Software localisation in Ireland 1982-2002

March

MicroPro International, the California-based developer of the hugely successful WordStar word processing package, opened a new subsidiary in Dun Laoghaire. The company planned to introduce European and Japanese versions of its products and had obtained IDA support to locate this work in Ireland.

It had hired an initial group of eight programmers in summer 1981 and trained them in the US before the new office opened. One of its American executives, Lyle Cowen, managed MicroPro Ireland in its early stages.

The Dun Laoghaire group proceeded to create a Kanji edition of WordStar for Japan and released versions of its software in nine European languages. It also adapted the products to run on an expanded range of hardware platforms in the era before standard microcomputer architectures.

Read John Nolan’s testimony

Northern Telecom, which had run a hardware assembly plant in Galway since 1973, established a design and development group there to modify its SL-1 telephone switches to meet European requirements.

This form of localisation was more concerned with national differences in telecommunications standards than with language issues.

January

The manufacturing facility that Apple had opened in Cork in 1980 began to adapt the functionality of its computers to suit customers in different European countries.

Production staff in Cork assembled supplementary packs for the new Apple IIe computer. These used special ROM components that configured the systems into specific versions for individual countries, supporting local character sets, keyboard layouts and video display formats.

Apple’s in-house term for this procedure was ‘localisation’.

March

Japanese personal computer maker Sord demonstrated an Irish language version of its word processing software at the Computex exhibition in Dublin.

The Sord Computers facility in Santry developed this capability at short notice for the show and its work was featured on RTE’s television news.

The project involved modifications to Sord’s English language word processor. Its developers translated the menus in the user interface into Irish. They also facilitated the output of accented upper case characters – a requirement that the company had not encountered with other European languages.

Údarás na Gaeltachta subsequently adopted the Irish language software.

Read James Mahon’s testimony

November

Lotus Development Corporation appointed David MacDonald as general manager of a new subsidiary in Ireland that would assemble international versions of its software packages for customers in Europe.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts company was just two years old, but had already become the world’s third largest microcomputer software company. Its Lotus 1-2-3 product, launched in January 1983, was a massive success. Primarily a spreadsheet application, 1-2-3 also incorporated a graphing tool and a database manager, initiating a new breed of integrated software packages for personal computers.

Lotus started disk duplication, the sourcing of printed materials and package production just four months later at a new facility in Santry.

David MacDonald was familiar with the methodologies of US manufacturers that set up operations in Ireland. He had previously worked for Technicon, Amdahl and Trilogy.

February

Softrans International was established in Dublin to provide a turnkey localisation service, initially supporting the major European languages.

This company was the first to define its business as ‘localisation’ – a term that founder Brian Kelly encountered when he previously worked in Apple. He had identified the opportunity for a localisation-plus-engineering specialist in late 1984, when the launch of the Macintosh was approaching. Apple was the major customer for Softrans in its early stages.

Its contract services included translation, engineering, testing and, occasionally, manufacturing.

Read Brian Kelly’s testimony

June

Lotus Development Ireland held an official opening day at its facility in Santry. In addition to its 1-2-3 spreadsheet-database-graphics package the software firm was now selling a new suite called Symphony, which added word processing and communications capabilities to the functionality of 1-2-3.

This photograph, which was issued at the opening ceremony, shows the equipment that replicated floppy disks at the facility. In 1985 the Industrial Development Authority was actively promoting Ireland as a location for software manufacturing, as opposed to software development, and was therefore keen to highlight the factory characteristics of the new Lotus operation.

September

Microsoft announced its first investment in Ireland – a software duplicating and distribution centre in Sandyford, where it expected to employ 45 people within the first two years of operations.

In 1985 Microsoft was ten years old and had annual sales of $140 million. The company was active across the spectrum of microcomputer software, having introduced applications packages, like Multiplan and Word, to complement its PC operating systems and programming tools.

An official opening event for the Sandyford centre took place in June 1986.

October

MicroPro, whose WordStar product had been overtaken by other word processing applications, scaled down and revised the mandate of its operation in Dun Laoghaire. Employment there had fallen over the previous year from 28 people to five.

The headcount rose again in 1986 and further localisation and product development work took place in Dun Laoghaire. But, in a departure from its original mission, packaging and distribution became the primary focus for the Irish subsidiary.

February

Lotus Development held an exploratory meeting with Softrans International and discussed taking a minority shareholding in the Dublin firm. The software corporation was considering an investment of this type to give it a close relationship with a localisation subcontractor in Europe.

Lotus VP of marketing Chuck Digate and director of European operations Irfan Salim both attended the meeting, but subsequently abandoned the idea of buying a stake in any of its European localisation partners.

December

Lotus Development announced that it was establishing a new software development division at its production facility in Santry. The company made an initial commitment to hire eight employees in this area, but subsequently expanded the group to 150 people. This followed a corporate decision in August to transfer European localisation activity from Windsor, England to Santry and to assign more technical responsibilities to Windsor.

By this time the Santry operation was shipping Lotus software to South America, Australia and Japan, as well as Europe.

Manus Hanratty, who had previously worked for Measurex, joined Lotus in Santry as product development manager in January 1987 and localisation work began there in March. The new group initially delivered versions of the company’s 1-2-3 and Symphony packages in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch.

Lotus Development Ireland soon became the most influential role model for localisation processes in the packaged software trade. Other vendors subsequently recruited localisation specialists from the Santry group to set up new localisation units in Dublin.

Read David MacDonald’s testimony

An internal resource developed by Apple Computer set an example that the rest of the industry followed in later years.

