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Understanding Character Variants |
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Chinese Character Variants
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Chinese Character Variants
Many languages may have character variants
that could potentially cause end-user confusion. At this time, VeriSign
is focusing on the Asian languages that use Simplified Chinese and Traditional
Chinese characters.
Due to the complexity of many Chinese characters,
a simplified version has been developed to simplify the most complex
characters. This version of Chinese, Simplified Chinese, is used mainly
in Mainland China. The other version, Traditional Chinese, is used mainly
in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian countries. These two
versions of Chinese share many characters. Other characters specific
to Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese scripts may represent the
same meaning. These characters have the same meaning and pronunciation
but they do not look the same. These characters are called character
variants and have the potential to cause confusion for end users when
using Traditional and Simplified Chinese scripts to register domain
names.
For example, a user in mainland China entering
a domain name in Simplified Chinese could be directed to one site, while
another user in Taiwan entering what they would perceive as the same
exact domain name in Traditional Chinese would be directed to a different
destination.
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Shared character +
Simplified Chinese character |
Community or Society |
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Shared character +
Traditional Chinese character |
Community or Society |
To some Chinese
speakers, 会 and 會 are equivalent - they have the same meaning. In the
example IDNs above, some Chinese speakers may view these two IDNs as
the same identifier. If these two IDNs were permitted to exist, there
may be confusion for end-users.
To draw an analogy from English, it would be
as if "community.com" and "community.com"
were considered unique registrations. To an English speaker, despite
the different font styles, the domain names are equivalent and have
the same meaning.
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