Arabic Domain Names

Dr. Abdulaziz H. Al-Zoman
Director of SaudiNIC - CITC
Chairman of Steering Committee - Arabic Domain Name Pilot Project
Internet Governance Forum, Shram Elshaikh, Nov 15-18, 2009

Arabic Users/Language in the Internet
IDN: Arabic Domain Names
Arabic Content Initiative (KAIAC)

Population of Arab world: 343 M (5% of world popul.)
Native Speakers:
422 M
English Speaking Arabs: 6.5 M (2%)
= 3%
Source: “Addressing the Gap in Arabic Content”, by Usama Fayyad, The 2 nd Int. Symposium on Computers and Arabic, October 11th, 2009
Source: Internet world stats – internetworldstats.com

Source: Internet world stats – internetworldstats.com

Total web pages
– 56 B – Yahoo
Total English web pages
– 14 B – Google Probe
Total Arabic web pages
– 0.7 B – Google Probe
(2009)
– 0.2 B – d1g.com web crawl
(2008)
Source: “Addressing the Gap in Arabic Content”, by Usama Fayyad, Executive Chairman d1g.com, presentation
on th 2 nd Int. Symposium on Computers and Arabic, October 11th, 2009

Source: www.citc.gov.sa

Source: www.citc.gov.sa

Content:
– KAIAC: King Abdullah Initiative for Arabic Content
– http://www.econtent.org.sa
To reach the next billion people, according to
IGF speakers in Hyderabad : The Internet
must support the large number of languages
in the world at all levels
IDN
– Arabic Domain Name Pilot Project
– http://www.arabic-domains.org
Source: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/120308-internet-needsmultilingual-support-for.html

Current ASCII-based
DNs are incapable of
representing Arabic
characters
Difficulty to reach
Arabic sites using
English DNs
(pronunciation &
spelling problems)
Full Arabic DNs will
encourage Arab users to
widely use the Internet
Arabic News paper
صحيفة الشرق األوسط
www.al-sharqalawsat.com
www.asharqalawsat.com
www.asharq-alaowsat.com
www.elsharkelaosat.com
E-government Site
يسّر
www.yasser.gov.sa
www.yaser.gov.sa
www.yasir.gov.sa
www.yassir.gov.sa

Linguistic Issues
• To define the accepted Arabic character
set to be used for writing Arabic domain
names
Arabic TLDs
Technical
Solutions
• To define the top-level domains of the
Arabic domain name tree structure (i.e.,
Arabic gTLDs, and ccTLDs)
• IETF (IDNA), UNICODE, …
Root Servers
• ICANN/IANA,
• (e.g., IDN ccTLD Fast track)

Identified a number of
linguistic issues with
respect to domain names:
– Usage of Tashkeel
(diacritics).
– Usage of Kashidah.
– Character folding.
– Which numerical digits
should be supported.
– Connecting multiple words.
– Mixing with other languages.
– Usage of special characters.
Discussed with more than 60 members of
the AINC linguistic committee reaching
final recommendations
A number of surveys have been collected
from the public
•Received more than 550 responses
•Collected information have been analyzed and
compared with the recommendations of the AINC
linguistic committee
Discussed with Arabic linguists to get
their guidance regarding the Arabic
linguistic issues in domain names.
Discussed and agreed by the Arab Team
fro Domain Names (under Arab League)

Tashkeel (Diacritics)
Kasheeda
Character folding:
Teh Marbuta + Heh
different forms of Hamzah
Alif Maqsura+Yeh
Numbers (numerical digits)
Connecting Multiple Words
Mixing Latin and Arabic
Characters
Special Characters (e.g., @,
#, $, %, ...)
Tashkeel should not be allowed.
However, if there is a need to allowed users to entered it as part of a
domain name then it should be stripped off by nameprep
Kasheeda should be disallowed
Folding should not be allowed
If it is technically possible, it is preferred to support both (Latin and
Arabic) sets with folding to one set. Otherwise, Latin set is sufficient
It is recommended that multiple words are separated by the
character "-".
It is recommended that Arabic domain names be pure Arabic and
they should not be mixed with other languages.
It is recommended that Arabic domain names should follow the
standard with respect to the use of special characters.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-farah-adntf-ling-guidelines-04

