[UA-discuss] Language - how do you refer to non-ASCII to a non-technical audience?

[Dave Crocker]

On 7/22/2016 3:41 PM, Jothan Frakes wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 12:21 PM, Don Hollander <don.hollander at icann.org
> <mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>> wrote:
>
>     I’ve been grappling with this for la very long and now find out I’m
>     not the only one.
>
>     So, how would you simply refer to IDNs.


Having scanned the various responses and having thought a bit about 
what's likely to be easy for someone's grandmother, I'm afraid I can't 
think of anything better than international domain names.

There are two types of goals for a term.  One is that it is 
automatically understandable, without explanation.  The other is that a 
simple explanation is sufficient to make it comfortable for future use.

An average non-technical (and even most technical) person is likely to 
assume the term means that it's registered in some other country or 
refers to a place that is in another country, or the like.  So we lose 
on the 'automatic' goal.  I can't think of anything likely to win, 
because the very concept of different scripts is to obscure for most folk.

But I think that a pretty simple explanation will suffice for later uses 
of the term.

mumble.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net