From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Mon Jul 24 2006 - 19:50:46 CDT
From: "Doug Ewell" <dewell@adelphia.net>
> Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:
>
>>>> I am developing a multilingual website. After considering various
>>>> options, I've gone with a subdomain for each language
>>>> (IT,FR,DE,JP,KR,ZH).
>>>
>>> Just as a side note, the standard language codes for Japanese and
>>> Korean
>>> are JA and KO, not JP and KR.
>>
>> For subdomain names, he can choose whatever codes he likes and wants
>> within his own domain domain name, this has no impact on the
>> applications.
>
> Of course he can. He can designate Italian as QQ and French as ZZ if he
> likes. But using standard codes consistently will present fewer
> surprises, both to himself and to users who see the URL or have to type
> it manually.
Yes, but many website authors do not buy a domain name for all countries where the language is spoken. There are tons of websites that only have domains in ".de" to support German, Austrian and German Swiss users, or in ".fr" for supporting French, Belgian, Luxembourgish, Canadian French and West African countries, or ".com" to support all English speaking users in the world (without having to buy also a ".uk" or ".ca". Most multilingual web sites only support a handful of languages, and they limit their support in those languages, and create supplemental web sites only for countries where they are established officially.
In domain names, country/region codes are used preferably because this is the legal context related to the content of the web site which does apply (including for the currency choice, deliverability of products, conditions of support, prices of products and services, and taxes), and most often, not the cultural linguisitic aspect. Language codes are generaly part of the content path on the site, or part of users preferences set in their navigation profile.
A wellknown exception is Wikipedia, which uses separate domains for languages, and do not focus a particular country as a market (and legally, the sites are all in the same ".org" domain and placed under a single US juridication in which international litigation is resolved, according to international treaties signed by USA).
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