[ICANN]<http://www.icann.org/> News Alert https://www.icann.org/resources/press-material/release-2-2015-06-22-en ________________________________ ICANN, JPNIC and JPRS Sign Memorandum of Understanding to Promote Collaboration on Translation 22 June 2015 Buenos Aires, Argentina... ICANN signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC) and Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) today to forge an alliance fostering greater collaboration on translation. Under the cooperative agreement, ICANN, JPNIC and JPRS will coordinate and collaborate to address the linguistic needs of the Japanese community by identifying and translating ICANN materials into Japanese. This increased coordination calls for greater communication with regard to the translation efforts undertaken by each party, avoids duplication of resources, and ensures that content of relevant interest are accessible to the local community. "I am confident that this collaboration will be a good model that shows how ICANN and the local community can come together to help address the language needs of markets where English is not the main language medium. This is an important topic that we need to address as we move forward with ICANN's globalization efforts," said Fadi Chehadé, ICANN President and Chief Executive Officer. The MoU was formalized and signed at ICANN's 53rd Public Meeting in Buenos Aires. JPNIC representative Akinori Maemura (on behalf of JPNIC President, Shigeki Goto) and JPRS representative Hirofumi Hotta (on behalf of JPRS President Koki Higashida) were present at the signing ceremony together with Fadi Chehadé and other staff members of ICANN, JPNIC and JPRS. "Since ICANN was incorporated, JPNIC has been closely keeping track of ICANN's activities and disseminating ICANN information to the Japanese community. The recently-established Asia Pacific Hub has helped to bring us to a new stage of collaboration, and I am delighted to enter into this MoU, which concretizes one of our on-going cooperation," said Shigeki Goto, President of JPNIC. "JPRS has introduced ICANN's activities in Japanese to the Japanese community in order to support private-sector-led Internet resource management. I am very pleased to enter into this MoU as it clearly expresses our intention to further contribute to the Japanese community through collaboration with ICANN and JPNIC," said Koki Higashida, President of JPRS. Kuek Yu-Chuang, Vice President and Managing Director for ICANN Asia Pacific said that the region's diversity called for ICANN to work even more closely with their stakeholders to achieve common goals. "We are very excited about this collaboration. Both JPNIC and JPRS are already doing a great job translating and sharing some ICANN materials, for example in their ICANN Readout sessions. With this MoU, we can better coordinate our resources to cover translation work more efficiently, so as to deliver ICANN materials to the Japanese community according to their needs." "We also hope that this will pave the way for more communities to come forward to work with us. Together, we can help to overcome the language barrier and ensure that this is not an impediment to participation in ICANN and our policy development process," he added. Christina Rodriguez, Director of ICANN Language Services Department, agreed. "This is a timely development and ties in very well with the department's recently refined approach in partnering with the community on ICANN's translation work. Such collaboration helps us to better reach audiences beyond those using the official ICANN languages (6 official UN languages + Portuguese), and provides a new avenue for community partnership." # # # To download high resolution photos of the signing ceremony, click here<https://www.flickr.com/photos/icann/19034086166/in/album-72157654926978575/>. Media Contacts Liana Teo Head of Communications, Asia Pacific Singapore Tel: +65 6808 6669 Email: liana.teo@icann.org<mailto:liana.teo@icann.org> ________________________________ About ICANN ICANN's mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet's unique identifiers. ICANN doesn't control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn't deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet's naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org<https://www.icann.org/>. About JPNIC JPNIC (Japan Network Information Center) is a non-profit, membership-based corporation that contributes in supporting the Internet infrastructure in Japan, by providing allocation and registration services of IP addresses and AS numbers as the National Internet Registry, conducting research on technologies and policies, and through information sharing and international coordination on Internet related issues. About JPRS JPRS (Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.) works to carry out JP domain name registration and management, and to undertake operation of the domain name system; and conducts research and development of various Internet-related services and technologies.