[iagooar]

You know that using a .cat domain for something not related to Catalan culture or language is not allowed by the conditions established by ICANN and Fundació puntCAT?

You have only translated the main page (with Google Translator...) to make it look like you have some Catalan content there. That's naughty.

"In order to be granted a .cat domain, one needs to belong to the Catalan linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. A person, organization or company is considered to belong if they either:[4]

  1. already have content in Catalan published online.
  2. have access to a special code (sometimes called ENS), issued during special promotions or by agreements with certain institutions.
  3. develop activities (in any language) to promote the Catalan culture and language.
  4. are endorsed by 3 people or 1 institution already using a .cat domain name."

Read more about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat

[magikarp]

Cryptocat's website and the Cryptocat app itself are both fully translated into Catalan, and we maintain a very communicative and open relationship with PuntCAT.

[iagooar]

The only page I have found in Catalan so far is the homepage, and it is translated 50% by Google and 50% by someone who probably did not even finish high school.

I'm happy that the app is translated into Catalan. I hope the translation is better than the one on the website.

Just wanted to make sure you know what this domain is actually used for.

[magikarp]

I'd gladly accept your help with improving our Catalan translations! :-)

[iagooar]

I can surely help you translate the homepage. Just give me a contact mail.

[magikarp]

[e-mail]

[unicornporn]

Would you consider making the APK for Android available? I'm on Cyanogenmod without Gapps (including Google Play). You teaming up with https://f-droid.org/ would be even better. Cheers!

[jonny_eh]

Are you offering to help with more Catalan translations?

[iagooar]

I'm offering to translate the homepage :)

[danso]

This thread ended way more positively and constructively than I would've imagined. Should be bookmarked for future discussions of "HN is turning into [insert negative thing here]"

[toomuchtodo]

Reminds me of Reddit's /r/bestof subreddit.

[Thiz]

I've always wondered what is so special about catalan? Why do they deserve a special three letter domain nobody else has?

Who should I address a letter to request for the wayuu culture to have a .way tld?

[iagooar]

The thing is, the Catalan community has a very strong presence on the Internet.

As an example, the Catalan version of Wikipedia currently has +400.000 articles, being the 17th biggest.

To make clear what this means, you have to know that Catalan isn't even under the 100 most spoken languages worldwide (it has about 7 million speakers). So there is 1 article for every 17.5 people. Compared to the English version (4.4 million articles, 700 million speakers = 1 article every 159 people), or the Spanish one (1 million articles, 460 million speakers = 1 article every 460 people!), it is quite impressive.

So why would they want an own .cat domain? Because as a non-independent country / nationality, they are not allowed to have a two letter domain. Still, they wanted to be represented on the net so there was the PuntCAT foundation which did a huge effort in order to obtain the three letter .cat domain, but as it was sponsored, I imagine that they decided to restrict the usage of it to websites that have something to do with Catalan culture, or at least are written in Catalan.

I must say the Catalan culture and political movement is a pretty interesting topic itself, but I didn't want to make this post political, but rather interesting for "teh techies".

[dmacvicar]

For curiosity. Does Valencia and Balearics use the .cat domain?. They seem to call their Catalan "Valenciano", even if it is the same language.

[MichaelGG]

Provinces can get ccTLDs - Taiwan has .tw.

Sponsoring and getting .cat is a pretty cool workaround, though.

[rahimnathwani]

Can provinces really get ccTLDs? I thought .tw existed because Taiwan has an ISO country code: http://www.iso.org/iso/country_names_and_code_elements

Having said that, I'm not sure why the UK (whose country code is GB) uses .uk

[rurounijones]

Because GB Is "Great Britain" (England, Scotland, Wales)[1] which does not include Northern Ireland.

UK is "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" which is all four.

It was a politically motivated move basically.

[1] Lets not get pedantic here.

[MichaelGG]

IANA considers .tw to be "Taiwan, Province of China", as does that ISO link. As I understand, China pretty much bullied everyone else into not recognizing Taiwan so the rest of the world (like the UN) agrees Taiwan isn't a country. That's why one reason Microsoft asks for your Region, not country.

There appear to be other ccTLDs like .IO and .AQ that aren't countries. (Probably more.)

And I'm just being pedantic.

[rahimnathwani]

Both IO and AQ are ISO country codes as well. I'm not sure why.

[micampe]

Hong Kong has a ccTLD (and an ISO country code, and a currency) but is not a country, while still mostly working like one.

[Nursie]

Whether Taiwan is a province or a country is a contentious issue, and will depend heavily on who you ask.

[MichaelGG]

Well as far as IANA concerned (which I suppose is the only relevant view for .tw), it's "Taiwan, Province of China"[1]:

https://www.iana.org/reports/2010/taiwan-report-07jun2010.ht...

[freehunter]

I would love for the Appalachian culture to apply for the .app TLD.

[cqdx]

What culture?

[farresito]

Maybe this will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACountry_code_top-level_d...

Summarizing, we might not have qualified for a two-letter domain because we are not an independent country.

[dmacvicar]

As a man married to a Catalan girl. Be careful where you are going :-).

[cpach]

ICANN.

[mst]

Right, shadow.cat's approach to solving this was to talk to Barcelona's perl mongers group and get them to translate some introductory perl documentation; they eventually decided they'd prefer to take payment in books rather than money if memory serves, but the point basically is "your community should allow you to find enthusiatic and affordable translators with very little difficulty." I was, frankly, pleasantly amazed by how well it went for us.