|
Multilingual domain name registration
Multilingual domain name registration is available to you as part of Dotster
participation in a testbed being conducted by VeriSign Global Registry Services.
The testbed permits certified registrars to submit multilingual domain names to
the Registry in a manner similar to the current system of registering
English-language domain names. The testbed allows certified multilingual
registrars to submit multilingual domains just as are currently done with
English character domains.
When functional, the name you create will work just like any English-character
name in that you can enter it into your browser and be taken to the
corresponding Web site. The native language domain name will be followed by
.com, .net or .org (for example:  )
Initially, your name will be reserved (parked) until sometime in the
future when VeriSign Global Registry Services is able to match your new
name with the Web site's location, also known as name resolution
When you register your domain name you receive RACE encoding.
RACE is the strange numbers that you see next to your domain name when
you register a domain name. RACE is used to translate languages into a
common format and is the way your name is stored in some of the systems
and databases on the Internet. Your name, in the characters you entered,
is represented in some systems in its RACE form - a set of numbers,
letters and dashes.
In order to be recognized by the traditional Domain Name System (DNS), the
name must be registered using the ASCII character set. The RACE language
encoding is a way to represent your native language characters in ASCII
characters the DNS understands. It will be important for you to keep the
RACE name until all the databases around the world are able to recognize
and retrieve your domain name using your own language's characters.
Initially, WHOIS cannot be searched using non-English characters. The
WHOIS database will be updated at a later date to recognize the non-English
language characters. Until that time, your name will appear in WHOIS by
its RACE-encoded name and you can only search for non-English domain names
using RACE encoding language.
It has been reported that domain name resolution will begin about a month
after the availability of the new names. Once VeriSign Global Registry
Services enables domain name resolution, and after you've successfully
modified your account with your DNS information, it will take up to 24
hours to have your domain name working worldwide.
Since there is no name resolution yet, if someone tried entering your name in
their browser, they would see the 404-error message (the site could not be
found). This will happen until the resolution process begins. Don't be
concerned; you are still the legal account holder of the domain name during
this period. However, it is important to understand that multilingual domain
names are being registered on a "test" basis. Circumstances could
arise that may affect your multilingual domain name registration.
Under the current system, you will not be able to establish an e-mail account
based on non-English language characters. The domain name service is separate
from e-mail and unfortunately, the systems that handle e-mail are not able to
recognize or support non-English language characters at this time.
Here is a list of languages that can currently be registered.
Western European-----
Danish
Dutch
Faeroese
Finnish
German
Icelandic
Irish
Italian
Norwegian
Portuguese
Spanish
Swedish
|
Central European-----
Afrikaans
Basque
Breton
Catalan
Croatian
Czech
Esperanto
Estonian
French
Frisian
Greenlandic
Hungarian
Latin
Latvian
|
Lithuanian
Maltese
Polish
Provental
Rhaeto-Romanic
Romanian
Romany
Sami
Slovak
Slovenian
Serbian
Turkish
Welsh
Others
|
|
Other Languages-----
Armenian
Chinese Simplified
Chinese Traditional
Cyrillic
Georgian
Greek
Japanese
Korean
|
|
