As Advisor to INFITT, the International Forum for IT in Tamil, I have
observed that despite the differences in Tamil speaking communities
throughout the world, they are able to agree to disagree on various
matters
and arrive at some degree of consensus on key issues and move forward.
So I am fairly optimistic that it can be done - Language communities
can speak with a near unanimous voice on key issues that pertain
to their language and script on an international scene. In fact it is
a unifying force and a rallying call for them to stand together for their
own language and script.
For the Chinese Han script community, and Hong Xue should be able to
confirm this as was stated in one of the teleconferences, we have seen
the given the successful examples of the Chinese Domain Name Consortium
CDNC (including Taiwan, Macau, Singapore, Hong Kong, China on Chinese
scripts) (see www.cdnc.org), despite cross-China straits tensions between
Taiwan and PRC, they were able to meet and agree on key points over
several years in terms of the Chinese simplified (used in Mainland
China and Singapore) and traditional characters (used in HK and Taiwan).
For the Han script community, and Edmon and William should be
able to confirm this, groups like the Joint Engineering Taskforce (JET)
for
CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean scripts) have resolved language table and
IDN implementation issues amongst themselves amicably and produced
IETF RFC, even though it involved several countries such
as China, Japan and Korea (more than 50% of the non-Latin script IDN
community)
which have had conflicts, wars and spats over war crimes, alteration of
history books
etc till today.
It is clear that language communities can and do speak with unified
voices,
thus bringing unification over and above what mere individual governments
can bring to the IDN table at ICANN.
I think the proposal is a good idea and implementable.
Apologies for failing to turn up in the last
telecon as I was called away to host a dinner function by my boss.
Tin Wee
*---------- Original Message -----------*
From: "Maniam s" <maniam01@xxxxxxxxx>
To: subbiah <subbiah@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx, "GNSO.SECRETARIAT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <
gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:42:58 +0800
Subject: Re: [gnso-idn-wg] Item 4.2.2 - Subbiah
>
HI,
> From a Tamil diaspora perspective, that spans 5
countries where Tamil
> is an official/national/significant language,
over the past few years
> our own language community has shown several
times over in the past few
> years that country-level differences can be overcome and various
> computing standards have been arrived at that later have been adopted
by
> Microsoft etc. Surely, I see a need for this
proposal.
>
>
Regards
>
Maniam
>
>
> On 3/18/07, subbiah <subbiah@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Item 4.2.2
> >
> > Given that alternative views have been expressed for the possible
> > right's of a country regarding IDN gTLDs in that country's scripts, I
> > would like to propose that some of these rights should also be given
> to
> > the language community. The two areas where language community input
> > would be particularly useful maybe the "approval" of a gTLD IDN string
>
> > in its script and also its rights to influence the definitions/tables
> of
> > its scripts/languages. Obviously such language communities must speak
> > with a united or near-unanimous voice before ICANN accepts input.
> >
> > There are two ways to accomplish this operationally:
> >
> > (1) Amend the first two alternative views to replace the word
> "country"
> > with "language community" and specifically define "language community"
>
> > in this context to include the relevant country/countries.
> >
> > Or simply add a new alternative view (which can be at Support level if
>
> > there is some support) as follows:
> >
> > *(2) Alternative View/ Support/ Agreement: To also accept a language
> > community's responsibility to approve any gTLD strings featuring its
> > particular script or influence the definitions/tables of its scripts
> if
> > that language community is speaking with a united or near-unanimous
> voice.
> >
> > Subbiah
> >
> > --
> > No virus found in this outgoing message.
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> > Version: 7.1.413 / Virus Database: 268.18.12/724 - Release Date:
> 3/16/2007
> >
> >
*------- End of Original Message -------*