The report is available for purchase online at www.commonsenseadvisory.com for US $1500 or as part of an annual subscription. Future reports will review such publicly traded language services companies as Bowne, Titan, and Systran. 

Idea Factory Languages, a Buenos Aires based language services supplier, reports a solid response to its single-point solution for localisation from German into Spanish. In the second half of 2004, the company successfully delivered more than half a million words in this particular language combination, and expects to grow this substantially in 2005. 

Encouraged by the success, the company is currently in the closing stages of adding a French-Spanish solution. “We believe the translation demand for other source languages than English is very real, and aim to meet this by offering an enterprise alternative to the current cottage industry options”, concludes Bengtsson. 

About Idea Factory Languages
Idea Factory Languages was founded in 2003 and has its production office in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The company brings the benefits of offshore localisation services to direct clients who want to maximize cost efficiency in their outsourcing, as well as multilingual vendors looking for a reliable partner for Spanish and Brazilian. Additional services include project management, engineering/testing, DTP and web management. For further information, please refer to the company website.

Oxford Conversis, a UK-based localization and translation company, will change its name to Conversis, Ltd. According to Gary Muddyman, chief executive officer, the new name, which will be effective January 1, 2005, is part of a strategic initiative to expand the company's operations and brand awareness globally.

“Although our roots are in the U.K., we also serve clients in North America, Europe and other countries, including many companies that have no presence in the U.K. whatsoever," Muddyman said. "Because the word 'Oxford' is so strongly associated with England and our goal is to position Conversis as a global, rather than a regional brand, we decided to eliminate 'Oxford' from our corporate identity."

Founded in 2003, Conversis is a subsidiary of Ruxley Holdings, based in the United Kingdom. Conversis is a leading provider in the Localization, Translation and Interpretation (LTI) industry, tailoring business needs to each company’s relevant markets. More information can be found at www.conversisglobal.com. 

The 27th Internationalization & Unicode Conference (IUC27) will take place in Berlin, Germany this April and amongst the highlights of this event will be a Localisation Technology track, sponsored by The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP).

This TILP sponsored track will outline the latest advances in localization tools, technologies, and standards, also covering localization workflow, migrating to XLIFF, a discussion on IGNITE, and the latest technology from Trados and Rainbow.

Other program highlights are tutorials, workshop and tracks on:

Research and consulting to be localized into over 40 languages

On the 11th of January, SDL International announced that The Gallup Organization has selected SDL to localize its market research and management consulting content into over 40 languages.

SDL will deliver linguistic, cultural and technology leadership for the management and deployment of Gallup's global content. The centralized business relationship with a single point of contact is complemented by direct contact at the local level with SDL's in-house translation resources. SDL will provide desktop publishing and software engineering consulting for localized content and will also provide audio translation and recording for Gallup's telephone-based market research work.

"Our continuing investment in technology and worldwide infrastructure enables us to better serve the business needs of global organizations such as Gallup," commented Cristina Lancaster, Chief Operations Officer at SDL International. "Project management and translation costs will be reduced, with quality and consistency improved. This is another resounding endorsement for our strategy from a major international player."

For further information contact Fiona Camden at SDL.

PASS Engineering, a worldwide leading provider of high-quality localisation tools, has announced the opening of two new offices in North America and Asia. This step is aimed at providing improved worldwide support to customers in the development of multilingual software products.

Business activities in North America - including the sale and support of PASSOLO products - will be handled by PASS Engineering, Inc. in Santa Barbara, California.

Official representation of PASSOLO in Asia will be conducted by Euro-Far East Co., Ltd. in Tokyo. They will be active in sales, consulting and customer support as well as the coordination of further activities in the area.

Visit www.passolo.com for further information

Ycomm Europe, an integrated documentation services provider, has launched QA Distiller and ColourProof, part of an integrated Translation Quality Control service.

Ycomm Europe has identified the need to automatically detect measurable errors or defects in translations, and has therefore developed QA Distiller, a fully automated quality assurance tool that scans bilingual files and translation memories for omissions, inconsistencies, formatting issues and terminology mistakes.

QA Distiller provides a reliable, objective and consistent way to analyse and evaluate translation quality. It traces measurable mistakes and enables users to fix errors quickly. 

Ycomm has also developed ColourProof, a proofreading tool that allows proofreaders to have more control over the change management in the documentation process. ColourProof generates colour-coded PDF files, highlighting in different colours the segments that are retrieved from a translation memory and newly-translated or modified segments.

For more information visit www.QA-Distiller.com or email QA-Distiller@ycomm-europe.com.