Across Systems, the provider of the Across Language Server, and IAI (Institute for Applied Information Science at Saarland University) have expanded their relationship and broadened the integration of their two technologies. Thanks to the direct connection of the Controlled Language Authoring Tool (CLAT) to the Across component crossAuthor, companies operating at an international level can reduce efforts and costs for translations, and ensure quality during creation of multilingual documents, using both rule-based and statistical methods for quality assurance. Across will market the combined solution in the United States, bringing to the U.S. a technology that had, heretofore, been used extensively only in Europe.
The integrated solution will be available in the first quarter of 2009 as an add-on for MS Word, MS PowerPoint, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe InDesign, PTC Arbortext and MadCap Flare. Users will be able to view matches from the translation memory and the terminology system as well as results of the rule-based quality assurance with CLAT. They can use the matches in a single work environment for optimizing their texts.
The Controlled Language Authoring Tool CLAT was developed by IAI and is based on the same technology as the award-winning “DUDEN Korrektor,” sold by Brockhaus Publishers. This tool facilitates quality proofing of texts, for example, to verify compliance with grammar rules or with corporate writing guidelines and language conventions.
The Across Language Server serves as the central platform for all corporate language resources and translation processes. It centrally stores specialized and corporate terminology as well as a translation memory. The component crossAuthor for translation-oriented authoring allows users to exploit these resources for writing the source text by enabling authors to use consistent wording for which translations already exist.
The direct connection of CLAT and crossAuthor enables the reuse of existing wording and terminological consistency as well as linguistic correctness of texts and compliance with defined style rules in a single workstep. This unique solution supports technical writers meeting the challenges of growing text volumes, shorter times to market, stagnating budgets and increasing quality demands.
“The integrated solution combines translation-oriented authoring and linguistic quality checks,” says Daniel Nackovski, president of Across Systems Inc., in the U.S.. “It is available for all common editors and we will be offering it in the United States as of the first quarter of 2009.”
Professor Johann Haller from IAI adds, “The integrated solution offers more than a sum of individual products. It will draw the attention of additional target groups that we could not reach until now. Even the presentation of prototypes during the tekom Annual Conference aroused considerable interest.”
About IAI
IAI ( www.iai-sb.de ) transforms linguistic research into applicable technology. More than 20 years ago, the basic idea of this ‘technology transfer’ resulted in the establishment of the Society for the Promotion of Applied Information Sciences (GFAI) at Saarland University e.V). IAI (Institute of GFAI at Saarland University) has gained international reputation in machine processing of written language.
The technologies of IAI ensure error-free, high-quality texts. They augment the linguistic competence and improve the information management in companies.
The best-known software tools of IAI are the utilities for checking the spelling and grammar of text documents, whose linguistic intelligence greatly exceeds that of other systems available in the market (DUDEN Korrektor). Many companies around the globe use custom-tailored solutions for terminology, consistency, and style checks in order to secure the linguistic quality of their texts (CLAT).
Another key development area of IAI focuses on the indexing and classification of the content of text documents and the use of these technologies for market and opinion analyses of Internet information.