The Apple Global Workbench separated the user interface of a computer from its operating system – an innovation that assisted software developers to embed elements for multi-language functionality inside new product designs. It thus became easier for localisation providers to address translation requirements as they arose.

November

Confidential Report Printing, a Clondalkin-based business established in 1978, re-registered as a public limited company and changed its name to Printech International.

The printing firm specialised in the production of technical manuals for the computer industry.

January

Apple Computer announced a system disk that enabled the use of Irish accented characters on Macintosh systems with a standard keyboard layout. The computer department at Trinity College Dublin co-developed the disk, which facilitated Irish language versions of any application that supported Apple’s LaserWriter fonts.

March

Typesetting and document design specialist Quark International announced a new European headquarters in Cork, where its US-developed software would be translated for sale to non-English speaking customers in Europe. The Cork operation would also carry out disk duplication and customer support.

March

Computer mouse manufacturer Logitech, whose headquarters were in Switzerland, announced that it would open an operation in Cork for software translation and localisation, disk duplication and package assembly.

It subsequently assigned a development role, primarily in mechanical engineering, to its Irish subsidiary.

May

California-based Ashton-Tate, which was best known for its dBase database, commenced software duplication and packaging operations in Swords.

June

Microsoft established an International Product Group (IPG) at its base in Sandyford to co-ordinate software localisation in Europe.

This operation was initially assigned responsibility for the Dutch and Swedish editions of Microsoft products. By 1990 the IPG had also taken on the Italian, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian versions.

RR Donnelley, the world’s largest commercial printer, arrived in Ireland through its acquisition of a company named Irish Printers.

The Irish subsidiary subsequently traded as Donnelley Documentation Services.

Claris Corporation, Apple Computer’s software subsidiary, announced plans for a manufacturing facility in Dublin. This operation was initially based in Airways Industrial Estate.

Claris supplied Apple-developed applications for the Macintosh, including MacWrite, MacProject and MacDraw, and AppleWorks which ran on the Apple II. In 1988 it acquired the FileMaker flat file database, which subsequently became its flagship product.

In 1991 Claris Ireland built new premises in Blanchardstown. When it moved its operations there, the organisation was managing product localisation in 20 languages.

Managed service provider EuroKom developed a customised document transfer system that enabled Microsoft’s localisation partners around Europe to transfer files between their PCs and a server in Dublin.

EuroKom managed this server and operated the online service on behalf of Microsoft in the years before internet connectivity was generally available.

International Translation and Publishing (ITP) commenced operations in Sandycove, offering localisation services to computer hardware and software vendors. ITP subsequently moved its base to Bray.

The founder of the company, Finbarr Power, had previously worked for Digital Equipment and Memory Computer in Ireland and had gained international industry experience in the Middle East.

European Language Translations (ELT) joined the growing number of translation and localisation service providers in the Dublin area.

Blackrock-based ELT majored in technical documentation and associated software.

23 May

Manual production company Printech International invested £300,000 in Softrans International and received a 42.5 per cent shareholding in the localisation services firm.

The companies agreed to collaborate on marketing their offerings to the software industry with a particular emphasis on US companies expanding in Europe.

June

MicroPro changed its name to that of its principal product and became WordStar International.

The company had failed to keep up with the industry’s shift from the DOS platform to Microsoft Windows and was subsisting on sales to existing WordStar users.

November

Lotus Development established a new team at its base in Santry to design and develop new tools and methodologies for software localisation. This initiative would build on the skills and experience that the company had gained by adapting its American products for international customers.

After three years in operation, the headcount of the software group in Santry had risen to 48 and its responsibilities had expanded to include localisation for South East Asia, South America and the Middle East as well as Europe.

Lotus had also begun to supply localisation training, materials and support to partner companies in its target markets.

04 December

PC software supplier Quarterdeck Office Systems announced plans to establish a new centre that would incorporate the company’s European sales headquarters. It proceeded to establish Quarterdeck International in Dun Laoghaire.

The Los Angeles company was the developer of DESQview, which enabled DOS-based PCs to run multiple applications simultaneously in separate windows..

The Dun Laoghaire operation took on global responsibility for the translation and localisation of Quarterdeck products. It also introduced telephone technical support for customers in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Swedish.

14 March

Oracle Corporation announced that it was setting up a research, development and manufacturing centre in Dublin. This was initially housed at offices in Blackrock. The centre’s first activity was software porting, converting products to run on different Unix platforms and distributing them worldwide.

Oracle already employed more than 2,500 employees in Europe and ran product development operations in Britain, the Netherlands, France and Germany.

The addition of a group in Ireland came at a time when Oracle was seeking to expand beyond its core business in relational databases and application development tools. The company was now developing enterprise management applications in areas like finance, human resources and manufacturing.

WordStar International closed the Dun Laoghaire office that, when it was known as MicroPro Ireland, had been a pioneer in software localisation methods.

Its parent company in California survived for some time afterwards, but it too was wound up in 1993.

May

Softrans implemented a computer assisted translation (CAT) glossary that it had developed internally.

This database, running on Apple hardware, suggested words, phrases and sentences in up to six different languages for the terminology in English texts.

September

Lotus Development introduced release 3.1 of its 1-2-3 product for Microsoft Windows, delivering translated versions in French, Italian, German and Spanish at the same time as the English edition.

Simultaneous shipment in these four languages – which were collectively known as FIGS in the localisation trade – was a significant landmark for the Lotus software group in Santry.

May

Symantec began production at a software manufacturing facility in Blanchardstown. The company charged this operation with duplicating and packaging its personal computer software for all territories outside the US and Canada.

Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, Symantec had become a public company in 1989. Its most important products in 1991 were the collection developed by Peter Norton Computing, which it had acquired in the previous year.

Read Allen Higgins’s testimony

13 May

Frame Technology, developer of the FrameMaker document publishing software, announced a new European operations centre at Airways Industrial Estate in Dublin. Its tasks included the delivery of localised versions of FrameMaker, including the first editions in Dutch, Spanish and Italian.

Los Angeles-based localisation service provider IDOC opened a new subsidiary, IDOC Europe, in Dublin.

ITP formed its own research and development group, primarily for developing add-ons to other vendors’ tools that the company was using on its localisation projects.

The group, headed by Tom Grogan, went on to produce tools for data transfer among different computer assisted translation systems.

July

A survey of international software corporations with subsidiaries in Ireland found that eight had established localisation units. Two more had localisation groups at the planning stage.

Twelve corporations were running disk duplication and packaging operations. There was now a clear trend for new projects to introduce localisation functions among their first activities.

This survey, which was published in Irish Computer magazine, also noted that three of the eight firms with localisation units employed in-house language translators.

13 October

Borland International acquired Ashton-Tate, whose facility in Swords became Borland’s first dedicated software manufacturing plant in Europe.

In the first year under its new owner this operation shipped more than 80 software products in ten different languages to customers in Europe and the Middle East.

December

Berlitz Translation Services assumed control of Softrans International, attracted by the company’s technical expertise.

Berlitz acquired more than half of the shares in Softrans. Printech International retained almost 20 per cent and the company’s directors held the remaining shares.

After six years in operation, Softrans had grown its headcount to about 70 people, including groups at branch offices in England and France.

Under its new ownership structure the company traded as Softrans Berlitz International and later as Berlitz GlobalNet. Berlitz designated its Irish subsidiary as a project management centre for the IT industry.

Read Brian Kelly’s testimony

March

ASK Computer Systems, a supplier of manufacturing management software and a sister company to database vendor Ingres, announced a new software development and manufacturing centre in Blanchardstown.

April

Multimedia Technologies Ireland, a campus company with bases at the University of Limerick and Trinity College Dublin, launched a support service for localisation companies.

This organisation, which was created through a national research and technology transfer programme, offered research expertise from the universities to those localisation service providers that catered for multimedia products.

European Language Translations achieved quality accreditation under the ISO 9002 standard. It was the first localisation company to attain this rank.

ISO 9002 recognised the quality assurance processes that supported an organisation’s production, installation and service activities. This accreditation did not cover product development, making it suitable for contracting firms.

June

London-based DataEase International became one of the smallest software vendors to open a localisation and distribution office in Dublin, setting up a new base in Kilbarrack.

August

Symantec recruited Stephen Brennan from Lotus Development to set up a software development centre at its Blanchardstown facility. He assembled a management team with Tony O’Dowd, Tommy McShane and James Grealis – all of whom moved from Lotus to Symantec.

The new unit established a software localisation process for Europe and then expanded its coverage to Asia. The Blanchardstown group later took charge of international product engineering to facilitate the global delivery of Symantec products.

Read Damian Scattergood’s testimony

December

California-based document imaging specialist FileNet Corporation opened a facility in Santry without any of the usual pomp and publicity.

This operation was originally planned as a hardware assembly project. By the time that its premises were ready, however, FileNet had overhauled its core strategy, phasing out proprietary hardware and focusing instead on imaging and workflow software.

The Santry facility undertook software duplication and localisation, starting with the translation of its archiving, retrieval and workflow applications into French and German. These early projects drew on external service providers, but FileNet employed its own localisation specialists in later years.

02 March

Sun Microsystems announced plans for a SunSoft software centre in Dublin to manage the development and localisation of its Solaris operating system for European users.

The computer maker had launched SunSoft in 1991 as its systems software subsidiary. SunSoft took over responsibility for Solaris – the Unix platform which had an installed base of more than 750,000 units and supported more than 7,000 third-party software applications.

Dick McQuillen, who had previously set up Sun operations in Europe and the Far East, was named head of SunSoft’s new operation.

March

The Silicon Valley Software Association hosted a ‘matchmaker’ event to facilitate partnerships for its members with Irish companies. Localisation service providers were prominent among the participants.

17 March

California-based database developer Informix Software announced plans to establish a European software centre in Dublin.

Informix Software Ireland started software packaging and distribution operations in August at Westgate Business Park in Ballymount.

General manager Terry Ralph and localisation and porting manager Ash Kathuria headed the software centre. Its localisation activity grew more quickly than anticipated and the porting of Informix products to new hardware platforms began there in early 1994.

The company saw Ballymount as a multi-purpose back office for Europe, Africa and the Middle East with responsibility for financial management and IT systems. It added a European treasury management function during its early months.

March

Corel Corporation established an Irish subsidiary. The Canadian firm, which was best known for its CorelDraw graphics software, soon selected premises in central Dublin. It designated this operation as its international headquarters.

Led by managing director Ann-Mari Doody, the Dublin office took charge of language translation and product localisation for Europe, Asia and Brazil.

12 May

Dublin City University (DCU) hosted a one-day conference and exhibition for the burgeoning software localisation industry, demonstrating a variety of computer assisted translation tools.

This event was organised by the The National Centre for Language Technology at DCU, the Irish Translators’ Association and consultant Reinhard Schäler, who had been one of the early entrants to the industry.

19 July

RR Donnelley, the US company that ran printing facilities at Clonshaugh and Kildare, acquired European Language Translations (ELT) in Blackrock.