Characters from Unicode Arabic Table (0600–06FF)
0621 ‏(ء)‏ Arabic Letter HAMZA
0622 ‏(آ)‏ Arabic Letter ALEF with MADDA above
0623 ‏(أ)‏ Arabic Letter ALEF with HAMZA above
0624 ‏(ؤ)‏ Arabic Letter WAW with HAMZA above
0625 ‏(إ)‏ Arabic Letter ALEF with HAMZA below
0626 ‏(ئ)‏ Arabic Letter YEH with HAMZA above
0627 ‏(ا)‏ Arabic Letter ALEF
0628 ‏(ب)‏ Arabic Letter BEH
0629 ‏(ة)‏ Arabic Letter TEH MARBUTA
062A ‏(ت)‏ Arabic Letter TEH
062B ‏(ث)‏ Arabic Letter THEH
062C ‏(ج)‏ Arabic Letter JEEM
062D ‏(ح)‏ Arabic Letter HAH
062E ‏(خ)‏ Arabic Letter KHAH
062F ‏(د)‏ Arabic Letter DAL
0630 ‏(ذ)‏ Arabic Letter THAL
0631 ‏(ر)‏ Arabic Letter REH
0632 ‏(ز)‏ Arabic Letter ZAIN
0633 ‏(س)‏ Arabic Letter SEEN
0634 ‏(ش)‏ Arabic Letter SHEEN
0635 ‏(ص)‏ Arabic Letter SAD
0636 ‏(ض)‏ Arabic Letter DAD
0637 ‏(ط)‏ Arabic Letter TAH
0638 ‏(ظ)‏ Arabic Letter ZAH
0639 ‏(ع)‏ Arabic Letter AIN
063A ‏(غ)‏ Arabic Letter GHAIN
0641 ‏(ف)‏ Arabic Letter FEH
0642 ‏(ق)‏ Arabic Letter QAF
0643 ‏(ك)‏ Arabic Letter KAF
0644 ‏(ل)‏ Arabic Letter LAM
0645 ‏(م)‏ Arabic Letter MEEM
0646 ‏(ن)‏ Arabic Letter NOON
0647 ‏(ھ)‏ Arabic Letter HEH
0648 ‏(و)‏ Arabic Letter WAW
0649 ‏(ى)‏ Arabic Letter ALEF MAKSURA
064A ‏(ي)‏ Arabic Letter YEH
0660 (0) Arabic-Indic Digit Zero
0661 (1) Arabic-Indic Digit One
0662 (2) Arabic-Indic Digit Two
0663 (3) Arabic-Indic Digit Three
0664 (4) Arabic-Indic Digit Four
0665 (5) Arabic-Indic Digit Five
0666 (6) Arabic-Indic Digit Six
0667 (7) Arabic-Indic Digit Seven
0668 (8) Arabic-Indic Digit Eight
0669 (9) Arabic-Indic Digit Nine

Characters from Unicode Basic Latin Table (0000–007F):
0030 (0) Digit Zero
0031 (1) Digit One
0032 (2) Digit Two
0033 (3) Digit Three
0034 (4) Digit Four
0035 (5) Digit Five
0036 (6) Digit Six
0037 (7) Digit Seven
0038 (8) Digit Eight
0039 (9) Digit Nine
002D (-) Hyphen-Minus
002E (.) Full Stop (Dot)
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-farah-adntf-ling-guidelines-04

