China idn ccTLDs

China's new idn ccTLDs 中国 and 中國 are now live. These ccTLDs are in addition to the ascii cn ccTLD. Here some examples of the now fully internationalised Domain Names.

1. Beijing/Peking University http://北京大学.中国/
2. Beijing/Peking University http://北京大學.中国/
3. Beijing/Peking University http://北京大学.中國/
4. Beijing/Peking University http://北京大學.中國/
5. Loughborough University http://拉夫堡大学.中国/
6. Loughborough University http://拉夫堡大學.中国/
7. Loughborough University http://拉夫堡大学.中國/
8. Loughborough University http://拉夫堡大學.中國/
9. Nanchang University http://南昌大学.中国/
10. Nanchang University http://南昌大學.中国/
11. Nanchang University http://南昌大学.中國/
12. Nanchang University http://南昌大學.中國/

These addresses are combinations of Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Each label of these Domain Names is either Simplified or Traditional Chinese. For each of these Universities I have used the following order of combinations:-

1. Simplified Chinese dot Simplified Chinese
2. Traditional Chinese dot Simplified Chinese
3. Simplified Chinese dot Traditional Chinese
4. Traditional Chinese dot Traditional Chinese

British Airways

British Airways make clever and creative use of language tags and country codes in their web addresses. The last part of their web address is of the form LT_CC where LT is a language tag and CC is a country code. Here are just a few of the many possible language tag_country code combinations.

1. http://britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_gb 『english_great britain』
2. http://britishairways.com/travel/home/public/ja_gb 『japanese_great britain』
3. http://britishairways.com/travel/home/public/ja_jp 『japanese_japan』
4. http://britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_cn 『english_china』
5. http://britishairways.com/travel/home/public/zh_gb 『chinese_great britain』
6. http://britishairways.com/travel/home/public/zh_cn 『chinese_china』
7. http://britishairways.com/travel/home/public/ja_cn 『japanese_china』

Their website presents content according to LT_CC. With ja_cn, for instance, it sets departure country to China and displays some content text in Japanese. If you experiment with the LT_CC pair you will find that there are many more supported combinations of language tags and country codes.

Loughborough Maps

The last time I blogged about Google Maps it was about transliterations into Japanese. Since then, Google can also transliterate English names into Simplified Chinese and Russian. The following are Google maps of Loughborough in several languages.

Update: Google now transliterate English Place and Street names into Korean

• Chinese ➸ ta.gd/拉夫伯勒
• Japanese ➸ ta.gd/ラフバラー
• Korean ➸ ta.gd/러프버러
• Russian ➸ ta.gd/Лафборо

Transliterations of Loughborough

I have just noticed that Google Maps transliterates Loughborough into Chinese as 拉夫伯勒 http://ta.gd/拉夫伯勒地图。 The transliteration I have been using and that is in common usage is 拉夫堡。 Considering Google is so influential I think that 拉夫伯勒 will become the standard transliteration for Loughborough.

LA & NYC

I am totally impressed by:

• Los Angeles ロサンゼルス.jp
• New York City ニューヨークシティ.jp

Not only do these sites have Japanese IDNs but also the pathnames are written in Japanese. Try navigating round the sites and you will see what I mean. So the whole URL is internationalized and not just the Domain Name.

Here are a couple of examples:

http://ロサンゼルス.jp/カテゴリー/ショッピング which I translate as
http://Los Angeles.jp/category/shopping

http://ニューヨークシティ.jp/カテゴリー/レストラン which I translate as
http://New York City.jp/category/restaurant

Alphabet

I have found several Japanese Companies that have Latin Alphabet acronyms. These acronyms are usually also transliterated into Katakana 片仮名. Frequently, the components of the Katakana acronym are separated by the katakana middle dot. IDC, for example, is written as アイ・ディー・シー As I find these transliterations I will enter into the table below. I am not sure how long it will take me to complete this table.

A	エー	B	ビー	C	スィー	D	ディー
E	イー	F	エフ	G	ジー	H	エイチ
I	アイ	J	ジェー	K	ケー	L	エル
M	エム	N	エヌ	O	オー	P	ピー
Q	キュー	R	アール	S	エス	T	ティ
U	ユー	V	ヴィー	W		X	エクス
Y	ワイ	Z

Kashi

Kashi is a recently opened Japanese Yakiniko restaurant in Leicester レスター. I received a leaflet about Kashi this week. The only Kanji on the leaflet was 川岸 which literally means River Bank. The romanization of 川岸 is kawagishi. Another Japanese word that means River bank is 河岸 and it's romanization is kashi. So there is some fascinating word play going on here. Both 川岸 and 河岸 are also family and place names.

I deduce that yakiniko is an anglicised form of yakiniku? The kanji for yakiniku is 焼き肉 or 焼肉

Next time I am in Leicester レスター I will visit Kashi and ask them about the origin of their romanized name Kashi.

Kashi Japanese Yakiniko Restaurant

84-86 Granby Street, Leicester LE1 1DJ

tel: 0116 285 8818

map: http://ta.gd/川岸

Acronym IDNs

Latin Script acronyms are common place. Much more interesting are acronyms in non latin scripts. Even more interesting is when non latin script acronyms are used for IDNs. Below, I list acronym IDNs I have found. I list both the full form and the acronym form.

1. Beijing University 北京大学.中国 北大.中国
2. Beijing University 北京大學.中國 北大.中國
3. HongKong University 香港大學.hk 港大.hk
4. Okayama University 岡山大学.jp 岡大.jp

DDN Co. Ltd, Japan, has an acronym as their Company name. They have an IDN which is also an acronym. Their IDN is a transliteration of DDN into Japanese Katakana where ディー is D and N is エヌ.

• DDN Co. Ltd ディーディーエヌ.jp

Languages

　There is a family set of developed Japanese IDNs that are intended for Japanese people who are learning languages. They are all hosted on the same server.

• Arabic ➫ アラビア語.jp
• French ➫ フランス語.jp
• Italian ➫ イタリア語.jp
• Portugese ➫ ポルトガル語.jp
• Russian ➫ ロシア語.jp
• Spanish ➫ スペイン語.jp

Samsung 삼성

 Samsung has a very interesting IDN. It is an acronym for Samsung. http://ㅅㅅ.com/ In the western world, we are familiar with acronyms for companies eg BT for British Telecom. The Korean for Samsung is 삼성. Take the initial letter/jamo from each syllable and one then has the Korean acronym for Samsung, ㅅㅅ.

City Maps

　Below I list some Google City Maps that use the Region Language. If you are using an English setup then it is most likely that links you create will have the host language set to English (hl=en). I modified the links to resolve to region language maps. I changed hl=en to hl=zh-CN, hl=ko, hl=zh-TW and hl=ja, respectively. With hl=en you will get a hybrid of English and the region language.

• Běijīng ta.gd/北京地图
• Pánjǐn ta.gd/盘锦地图
• Seoul ta.gd/서울지도
• Táiběi ta.gd/台北地圖
• Tokyo ta.gd/東京地図

Howl's Moving Castle

　The award winning Japanese animation Howl's Moving Castle ハウルの動く城 is being shown at the Cope Auditorium, Loughborough ラフバラ University School of Art & Design, on Thursday March 11th 2010 at 6.30pm. Free Entry! There is a Wikipedia ウィキペディア article about ハウルの動く城 at ta.gd/ハウルの動く城
　This event is being organised by Loughborough ラフバラ Student Union and is sponsored by Santander Universities.