ELT became part of the RR Donnelley Language Solutions division, which ran localisation centres across Europe and Asia.

February

A new representative body, the Software Localisation Industry Group (SLIG), set out to involve a wide spectrum of participants, including software product vendors, localisation service providers and academic researchers.

Based in Ireland, SLIG was convened with support from National Software Director Barry Murphy. The initiative originated in discussions at an international industry conference, Localisation World.

Dublin start-up Clockworks International launched localisation services for multimedia publishers. The company, which was founded by PJ King, tackled the translation of recorded audio and words rendered into 3D graphics animations.

International Translation and Publishing began to collaborate with German developer Trados, producing enhancements for the Trados’ Translator’s Workbench for Windows (TWW).

This partnership resulted in the S-Tagger product set, which enabled TWW users to handle files created with the FrameMaker and Interleaf authoring systems.

20 March

Business graphics developer Shapeware Corporation, announced plans for a new European headquarters, Shapeware International, in Dublin. Its responsibilities would include translation and localisation of the company’s Visio drawing and diagramming software for customers in Europe.

Shapeware changed its trading name to Visio in November 1995.

April

Singapore-based Creative Labs announced plans to manufacture and localise audio cards and other multimedia enhancements for PCs at a new base in Blanchardstown. This facility would also provide customer services and multilingual technical support for the whole of Europe.

Creative had undergone an initial public offering in 1992, following which it brought in a US-based management team. The former Ashton-Tate CEO, Ed Esber, had recently taken charge.

Creative’s operations strategy for Europe clearly mirrored that of the big American packaged software companies.

April

Montreal-based software manufacturing specialist Saturn Solutions established an Irish subsidiary.

Saturn Fulfilment Services subsequently opened at the Citywest campus and provided outsourced packaging services to customers like Autodesk and Corel.

02 August

Quarterdeck International announced that its localisation, sales and support services in Dun Laoghaire had achieved ISO 9001 quality certification. The company claimed to be the only major international software vendor whose localisation activities had qualified to this level. The normal industry practice was to seek the ISO 9002 standard, which covered manufacturing and servicing only.

The organisation in Dun Laoghaire had shipped localised versions of Quarterdeck’s software and documentation to five continents in eight different languages.

October

The media services group of Rand McNally hired 40 staff who had previously worked for a communications software firm in Shannon and positioned its new operation as a resource for emerging US software vendors that wanted to expand into Europe.

Rand McNally claimed that it could bundle a wide variety of testing and logistics services with its localisation capabilities.

October

More than 70 software companies, materials suppliers and printers launched the Software Manufacturing Association as the Irish chapter of a US industry group of the same name. Symantec managing director Austin McCabe was its regional co-ordinator.

December

The localisation tools group at Lotus Development in Santry revealed that it had introduced ‘pseudo-translation’ techniques to reduce the timelag between new product releases in the US and elsewhere.

This approach, which utilised the company’s own Lotus Notes software, identified elements in unfinished products that might pose later problems for different languages or character sets.

Localisation groups in other software companies also adopted pseudo-translation methods with the objective of delivering new releases simultaneously in multiple languages.

January

Gecap Gesellschaft fur Technische Information, a German software company that offered localisation services, registered an Irish subsidiary and opened an office in Dublin.

January

Corel Corporation, which was already shipping its software in fifteen languages, recruited a new director of technology in order to re-engineer the localisation process at its Dublin base in Harcourt Street.

Tony O’Dowd joined the company at the start of 1995 and implemented methods and policies that he had previously experienced at Lotus and Symantec. He also initiated the development of visual tools for localisation projects and introduced machine translation – a technology in which Corel chairman Michael Cowpland was reported to be taking a personal interest.

By the summer the Dublin office had become a beta tester for new automated translation technology from Logos Corporation. Running on a Sun workstation, this software supported four language pairs, translating English text into French, German, Italian or Spanish.

Corel promoted Tony O’Dowd to general manager later in 1995.

April

RR Donnelley combined its software documentation business unit with Corporate Software Inc. to create a new entity named Stream International.

Stream inherited Donnelley’s translation and localisation operations, including its language services unit in Dublin.

June

Novell became the latest addition to the band of US software vendors with operations centres in Dublin. The Utah-based developer of the NetWare network operating system hired Caroline Lonergan, who had previously worked for Claris, as the general manager of Novell Software Ireland.

This operation contracted out its manufacturing requirements so that it could focus on logistics management.

August

Microsoft shipped its Windows 95 operating system. This release differed from its predecessors because it was developed with localisation in mind. Display boxes, for example, were now automatically resized to accommodate translated text.

Windows 95 was initially delivered in twelve languages, rising to 30 languages within a matter of months. The Microsoft Worldwide Product Group Ireland oversaw its translation into 20 languages.

Applications suppliers stepped up their localisation practices in tandem with the move to Windows 95, rolling out new product releases more rapidly in more languages.

Read Allen Higgins’s testimony

September

Robin Hilliard, previously a software engineer at IDOC, set up Dublin-based Translation Craft.

The company was both a localisation tools developer and a localisation service provider with a special focus on translations into Brazilian Portuguese. Its best known products tested the validity of software help files.

November

The Software Localisation Industry Group (SLIG) held its first conference and general meeting at University College Dublin.

Chairperson Helen Wybrants highlighted SLIG’s active involvement in the preparation of national and EU research programmes over the previous year.

According to the industry group, about 4,000 people in Ireland were now employed directly in the engineering and manufacturing of localised products.

