[General-members] Results of Consultation on Offering ARIN Content in Multiple Languages

[ARIN]

In February, ARIN conducted Community Consultation 2023.2 (https://www.arin.net/participate/community/acsp/consultations/2023/2023-2/) in response to open suggestion ACSP 2022.10 regarding providing announcements and policy documents, such as the Policy Development Process (PDP) and Number Resource Policy Manual, in Spanish and French to encourage greater participation and discussion from non-native English-speaking members of our community. The consultation was held for 10 business days and received a total of eight comments.

The consultation highlighted the availability of online document translation services and raised doubts about the value of producing official versions at ARIN due to their considerable cost and uncertain impact on improving access to ARIN’s services. It is worth highlighting that the current regional approach to registry services was established, in part, to minimize the need for RIR support for multiple languages. Providing for equitable access to the PDP and ARIN’s services would involve significantly more than just translated documents; it would require formal multiple-language support from ARIN’s diverse service teams (covering customer, registration, financial, and technical support), and the provision of real-time translation support during public policy meetings.

It is also worth noting that when ARIN asked our customers about the need for multilingual documents and announcements during the 2022 Prioritization Survey (https://www.arin.net/participate/community/community_surveys/surveys/2022prioritization/) they both ranked at the bottom of the list.

The feedback received during the consultation did not identify a strong need for document translation at this time. ARIN does recognize that there are non-native English-speaking members in our community, and we will continue to monitor feedback on this topic.

ARIN thanks those who provided valuable feedback on this consultation. We rely on this input from our members and community to help steer the organization as we continue our mission in support of the operation and growth of the Internet.

Regards,

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)