viaLanguage announces Online Translation & English Editing Services

viaLanguage has released an online translation portal (a growing trend) but theirs also offers a full range of editing services called RapidEdit™. RapidEdit comes in five flavors; the first three are different levels of editing: Efficiency Edit™ checks spelling and grammar (a notch above MS-Word), Courier Edit™, the next level, includes changes to improve the flow and clarity of ideas and Diplomat Edit™ is for the highest quality presentations, speeches, articles, etc.

The other two editing flavors are for Machine Translation: Pre-Empt™ and Post Machine Translation Editing. Post-Machine Edit corrects the errors that commonly occur after the machine translation. Pre-empt prepares documents for machine translation (avoiding jargon, long sentences and ambiguity). The interesting thing is that Pre-empt affects the source document, the original authoring, once again moving up the content food chain. More Information...

IBM releases ICU 2.2

IBM has released International Components for Unicode (ICU) version 2.2. ICU is a free, open-source, internationalization library providing a full range of services for supporting UNICODE. These services include: Unicode data representation, character set conversion, locale handling, sorting & searching, normalization, transliteration, compression, layout and rendering for complex scripts, etc. ICU is a cross-platform library: ICU4C offers C/C++ APIs, ICU4J offers JAVA APIs and ICU4JNI offers JAVA APIs implemented by the C version (ICU4C) to provide extra performance.

The main purpose of the ICU 2.2 release is to offer correct support for Unicode 3.2, which added 1016 new characters (mostly Philippine scripts and mathematical symbols) to the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Readers interested in the Asian market are reminded that ICU has, since version 2.0 (released December 5th 2001), provided full support for all the new ideographic characters of UNICODE 3.1.1 which includes all characters present in China's GB18030 and Japan's JIS X 0213. As regards Hong Kong however, both HKSCS (1999) and HKSCS-2001 contain 35 characters not present in any version of Unicode. More Information...

TRADOS GXT v5.2 released

This is the first version of Uniscape GXT, now called TRADOS GXT, released since the TRADOS/UNISCAPE acquisition/merger (see the LISA special issue on this merger). TRADOS GXT 5.2 now includes more flexible translation memory management (as I expected), a better tool for dealing with multiple glossaries and new filters for Quark XPress and Excel. Click here for the TRADOS press release...

The TRADOS Web site does not itself contain any more information on TRADOS GXT. If you click on "enterprise solutions" you are redirected to www.uniscape.com which is now the home of TRADOS Enterprise Solutions and where you can get more information on Uniscape GXT. Click here for a short and very readable overview of GXT...

Multilizer Inc. releases Java edition of Multilizer 5.1

Multilizer is a localization tool with a unique architecture. It is designed to allow programmers and translators to work in parallel. It supports a variety of platforms from Windows file formats (exe, dll, ini, txt, etc.) to mobile (Palm, EPOC, PocketPC, Java, etc.) to data (XML, XHTML, WML, databases, etc.). It supports three kinds of localization: binary localization (like Catalyst), source localization (modifying the code) and component localization, which allows run-time language switching. In run-time localization you have to modify your application to add Multilizer components to it; these components will provide multilingual support at run-time, including bidirectional rendering. You could say that their so called "run-time localization" is an "internationalization tool kit" or even a "multilingualization library". Multilingualization refers to the most flexible form of internationalization architecture that allows language switching at run-time (which I still maintain will someday become the prevalent architecture). Click here for a short and conceptually clear description of the Multilizer approach...

Multilizer comes in several versions: Windows, Oracle, .NET and VB, VCL (the Delphi Visual Components Library) and now Java. You can also buy the multi-platform version which will allow your localizers and translators to deal with a variety of platforms with the same tool. Click here for a list of Multilizer customers and testimonials. Multilizer supports workgroups as well as individual translators; it has its own "translation memory" which serves both as translation memory and glossary; it can import/export TMX files, Microsoft glossaries, etc. It does not seem to support fuzzy matching. Click here for the press release...

Star E Media Ships First 30,000 CDs to SpaceToon

Star E Media Corporation (OTC:STRE) has shipped to SpaceToon Online the first 30,000 CD's pursuant to its $25M, five year exclusive Middle East marketing and distribution agreement. Star E Media's agreement with SpaceToon calls for 1,000,000 CD's to be shipped over the next 12 months. The Arabic/English “edutainment” software titles to be distributed in the Middle East by SpaceToon will include Scholastic and School Zone titles. Additional “edutainment” titles are in the works that will increase product recognition and sales for Star E Media's Arabic/English CD-ROM edutainment products. Click here for the PDF press release...

From their About Us: "Star E Media was formed in March of 2000 by seasoned executives to obtain proprietary children's educational entertainment software that is well-known through out the English speaking world and localize them into foreign languages in addition to English for worldwide distribution. Star E Media then obtained (40 to date) exclusive licensing of award-winning English titles that have sold millions such as "Clifford's Big Red Dog," "I Spy," "Jump Start," "Math Blaster," etc., published and distributed by three world-renowned US children's software and educational entertainment companies. Star E Media has granted two exclusive distribution agreements. ESP International for Spanish around the World and SpaceToon for the Middle East. ESP must purchase or caused to be purchase over $30M in 4 years to maintain their exclusivity and SpaceToon must purchase $25M in 5 years to maintain theirs."

Simple strategy: buy bestsellers, localize them, resell them! Sounds easy. In a sense, Star E Media has turned English-centric vision to it's advantage. If companies don't see the benefits of localization and foreign markets (or are simply too busy to consider them), then get their product at a good price and reap the benefits!

Pierre Cadieux (pcadieux@i18n.ca) is president of i18N Inc. (www.i18n.ca), a firm specializing in internationalization training and consulting for Web sites and Globalization Management Systems, shrink-wrap software and embedded systems. Pierre is Technology Editor for the LISA Newsletter. He has been Director of Localization Technology at Bowne Global Solutions, where he published the first generic model of Web globalization, and VP Technology at Alis Technologies, where he pioneered the transparent handling of Arabic and Hebrew languages and created the core bidirectional technology licensed by Microsoft. Pierre also regularly presents workshops at LISA events.