November

Enterprise development agency Forbairt selected the computer science department in University College Dublin (UCD) to house one of eight new centres of expertise that would channel skills from third level colleges to commercial organisations.

The Localisation Resources Centre (LRC) at UCD planned to assemble a library of language translation tools and other software localisation products. It would then conduct comparative evaluations and provide consulting services to prospective users. The LRC commenced operations in 1996 under director Reinhard Schäler, supported by an administrator and a researcher.

December

Lotus Development Ireland (which was now owned by IBM) became the co-ordinator of a €2.6 million language engineering project in the EU Fourth Framework research programme.

The Open Translation Environment for Localization (OTELO) project developed an integrated environment for all aspects of the translation services cycle for computer software – enabling users to access multiple machine aided translation systems.

Three German partners – SAP, Logos and GMS – and the Centre for Language Technology at the University of Copenhagen collaborated on OTELO, which ran from December 1995 to August 1997.

January

Dave Ayres, a former quality assurance manager at Lotus Development, established software testing and localisation services specialist DLG Software Services in Dublin.

February

The Informix facility in Ballymount revealed that it was working on a development project to apply a new data structure to localisation processes.

Using recently acquired information manipulation technology, Informix was designing a ‘DataBlade’ module that would embed a capability to handle languages and character sets other than English into new software.

This tool was subsequently offered to applications developers and user organisations as an add-to the Informix Universal Server database system.

Localisation industry representatives joined forces with state agency FÁS to address a growing skills shortage in Dublin. These discussions led to the launch of a training course in localisation quality assurance at the FÁS centre in Cabra.

The six month course was designed for people without third level qualifications. The localisation companies helped to draw up a syllabus, sponsored the participants and gave them opportunities to gain work experience. It became an entry path into software careers for successive groups of trainees.

Read Anna Browne’s testimony

May

Oracle, which had grown its manufacturing and distribution operations in Santry since the early 1990s, announced that it would establish a European business centre with additional responsibilities at a new location in East Point Business Park.

The first activities at this hub would include a telesales organisation for eight European countries and the United Arab Emirates and an online store for selling Oracle software via the internet.

In July Michael O’Callaghan took charge of localisation management at Oracle’s European manufacturing and distribution division. He had previously been general manager of Microsoft’s worldwide products group in Sandyford.

June

The Dublin office of messaging software vendor Isocor shipped an internal communications system to the Russian State Duma, or parliament.

Isocor’s Irish operation was a product development centre, but also housed a localisation unit. This group oversaw the translation of all the front-end software for the Duma system.

June

The Localisation Industry Standards Association (LISA), an international trade association founded in 1990 and based in Switzerland, held its annual conference in Dromoland Castle, Co Clare.

August

Printech International, a subsidiary of venture capital company DCC, increased its ownership of International Translation & Publishing (ITP) to 90 per cent by buying out the company’s founders and management. State agency Forbairt held the other 10 per cent.

Clondalkin-based Printech had acquired a 20 per cent stake in ITP in 1994. It subsequently tried to market its partner’s localisation capabilities in combination with its own printing services – in the same way as it had done after its previous investment in Softrans.

ITP had now grown to 160 employees, including staff at offices in the US Singapore and Belgium.

September

Graphics and digital art software producer MetaTools announced an international operations centre in Dublin.

November

New York-based printing company Bowne acquired localisation specialist IDOC. The IDOC Europe organisation in Dublin was later renamed Bowne Global Solutions (Ireland).

December

Sun Microsystems Ireland announced that its European software centre in Dublin would relocate to a new purpose-built facility at East Point Business Park in summer 1997.

Formerly known as SunSoft, the centre had expanded its operations to include software localisation, software development, system test, performance benchmarking and quality assurance. Its headcount had now increased to 60 employees.

December

Stream International spun off its language solutions division to a group of investors that retitled the business as Lionbridge Technologies. This name played on an abbreviation of the word ‘localization’ and was sometimes rendered as ‘L10nbridge’.

The new entity claimed to be the largest independent supplier of IT localisation services. Lionbridge’s 280 employees in Ireland, France, Korea, Japan and China offered technical authoring, terminology development, translation, electronic and desktop publishing, software engineering and testing, multimedia localisation and internet services.

March

The Localisation Resources Centre launched its own industry publication, Localisation Ireland, edited by Reinhard Schäler and distributed free of charge to localisation professionals.

Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products opened a sales office in Dublin, aiming to sell its multilingual technologies to the city’s software cluster.

The Belgian company, which had gone public in 1995, was growing through acquisition, expanding into areas like machine translation.

April

Scottish localisation and logistics firm McQueen acquired Rand McNally’s media services group and took over the US service provider’s operations in Shannon.

April

A product developed at Lotus Development Ireland enabled users to create multilingual groupware based on a distributed document database. Notes Global Designer incorporated localisation expertise from the company’s base in Santry to facilitate new applications that spanned multiple countries and multiple languages.

Lotus, which was now an IBM company, had gradually transformed its Irish subsidiary from a warehousing operation to a localisation management centre.

April

International Translation & Publishing opened a subsidiary in Tokyo to provide project management, translation, software engineering and desktop publishing services.

The new company, ITP Japan, was 30% owned by the Tokyo-based management.

May

Translation software developer Trados set up an Irish subsidiary in Monkstown, Dublin to market its technologies to localisation providers.

Founded in 1984 in Stuttgart as a translation services business, the company’s core products in 1997 were the Translator’s Workbench, which enabled translators to recognise, store and reuse strings of text, and MultiTerm for Windows, a multilingual terminology management package.

