Turning Over a New Leaf

Heidelberg, 1 July 2004

Cross-language communication is becoming a necessity as well as a challenge for an increasing number of people. For some years now, automatic translation software has proven to be an indispensable help in coping with the increasingly extensive translation tasks at hand. The Heidelberg-based company Lingenio is one of the leading manufacturers of such programs and has recently launched the new product series "Translate" in cooperation with language specialist digital publishing AG.

Helplessly sitting in front of a foreign-language web page, who wouldn't wish for a button to instantly produce a perfect translation into their own language? This is exactly what is suggested by the link Translate this page, which can be found next to the results produced by search engines – the output, however, is usually far from perfect. Lingenio's language specialists are aware of the problems and pitfalls presented by human languages and have set themselves two goals in the development of their products: 1. to achieve the highest possible translation quality by means of an increasingly precise description of linguistic properties in the algorithms, grammars and dictionaries the programs work with and 2. to perfect the software's intuitiveness and usability and integrate it into the user environment in the best possible way.

The result is their latest product "Translate", put on the market in June by the new partner digital publishing. An innovative feature is the improved handling of idioms: for the idiomatic phrase "to turn over a new leaf" e.g., the program – apart from the "literal" translation "ein neues Blatt umdrehen" – also offers the German idiom "einen neuen Anfang machen", using the extensive integrated dictionary of idioms.

Translate enables you to translate texts, e-mails and web pages or to simply look up words in the dictionary. Depending on the version, the software integrates directly into Word, Outlook and other Office applications. The options to create user dictionaries and integrate so-called translation memories is of particular significance when the program is used professionally. Additionally, the software offers the possibility of implementing specific corporate solutions especially designed to support work in teams or to provide access to the translation functionality from any other application program. This way, technical or company-specific translations can be managed in central dictionaries and translation memories and thus be used by several employees at the same time.
The technology used in "Translate" is based on research originally initiated by IBM in 1989 and in 1995 leading to the product "Personal Translator", which was awarded the EU's renowned IST Prize for groundbreaking products in information technology in 1996. Five years ago, Lingenio GmbH Heidelberg (known as linguatec Entwicklung & Services until 2004) was founded by the research team as a consequence of a management buyout. In May 2004, Lingenio and digital publishing, a market leader in language learning software and now in charge of marketing the Translate product series, started their cooperation.

Text as Word document: pressrelease040701.doc