As usual each brief is provided with a link for more information and all links have been verified (as of August 5).

MultiCorpora Ships MultiTrans™ 3

July 2 -- MultiTrans is an interesting alternative to more traditional translation memory (TM) approaches. Rather than work with the aligned segments that exist inside a TM, MultiTrans works with aligned documents in a large, multilingual full-text corpus. It performs automatic alignment and indexes the full text and comes with an integrated Translation Support Workbench. It reduces significantly the overhead associated with creating and managing TMs.

The new MultiTrans version 3 now has Unicode support and offers enterprise-wide terminology management, joining BGS and TRADOS in this fascinating new space poised for growth. More Information...

IO-TEK Launches Innovative Online Translation Service

July 5 -- IO-TEK keeps it simple. No product to buy, no minimum commitment. You can use their online translation service, you can benefit from their workflow management technology (MC-Global™ Suite) and gain access to over 5000 Certified Human Translators in 42 languages and 25 areas of expertise. All you pay for are the translated words. This is another example of a low cost GMS-like approach; the Web is becoming more and more the preferred platform for translation management (as the GMS vendors have been saying for years). More Information...

Esna Releases Automated Multilingual Attendant

July 8 -- Built with the Nuance 8.0 speech recognition engine, Esna's Telephony OfficeLinX 2000 v.4.5 can answer the phone, automatically detect the caller's language and direct calls accordingly. Shades of Deep Blue vs. Kasparov...how many people do you know that can answer the phone in 27 languages? More Information...

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 Beta released

July 9 -- This new version will support Microsoft .NET and XML Web services and will be deeply integrated with Visual Studio .NET and ASP .Net. The Globalization Management Systems of SDL and Uniscape can integrate with this to provide efficient management of multilingual Web sites. More Information...

July 23 -- Lionbridge announce their alignment with the .NET server group and their capability to integrate with MS CMS. More Information...

Bynari Goes Open Source... Sort Of...

July 10 -- Bynari makes a mail server that runs on Linux and other OS and that can talk to Outlook clients; it is, in effect, a replacement for Microsoft Exchange. Quoted from the Bynari Web site : "By uncoupling Outlook from Exchange, organizations become free to seek alternative server solutions whether on NT, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, IBM OS390 with zVM or any other platform the user chooses. ... The advantages of shedding Exchange means organizations can choose highly scalable, reliable and efficient messaging and collaboration hosts at a fraction of the cost of Exchange."

Bynari are now selling, for a modest fee, the source code for these products. How open this move is will depend on how modest the fee truly is. Most interesting is this quote from their press release: "One of the most pressing requirements Bynari Inc. sees is the need to provide the product in numerous languages," says Adelstein. "This should allow companies to purchase the source code and localize it for their market." Inasmuch as Bynari suggest this move is the result of more demand than they can handle, I wonder to what extent the source code has been internationalized... More Information...

Bantam Software Releases TransLocale v1.1

TransLocale is a product similar to Catalyst or Passolo; it allows translation of Windows resource files, visual dialog editing; it has glossary and TMX support, etc. It costs $400 in single-user versions and a free download is available. Bantam Software is a New Zealand based company specializing in the production of software applications for the localisation industry. More Information...

ATIA releases Language Studio

Language Studio is another localization tool but this one works also on the source level. It automatically extract strings from Visual C++ and Visual Basic programs, stores them in a database and creates links between the database and source files ensuring the proper replacement of the extracted strings with their translated equivalents. More Information...

724 Solutions announces availability of Command Banking

July 16 -- Command Banking is an m-banking (mobile-banking) solution that allows customers to access financial information from wireless devices. Customers can get account balances, transfer funds, pay bills and the user interaction is supported in multiple languages. More Information...

Vignette Joins Web Services Interoperability Organization

July 29 -- As more CMS vendors (Vignette this time) and GMS vendors (GlobalSight in the last tech briefs) join the Web Services bandwagon, the more likely we will see significant integration and standardization happening in the way CMS and GMS can connect...to the benefit of the customer. More Information...

Macility Releases PopChar X version 1.2

August 2 -- Austria-based Macility has released PopChar X 1.2 (US$29), a character insertion utility for Mac OS X that provides a drop-down menu showing all the characters in a font, sorted by script or character set. It can insert Unicode characters (or their HTML character references) into any Unicode-aware Mac OS X application. This utility could be extremely handy for companies that need an easy way for Mac-based DTP specialists to insert Unicode characters into documents. Unfortunately Unicode support among Mac applications remains spotty, so users will need to make sure their applications can use the characters selected in PopChar X. More Information...

Astea Announces Multi-Lingual Wireless CRM Applications

August 5 -- Astea International Inc. announced the availability of multi-lingual versions of Alliance PocketPC wireless applications that extend the capabilities of Astea AllianceEnterprise CRM Suite solutions to personal digital assistants (PDAs). The Astea mobile solutions can be deployed in any European language including English, French and German, and double-byte Asian languages including Kanji, Mandarin and Thai. PDAs are smaller, lighter and cheaper; it becomes practical to capture data in the field, in front of the customer. The customer benefits because the sales and support staff have fast access to a lot of data. The company benefits because quicker data capture, means faster invoicing. More Information...

Does the m in m-computing mean mobile or multilingual?

It would be nice if it meant both: i.e. if m-computing were inherently multilingual or, at least, more multilingual than previous application platforms. Could it be because m-computing is more prevalent in Europe than in the U.S? Could it be because wireless networks are huge undertakings that are almost inherently multinational? Or could it simply be because the personal digital assistant is the most personal of all personal computers?