June

California-based localisation and internationalisation services provider SimulTrans opened its European headquarters in Dublin.

Founded in 1984 to provide translation services in Silicon Valley, the company’s name signified a competence at enabling clients to release products simultaneously in multiple languages.

SimulTrans had previously undertaken projects for software supply chain operations in the Dublin area, including the introduction of Latin American and Asian editions of Lotus, Symantec and Microsoft products.

June

Internet software supplier Netscape Communications announced plans to open its first development operation outside North America at Citywest Business Campus in Dublin. The company had shot to prominence with its Navigator web browser and subsequently added product suites for messaging, collaboration and groupware on the internet.

Localisation services for Europe were among a range of technical and administrative functions assigned to the new office. Manus Hanratty, who had held localisation management roles at Lotus Development and Creative Labs, became general manager of Netscape Communications Ireland.

July

Localisation services provider Vistatec was launched in Dublin. Its founders had previously worked for the Irish arm of Gecap and went out on their own when Bowne bought Gecap.

Vistatec initially focused on translating clients’ software into European languages.

The company opened its first US office in Washington, DC in March 1998 and added a branch in California in the following year.

July

Corel released an integrated management system for streamlining localisation projects, Corel Catalyst, based on the experience of its localisation unit in Dublin.

The new toolset offered a single, interactive environment for translators, engineers and project managers working on Windows-based applications. It could track projects, anticipate bottlenecks, optimise the quality of localised products and ensure the consistency of translations and terminology across product lines.

October

The Microsoft Worldwide Product Group in Sandyford delivered IE4 – the latest generation of the corporation’s web browser – in French, German, Italian, Brazilian, Spanish and Japanese. It also announced that versions in Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Greek, Turkish, Slovenian, Slovakian, Korean, Simple and Traditional Chinese would ship within three months.

In total, the localisation unit delivered IE4 in 26 languages, utilising over 130 employees and contractors in Sandyford plus 20 external vendors.

October

The computer science department at the University of Limerick introduced a one-year full-time graduate diploma in localisation. This course was designed for students with primary degrees in non-computing subjects. UL also offered an MSc option for those who undertook research and development and produced a thesis in the following year.

While other universities around the world taught localisation techniques as part of their translation or computing degrees, the UL diploma was the first course that covered the subject exclusively.

October

Lionbridge Technologies, which already employed around 100 people at its localisation services office in Dublin, announced that it would open an additional facility in Ballina.

This initiative aimed to build on its quality assurance experience from localisation projects and to deliver a broader range of software testing services.

January

The National Software Directorate (NSD), which was based inside the Forbairt development agency, introduced a new programme to assist more software companies to avail of localisation and platform porting services. Its internationalisation scheme focused on smaller, Irish-owned developers, few of which had previously engaged with the pool of software translation and order fulfilment specialists in Dublin.

This initiative highlighted the reality that the localisation service firms had concentrated their efforts on contract work for the big names of the US software industry.

January

Software Translation Artwork Recording (STAR), a Swiss developer of translation memory, terminology management and quality assurance tools, expanded into Ireland.

The company’s sales and support office in Bray offered training, helpdesk and consulting services for STAR’s localisation technologies.

January

Florida-based outsourcing specialist Sykes Enterprises purchased McQueen, just nine months after the Scottish company had bought the former Rand McNally services business in Shannon.

After a couple of years Sykes wound down the localisation unit in Shannon. From then on its Irish subsidiary focused on fulfilment and call centre services.

March

Apple Computer closed the manufacturing operations of its Claris subsidiary in Blanchardstown, making 40 localisation specialists redundant.

This move followed a decision to restructure Claris into FileMaker Inc., which would focus on database software. All of the other Claris products reverted to the parent company.

April

David MacDonald joined Bray-based International Translation & Publishing as chief executive. He had been managing director at ICL Ireland for the preceding five years. Prior to that, he had set up the first localisation unit in Dublin at the Lotus Development facility in Santry, followed by a spell as the corporation’s director of international consulting services.

Read David MacDonald’s testimony

April

Start-up Connect Business Solutions offered a ‘globalisation’ service for software applications that required complex re-engineering to operate in International markets.

Eugene McGinty, its founder and CEO, was previously a manager at Claris and brought in several of his former colleagues from the Apple subsidiary. Other recruits at the new Dublin-based company had worked for the local branches of Lotus, Oracle and Microsoft.

Connect Business Solutions targeted its professional services at multinational customers.

April

ITP, which had built up a sideline activity in translation tools development, sold its S-Tagger conversion software to Trados. This technology converted FrameMaker and Interleaf files into a format that could easily be edited in Microsoft Word. Trados had previously distributed the ITP product.

Trados established a development unit in Dublin, staffed by a team that moved from ITP. The two companies subsequently collaborated on additional enhancements to the Trados Translator’s Workbench.

May

A workshop at the Localisation Resources Centre was the launchpad for the Certified Localisation Professional project. This EU-funded initiative established an industry advisory group to define job profiles and competencies for the localisation industry.

The initiative produced new assessment and accreditation processes for trainees and employees.

May

The National Software Directorate (NSD) completed an analysis of the size and composition of the software industry in Ireland. According to this survey, four per cent of the 669 companies on its files were engaged in software localisation.

The NSD also calculated that 14 per cent of the 18,400 employees in the industry were working on software localisation. This estimate, however, covered a wide range of roles and was not intended to indicate the number of localisation engineers.

July

Cork-based start-up Quality Automation introduced a new testing toolset for the localisation industry, based on technology from Segue Software.

