throughout China. As such, using it is virtually a must.

Second, the software that would allow them to enter their own characters requires that they type in the sounds of the characters using roman (what you referred to as English) letters. (The languange is called Pinyin.)

So, if a Chinese wants to search for Chinese cooking, they have to type in "zhongguofancai" to get their characters to appear. That being the case, the domain zhongguofancai.com is easily as good as (if not better than) its character-related counterpart.


S

 

[Rubber Duck]

Rhys:

I'm sure that all other things being equal, the Chinese would prefer to type in their own characters.

However, the reality is that isn't an option for them.

Firstly, the QWERTY is commonplace throughout China. As such, using it is virtually a must.

Second, the software that would allow them to enter their own characters requires that they type in the sounds of the characters using roman (what you referred to as English) letters. (The languange is called Pinyin.)

So, if a Chinese wants to search for Chinese cooking, they have to type in "zhongguofancai" to get their characters to appear. That being the case, the domain zhongguofancai.com is easily as good as (if not better than) its character-related counterpart.


S

If this perverse logic of yours were anywhere near accurate the hundreds of millions of Chinese Web pages in existence would also be in Pinyin. If the Chinese are capable of generating hundreds of million of web pages in Hanzi they can produce web address in Hanzi. They don't search in Pinyin. It well documented in that they search in Hanzi. The reason they don't navigate in Hanzi is simply explained by the fact that they have no browser support. In short you are talking utter bollocks. You will see that what I am saying is true when IE 7 is released sometime in the next month!

 

[DNWizardX9]

Santana, if that is true why are some Chinese IDNs getting hundreds of visitors/day right now? Ask RD to show you his stats to back myself up.

 

[Ben]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers
http://google.com/trends?q=中文,pinyin

 

[thefabfive]

Very educational links, Ben. :bingo:

I would hope people would familiarize themselves with such topics before posting erroneous information.

 

[NP41215]

.
RubberDuck knows what he speaks about Chinese IDNs.

Actually, PinYin can be a lot faster when the output is in Chinese.

That is because most PinYin input has AI built in. For example to type the Chinese IDN equivalent of UnitedStatesOfAmerica.Com, the PinYin method takes just two key strokes (i.e. m and g) to create 美国, which means UnitedStates or UnitedStatesOfAmerica.

In fact proficient Chinese typists can type Chinese character content/material at speeds equivalent to hundreds of Englsh words per minute. Several pages of English text, when translated into Chinese, may occupy but one page or so in Chinese, and with far fewer "words" due to the simplicity of Chinese grammar which obviates the need for many grammar-supportive words that are required in English.

That inputting or outputting in Chinese characters is necessarily slower than in English words is a myth. With the right AI-supported text editor and some use or practice, it is usually faster than inputting and outputting in English, and several times faster for proficent typists.

In other words, the upper typing speed limit is much higher for Chinese characters than for English words in terms of equivalent information throughput.

Even so, there remains a lot of room for AI improvement and speed efficiency in Chinese character input and output. The situation can only get better in the future.

In fact, it is also much easier (AI-wise) to do voice input/output in Chinese since there is always only one sound/syllable for each Chinese character and therefore the parsing of each character or its sound and the translation between a character's sound and the character itself is far simpler and easier than the case of multi-syllable words (as most English words are).

In decades past, the progress was somewhat slow, but has picked up in recent years. Money for R&D plus research talent used to be meager in this area until recent years.

Eventually vocal input will take over, imho. Monosyllabic languages should be the easiest for high-accuracy vocal input. The Chinese language grammar is also extremely simple, very close to a computer language. There are no such things as tense (past, present or future) etc., or complicated prepositions. For example, instead of saying: "I　will be going to school today", Chinese equivalent would be "<subject> [<time-tag>] <action> <object>" or literally "I today go school." So man<-->robot/machine interaction will be far simpler in Chinese than, say, English.

There are other advantages, but I don't intend to make this an essay.