Country level
– Individually done be some Arab
countries (ccTLDs)
• Arabic.English , e.g., com.sa‏.نطاق
• Problem of mixing languages (leftto-right
and right-to-left)
• Not accepted (linguistic and
socially)
GCC level
– Implementing a
pilot project for
Arabic Domain
names in the GCC
Countries
Arab world level
– Extend the GCC Pilot Project to include members of the Arab League.
Renamed: "Arabic Domain Names Pilot Project”, under the auspices of the
Arab League
– 2 committees (Steering and technical) as part of the Arabic Team for Domain
Names

Compare with:
www.tadawul.com.sa

‏(مثال . إختبار ( example.test Participated in the
– Published a technical report about the test “IDN Top Level Domain
Evaluations and Testing Report”
OS (4)
– Windows XP/Vista
– MAC OS X
– Linux (ubuntu)
Applications (10)
– Internet Explorer, version 6.0/7.0
– FireFox, version 2.0/3.0b
– Opera, version 9.24
– Safari, version 3.0
– Office Outlook 2003
– Outlook Express version 6.0
– Thunderbird 2.0
– Apple Mail version 2.1
Web mail (3)
– Yahoo Mail
– Google Mail (Gmail)
– Microsoft Mail (Hotmail)
http://www.arabic-domains.org/docs/IDN-ADNPP-Report.pdf

Test Cases
http://www.arabic-domains.org/docs/IDN-ADNPP-Report.pdf

Arabic-Indic vs. European-Arabic digits
– 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
– 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
“Windows has supported number substitution by allowing the
representation of different cultural shapes for the same digits while
keeping the internal storage of these digits unified among different
locales, for example numbers are stored in their well known
hexadecimal values, 0x40, 0x41, but displayed according to the selected
language.
Source: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa350685(VS.85).aspx?PHPSESSID=o1fb21liejulfgrptbmi9dec92
م‎12‎م
input[0] = U+0645
input[1] = U+0031
input[2] = U+0032
input[3] = U+0645
≠
م‎١٢‎م
input[0] = U+0645
input[1] = U+0661
input[2] = U+0662
input[3] = U+0645

The 2 nd most widely used alphabetic writing
system in the world
Used by many languages such as:
– Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Kurdish, Pashto, Jawi, …
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_script

There are a number of
groups of characters
that have the same
shapes,
06A9
– eg. Kaf, Heh, Yeh, Alef,
… groups
0643
06A9

كلمني
کلمني
کلمنې
input[0] = U+06a9
input[1] = U+0644
input[2] = U+0645
input[3] = U+0646
input[4] = U+06d0
input[0] = U+06a9
input[1] = U+0644
input[2] = U+0645
input[3] = U+0646
input[4] = U+064a
input[0] = U+0643
input[1] = U+0644
input[2] = U+0645
input[3] = U+0646
input[4] = U+064a

Announced on 12 Nov. 2007
It is directly supported by HM King Abdullah
Goes along with:
– the Arab League Council’s declaration (in their 19 th
meeting)
– The national ICT plan
Implemented by KACST with the cooperation of
others
الحياة 3/11/1428 ھ الموافق 13/11/2007 م

Support and encouragement:
– Activities that enrich Arabic content
– Development of Arabic language Tools
Help to make Arabic content and tools available
to everyone
Setup
– standards for Arabic content and tools
– Indicators
Promote the awareness of the Arabic content and
how to develop it

•Assessment of
Current Content
•International
Benchmarks
•Needs
•Roadmap
•Projects
•Role of Stakeholders
•Indicators
Strategy
Projects
Digital library•
Multimedia Center•
Digital dictionary•
Open Content•
S&T Books •
Translation
Arabic Corpus•
…•
• Linguistic Tools
• Search Engine
• Automatic
Translation
• OCR
• Spell Checker
Tools
Infra-
structure
Corpus
Dictionaries
Hardware
Internet
Portal
•
•
•
•
•

رارارارا
شكككك
شککککرارارارا
xn--mgbti28b
input[0] = U+0634
input[1] = U+06a9
input[2] = U+0631
input[3] = U+0627
xn--mgbti4d
input[0] = U+0634
input[1] = U+0643
input[2] = U+0631
input[3] = U+0627