Sinhala Tamil domain names to bridge digital divide
With the aim of enhancing Internet access countrywide especially in remote and rural areas, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and several local experts in policy, technical and linguistic fields have joined hands to come up with Sinhala and Tamil language domain names.
This initiative will pave the way towards promoting multilingual Internet use among the Sri Lankan community, ICANN representatives and several IT experts told a media conference in Colombo this week.
The move will enable public and private sector institutions, organizations, as well as individuals to register their web site addresses in Sinhala and Tamil making it more accessible to a majority of Sri Lankans who are not conversant in English.
It will also help in making people living in villages’ well informed while bridging the digital divide existing in the country at present, they claimed.
This is a long term exercise and is the first step towards introducing the Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) program and launching the Sinhala Generation Panel (GP), IT experts said.
The launch signifies an exciting future where the local community contributes towards developing secure and stable access to the Internet in Sinhala, they said adding that currently Sri Lankans could obtain content in the Sinhala language to a certain extent, but they have to type the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in English.
The Domain Name System (DNS’) expansion will help provide for the growing Internet community in our region, Champika Wijayatunga, ICANN’s Security, Stability and Resiliency Regional Manager said adding that at a time when everyone and everything is going digital, a website and domain name are essentials for every business, including people.
‘We are seeing the Internet evolve as more people coming online can do so in their own languages,” he said.
The launch of the Sinhala Generation Plan (GP) brings Sri Lankans one step closer to accessing the Internet’s domain name system using domain names in their scripts and languages, he added.
“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 Sarmad Hussain, ICANN’s IDN Programs Director.
“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,” he pointed out.
Harsha Wijayawardhana, Co-Chair of the Sinhala GP, said that their efforts will help to form the basis for allowing complete domain names in the Sinhala language.