Just in time for this week's Localization World 2010 conference in Seattle, Across Systems and the Institute of the Society for the Promotion of Applied Information Sciences at the University of the Saarland (IAI) have established Congree Language Technologies as a joint venture.

Congree is positioning itself as a leading supplier of technology for authoring assistance and will deliver integrated solutions for the formulation of consistent document texts, taking into account defined style rules and corporate wording. This provides the prerequisites for a controlled language that increases the comprehensibility of the texts' content, maximizes the reuse of translations, and ensures high-quality content.

Congree's products combine the various technologies available in the area of authoring assistance into integrated solutions. Essential elements include a terminology system for unifying word selection, an authoring memory for re-using complete formulations and text segments, and components for rule-based quality checking. The rule-based methods include grammar and spell-checking as well as adherence to company-specific style guides to provide controlled language. Thus, product and corporate communications become an integral part of an organisation's corporate identity.

Thanks to Congree, professional authors will be in a position to create high-quality, rule-compliant texts in their preferred applications that are easy to translate more quickly and cost-effectively. Congree technology can be used with all common source text editors, from MS Word, MS PowerPoint, and MS Excel, to Adobe FrameMaker, Just XMetaL, and PTC Arbortext, on through to Adobe InDesign and Madcap Flare.

It can be used in real time during text processing, or as a batch process for the subsequent quality-checking of completed content. Congree's products are available in various configurations, scalable from a single workstation license up to client/server-based enterprise solutions.

Bundled expertise
With the establishment of Congree Language Technologies, Across and the IAI are bundling their previous activities and expertise in authoring assistance. As one of the world's leading suppliers of technologies for translation management, in recent years Across Systems has focused intensively on methods for the efficient creation of source texts, because consistency influences the subsequent translation significantly. Across brings to the joint venture the interfaces to the leading source text editors as well as its translation memory technology (used here as authoring memory) and its technologies for terminology systems and workflows.

The IAI is known for its software tools for spell-checking and grammar checking, as well as its custom-tailored solutions for terminology, consistency, and style-checking (CLAT software -- Controlled Language Authoring Technology). The IAI's products distinguish themselves from competing products currently available on the market through their outstanding linguistic intelligence and are used worldwide to assure linguistic quality by customers including Siemens, Volkswagen, Daimler, and BMW.

Dr. Paul Schmidt, Acting Director of the IAI, says, "We have the world's leading technology when it comes to linguistic authoring assistance. The joint venture with Across will serve to market this technology more widely and to open up additional fields of application."

Across CEO Niko Henschen, adds, "Translation management and authoring assistance relate to one another, but in the end, they address different users who have their own needs. Therefore, in the future, Across will focus clearly on the topic of multilingualism, while Congree will offer 'best-of-breed' technologies for authoring assistance."