In this issue, Matta Saikali (Premium Content) presents the second article of his three-article series on internationalization and localization testing. His concern is how to set-up a test lab efficiently in order to provide reproducible bug detection and reporting. With multiple language versions of multiple operating systems this can indeed become very time consuming.

David Fine presents us with an overview of the ISO working groups in internationalization; what they have done as well as work in progress. If one considers the different programming languages as if they were natural languages and locales, then the ISO effort to achieve common internationalization approaches for all these languages becomes an attempt to internationalize internationalization itself!

Chuck Wrobel describes his job as internationalization evangelist: how to spread the good word, and make sure it is never forgotten.

Below you will find the second installment of the Tech Briefs. Starting with this issue the tech briefs will be published in every issue of the Globalization Insider, rather than once every two months as has been the case. This will allows us to provide more in-depth coverage and more up-to-date data.

Stay tuned for the next technology issue of the Globalization Insider (this fall) where I will continue my investigation on the nature of internationalization with an article on the internationalization of software and Web sites. I will argue that software and Web sites are basically the same thing.

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GlobalSight Introduces Real-Time Localization Project Management

When the World Health Organization has to release a health alert, they may need to translate it into 12 languages, in the middle of the night, in less than 2 hours. This obviously requires special features from Globalization Management Systems who, until recently, were proud of 48-hour turnaround times. GlobalSight now has this capacity. More Information...

OpenOffice.org 1.O Released: Free Office Productivity Software

May 1 -- OpenOffice.org 1.0 is an open source, multi-platform, multilingual office productivity suite, based on Sun's StarOffice™. It is being positioned as a no-cost alternative to Microsoft Windows. OpenOffice.org now has over 50,000 members and several localization projects are underway to extend the range of language versions available. More Information...

Be sure to take a look at the the OpenOffice.org community (www.openoffice.org) which also has links to thought-provoking articles on Open Source, notably an analysis by Tim O'Reilly and an article about the European Union pushing open source to save on e-government development costs.

ALIS ¿Qué? v3.0 automatic language and encoding identification

May 2 -- ALIS ¿Qué? v3.0 uses trigrams and language models to achieve a very fast identifier with wide coverage. It identifies correctly 28 languages and close to 100 language and encoding pairs. More Information...

Convera RetrievalWare Integrates with Vignette V6 Content Suite

May 20 -- RetrievalWare is a multimedia, multilingual search system that can index, search, categorize and profile Vignette-managed content as well as a broader set of enterprise sources, including data warehouses, databases, groupware systems, e-mail files, presentations, even videos and other multimedia files. More Information...

GlobalSight Creates Globalization Web Service Based on MS .NET

May 21 -- "Web services" refers to an architecture that allows Web sites to offer services (by means of Internet protocols, notably SOAP, XML) to applications running on other machines. For example, I often consult xe.com to obtain currency conversion rates; eventually, if xe.com develops a Web Services interface, it will be possible for an Excel macro on my desktop to automatically fetch conversions as I write my expense report.

One of the most important issues in localization is connecting customers to vendors, establishing a link that will automatically bring in work from the customer and deliver back the translated results. Web Services don't solve the whole problem but they do provide the infrastructure to facilitate this connection. GlobalSight's move is an important strategic step that makes it easier for customers to integrate with them. The entire industry will benefit when a standard Web Services interface for localization is adopted by several vendors. More Information...

The more technically minded may enjoy an excellent article that recaps the history of Web protocols and how we arrived at Web services or they can consult the Web services W3C official site.

Blackboard Announces Blackboard Learning System ML

May 22 -- At the World Education Market 2002 (WEM), Blackboard Inc. unveiled the multi-language edition of its Web-based course management system. This UNICODE-based system will allow selection of user interface language and locale as well as content language. More Information...

Mozilla.org Launches Mozilla 1.0

June 5 -- The Mozilla organization, created by Netscape, has released Mozilla 1.0 which, in brief, is an open source version of Netscape Communicator. Mozilla is not only an open-source multi-platform Web browser, it is also a suite of tools for development of Web applications in general. More Information...

Convey to Embed Stellent OutsideIn Filters

June 7 -- Convey Software will embed the Stellent Outside In® XML Export technology into Convey Content Director(TM), the front-end module of their Globalization Management System. This will allow Convey to process more content formats than the other GMS vendors, but only in one direction. To be precise, the Outside In technology can extract text and attributes from many format types, but cannot re-create documents from translated results. Does this mean that Convey will develop the re-coding filters themselves or will their GMS always deal with whole documents? More Information...

CountryHawk detects your country!

June 3 -- cyScape are specialized in Web server components that detect the characteristics of the client browser. CountryHawk, in particular, can detect the country of origin of tour visitors, with NO reverse DNS required. Try clicking on CountryHawk and see if the detected country at the top of the screen is correct; it was for me!

BGS Introduces Enterprise Terminology Management Service

June 18 -- Again proving that terminology management is becoming a C-level topic, BGS has introduced an Enterprise Terminology Management Service to help enterprises achieve consistent branding and overall more efficient creation and translation of content. This comes less than a month after TRADOS released MultiTerm iX (see the previous tech briefs) also targeted at the C-level of global corporations. I believe the BGS approach is win-win: it is strategic for BGS because it strengthens their partnership with the customer (and does so higher up the "food chain") and is also a win for the customer because managing terminology is not as simple as might seem at first sight. More Information...

Passolo 4.0 Beta Test Program announced

June 14 -- Passolo is direct competitor to Catalyst; it allows the localization of binary EXE files and resource DLLs. The Beta Test program for their latest version started July 1 and offers discounts and other advantages to beta testers. More Information...

yourDictionary.com and GlobalSight Launch I-ffective©

June 20 -- Bulding on their stategic move towards .NET Web Services (described above), GlobalSight have teamed up with yourDictionary.com to offer a Web Service for translation and localization of software and documents. One major benefit for smaller enterprises is that you now can now reap the benefit of a GMS without having to buy one! More Information...

SDL announces Enterprise Translation Memory System

June 27 -- SDL now have a truly client-server system, with SDLX as the client and a multi-format TM server capable of handling proprietary TM formats such as SDL, STAR and TRADOS as well as the open XML-based format TMX and XLIFF. Good for them! I for one was tired of hearing people complain that TRADOS did not follow TMX. In all areas of computer science and other industries, if there is a de facto standard, just deal with it, import it... open standards will usually follow. More Information...

Berlitz uses Ektron eWebEditPro for their Web Site

July 8 -- Berlitz find that combining eWebEditPro with Microsoft Content Management Server provides them with the flexibility to manage and update content, and grow sites over time, while adding new languages. More Information...

And The Winners Are:

I consider these wins as more marketing issues than technology, but nevertheless worth mentioning:

WizTom localization tool wins OCTAS award of Québec's Computing Federation.

Multilizer voted "best globalization tool" by readers of Delphi Informant magazine.

Alchemy CATALYST 4.0 wins Golden Globe awards.