[UA-EAI] Using search engine translators on unfamiliar email addresses

[John Levine]

In article <DM6PR21MB12432C9BF284C47B8981251DD1920 at DM6PR21MB1243.namprd21.prod.outlook.com> you write:
>We encountered the recurring question on ALAC call today – what if I receive an email address in a
>script I don’t read?

Sheesh.

>  *   I mentioned that this is an edge case – why would I send Slovak email to a non-Slovak reader?
>EAI is most useful for people who want to communicate with someone who uses their own script,
>particularly if that person doesn’t regularly use ASCII.

This is definitely the right answer. You can assume that anyone who is
interested in receiving mail in a language you can write will have an
e-mail address you can read or at least spell. 

Nonetheless, I happen to know the technical answer to the question,
since my assistant is busily testing Chinese and Arabic addresses in
mail software even though she reads neither Chinese nor Arabic. You
copy the address from wherever you got it and paste the address into
the To: line of your mail program. Assuming you have an EAI capable
mail program (we need to chat about Outlook), it'll work fine.

>Then someone from the audience said, ”Use Google Translator”.

That answer is so stupendously wrong I need some extra space to go
appreciate the depths of its wrongness.

One of my test addresses is 测试@电子邮件测试.中国. (You can send mail to it.)
Google and Bing Translate render it in English as Test at emailtest.China
or Tests - Email Tests.China, which are pretty good translations of
the words it's composed of. But so what? Neither translation is even
sort of close to an actual e-mail address. The actual address is the
Chinese one.

R's,
John