Earlier today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which governs domains, registrations, Internet Protocol addresses, and many other aspects of the net, voted to approve a fast-track process for implementing non-Latin domain names by early to mid 2010.

This means that by next year, you could be seeing domains in Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, and dozens of other non-Latin languages.

The new domains, which ICANN terms “Internationalized Domain Names” or IDNs, has been something the organization has discussed for several years, but now IDNs have been placed on a fast track process, beginning November 16th. It will involve around 100 new, international characters on top of the traditional 26-character English alphabet.