According to the company, its offering automated the verification processes that localisation service providers required at the end of each project.

August

Bowne Global Solutions signed a memorandum of understanding with Oracle for the localisation of its computer based training materials into multiple languages. Bowne’s Dublin office was responsible for project management.

This agreement, which covered analysis, translation, engineering and multimedia services, was worth around $1 million for Bowne.

October

The Euromap project set out to lay the foundations for new language technology partnerships that would bid for funding under the forthcoming Fifth Framework Programme. Euromap offered comprehensive information on human language technologies for researchers, suppliers and potential users.

Adapt Localisation Consultants, a start-up company run by Localisation Resources Centre director Reinhard Schaeler, acted as a national focal point for Euromap in Ireland.

December

Pat Clark, a tools developer who had worked for Symantec, released the ToolProof bug detector. This product automatically examined the user interface of localised applications to detect anomalies in their dialogues and menus.

December

The Localisation Resources Centre (LRC) moved from University College Dublin to the University of Limerick and changed its title to the Localisation Research Centre. This transition followed the end of a funding programme run by Forbairt and its successor, Enterprise Ireland.

At the new name signified, the LRC in its new guise placed more emphasis on national, EU and industry research activities.

March

American web content developer Magnet Interactive opened an Irish subsidiary to support its GlobalReach business unit. GlobalReach focused on multilingual and culture-adapted web sites and multimedia applications for international clients.

Magnet hired four executives from Bowne Global Solutions to provide localisation experience for this initiative.

April

Speech recognition technology vendor Lernout & Hauspie announced the first real-time language translation service on the web and concentrated its efforts to attract paying users on the localisation industry in Dublin.

The Belgian developer tailored this service to suit short documents. It was based on the company’s iTranslator machine translation software, which supported bi-directional translations for more than a dozen language pairs.

Lernout & Hauspie named Esat Telecom Group as a web portal partner for this service, reporting that Esat had identified a requirement for quick translations among its business customers. Lernout & Hauspie had opened an Irish sales subsidiary in 1997.

April

Sun Microsystems released Global Application Developers Kit 1.0 for applications running on its Solaris operating system.

This resource facilitated the use of multiple languages in a single application environment. Developers could design language-neutral versions of their applications and then allow users to input, display and output text in many languages.

Sun was already shipping the Solaris operating system in 37 languages.

May

Epicor Software designated its Dublin operations centre as a worldwide localisation hub. The Irish subsidiary proceeded to increase employment and to translate Epicor’s enterprise management applications into more languages.

Formerly known as Platinum Software Corporation, the California-based developer had opened its European support centre in Dublin in 1993. The company subsequently expanded and diversified through acquisitions and the support centre added localisation to its activities in 1998.

June

DLG Software Services announced that it was opening an office in Boston to sell localisation engineering and testing services to software firms in the US.

September

ITP launched FastTrack, a web- and email-based ‘e-localization’ service that offered a quick turnaround for small to medium-sized projects. Job submission, costing and delivery were all channelled through the internet.

The company promised a maximum turnaround of 72 hours for translating documents of 2,500 words or less.

September

Printech International, the Clondalkin-based parent company of International Translation and Publishing, changed its name to SerCom Solutions.

The new identity signified the company’s evolution from batch printing to supply chain management services for the computer industry.

November

Siebel Systems, a maker of customer relationship management software, announced the establishment of its European Services Centre in Galway. A technical services group at the new operation would conduct software engineering, localisation and development.

December

Dublin-based localisation specialist Vistatec announced that the European Union had awarded it a $250,000 research grant to create a knowledge base for European companies engaging in e-business. This resource would cover the legal, taxation and currency issues involved in international trade, along with security and technical data and geographically specific linguistic and cultural concerns.

Vistatec established a sister company, GlobalTec, to develop this knowledge base and set out to attract venture capital for its new initiative.

January

AOL Technologies held an official opening ceremony for its international software centre in Citywest. This was the facility that Netscape Communications set up in 1997. America Online (AOL) had acquired Netscape in 1999 in a deal valued at $10 billion.

Under its new owner, the Citywest operation was responsible for software and service localisation across nine European countries, supporting the recently merged businesses of AOL, Netscape and CompuServe. This was AOL’s first development centre outside the US.

February

Lernout & Hauspie acquired Dublin-based localisation engineering firm Clockworks International and integrated the company’s operations into its Mendez internet and globalisation division.

March

Localisation product developer SDL International acquired International Translation and Publishing Limited (ITP) for $22.75 million.

ITP’s previous owner, investment firm DCC, had put the company up for sale at a time when the valuations of information technology firms everywhere had been inflated by a fashion for ‘dot com’ businesses.

Mark Lancaster, who founded SDL in 1992, had previously headed a Lotus Development document translation group in Staines, England.

July

TextTrans, a Dublin start-up led by Claudio Costa, took over the localisation services business of Translation Craft. It continued the earlier company’s work on software applications in Brazilian Portuguese.

SDL International took over Translation Craft’s localisation tools business, which had expanded into a range of quality assurance products for localisation engineers.

September

A corporate consolidation exercise at Corel transferred the operations of its Dublin office back to its headquarters in Canada. Dublin had held worldwide responsibilities for production, localisation and certain areas of engineering and finance.

Corel noted that some Dublin-based employees would be given relocation opportunities when their office closed. It also indicated that the new structure would integrate product localisation into an earlier stage of its software development cycle.

September

Three Dublin-based localisation engineers – Ian Dunlop at Novell, Paul Quigley at Oracle and Liz Tierney at Sun – initiated a project to design a single industry standard that could encapsulate the multiple file types used by software companies and localisation service providers.

This collaboration produced the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF), which aimed to streamline the exchange of text, glossaries, translation memory and software code. The consortium completed the first version of a specification in April 2001 and made this work freely available. The group then asked the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) to approve XLIFF as an open standard.

OASIS convened a technical committee to oversee the further development of XLIFF at the start of 2002. Tony Jewtushenko, who was based at Oracle’s organisation in Ireland, chaired this committee. In February OASIS released a draft document on XLIFF 1.0 for review by its members and other interested parties.

October

Alpnet, a US-based language services provider, opened a Dublin office in Upper Mount Street to sell its multilingual consulting and localisation services.

October

Oracle’s Worldwide Product Translation Group in Dublin announced the completion of its largest localisation product, in which a team of 40 staff managed almost 500 translators and language specialists around the world.

A single global process and toolset facilitated the release of 28 language versions of Oracle’s new E-Business Suite 11. This fully integrated set of enterprise applications included financials, human resources, manufacturing, supply chain management and customer relationship management.

October

Berlitz GlobalNet announced the opening of a new building in Dun Laoghaire where all of its 350 employees would work under the same roof.

According to the company, this operation was now the world’s largest localisation facility.

November

California-based Uniscape, which had positioned itself as an e-business globalisation specialist, launched a new Dublin office to oversee its European operations.

November

Gladstone, a publicly-quoted company in Britain, announced plans to acquire localisation provider DLG Software Services for £5.4 million and to merge the business with its Ge.world globalisation division.

The combined entity, Transware, became a specialist in localisation for e-learning software.

December

Corel spun out its Catalyst integrated translation system to a new Dublin-based company, Alchemy Software Development, in which it retained a minority shareholding.

The CEO of Alchemy, Tony O’Dowd, had been general manager of Corel’s Irish subsidiary, while localisation industry pioneer David MacDonald became chairman of the new venture.

Four months later Alchemy announced a partnering programme through which a select group of localisation service companies could develop customised versions of its software translation platform. The first authorised partner under this scheme was another Dublin-based firm, Vistatec, which welcomed the new arrangement as a means to deliver further added value to its clients.

LocalizationWorks, a new web-based recruitment service, aimed to establish an online community environment for localisation professionals worldwide.

Damian Scattergood, a former localisation technology group manager at the Symantec facility in Dublin, fronted this initiative.

Localisation services provider Moravia IT opened an office in Dublin. The company, which originated in the Czech Republic, had been an early adopter of machine translation techniques.

August

Bowne Global Solutions outbid Lionbridge Technologies in a contest to purchase Lernout & Hauspie’s Mendez internationalisation business, including the former Clockworks International group in Dublin.

Lernout & Hauspie was embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings, following a major financial scandal in the previous year.

Bowne now claimed to be the world’s biggest software localisation services company. Its existing Dublin office, however, was responsible for sales and administration rather than production.

January

Oracle’s Worldwide Product Localization Group (WPLG), which was headquartered in East Point, Dublin, had grown to include engineering centres in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.

WPLG now employed 265 people – 90 of them based at East Point – and was delivering Oracle products in 30 languages.

One of the group’s recent projects focused on employment regulations in Ireland. WPLG had produced an Irish edition of the human resources management module in the Oracle E-Business Suite.

January

SDL International acquired Alpnet for approximately $7 million in cash.

Alpnet’s revenues were higher than those of its buyer – more than $50 million in the previous year – but the American company had experienced a cash shortage and a fall in its share value.

January

The Localisation Resource Centre at the University of Limerick joined with Alchemy Software Development to launch a certified training course for Catalyst users. Version 4.0 of Alchemy’s project management environment was now oriented towards the translation of XML-based applications and web sites.

This initiative aimed to establish ‘Catalyst Certified Professional’ as evidence of skills attainment in the localisation industry.

In the same month Alchemy opened its first permanent sales and administration office in the US in Portland, Oregon. The company chose this location because it planned to target a cluster of Microsoft-oriented software developers in the Pacific Northwest.

February

Fifteen language service providers from twelve countries formed a non-profit trade association: Globalization and Localization Association (GALA). Its membership did not include localisation groups inside software companies.

May

Translation technology developers Trados from Germany and Uniscape from the US announced an agreement to merge under the Trados name.

June

Damian Scattergood and Paul Quigley launched Key Performance Solutions, promoting it as the world’s first automated localisation solutions provider.

The Dublin-based start-up offered an evaluation service that identified aspects of a software localisation process that could benefit from automation. It then guided clients through business process re-engineering and automation process development programmes, aiming to reduce engineering costs, improve quality or enhance time to market.

Within weeks of the company’s inception, the founders accepted an offer to become part of the STAR Group.

Read Damian Scattergood’s testimony

July

The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP) was formally registered as a non-profit organisation. Its founder, Reinhard Schäler, was director of the Localisation Research Centre (LRC).

TILP was a representative body for localisation professionals. It developed industry partnerships and a range of services for its international membership.

The LRC also relaunched its magazine, previously named Localisation Ireland, as Localisation Focus. This new identity reflected the international character of the journal, which was now published quarterly and circulated to some 2,000 localisation professionals around the world.

September

Bowne Global Solutions acquired Berlitz GlobalNet in a move that combined two of the largest suppliers of translation services.

This transaction followed a decision by the owner of Berlitz to focus the organisation on language education. The Berlitz management team in Dublin tried to buy the localisation business, but Bowne also made a bid and won out.