Acquisition
February 13 2001 - 2:00AM
UK Regulatory
RNS Number:7771Y
SDL PLC
13 February 2001
Tuesday 13th January
PRESS RELEASE
SDL PLC ACQUIRES ENTERPRISE TRANSLATION SERVER & "TRANSCENDRT" MACHINE
TRANSLATION ENGINE
SDL plc ("SDL International" or "the Company"), a leading provider of
globalization solutions, today announces that it has agreed to acquire the
Automated Real Time Translation Division from Transparent Language, Inc.
("Transparent"), for a total consideration of US$9m. The assets being acquired
by SDL International include the intellectual property rights to Transparent's
TranscendRT machine translation technology and related products, including the
Enterprise Translation Server, which provide instant language translation of
e-mail, web pages, and documents.
The consideration will be satisfied with the payment of $1.5m in cash and
through the issue of $7.5m in new ordinary shares of 1p each in the Capital of
the Company. The division being acquired made a net loss of $3.7 million for
the nine months ended 31 December 2000, which reflects the costs of developing
and launching the TranscendRT technology. The acquisition is expected to be
completed by 15th February 2001.
The Directors of SDL International believe that combining the Enterprise
Translation Server's real time translation technology with SDL International's
leading edge products SDLX and SDLWebFlow, will enable the Company to provide
a complete solution for companies to manage multilingual web site content. The
combination of SDL International's expertise in computer aided translation via
its leading translation memory product SDLX with the high performance
Enterprise Translation Server will provide a powerful commercial solution in
the field of automated translation.
Strategy behind the Acquisition
SDL International's strategy is to consolidate its lead as the world's
pre-eminent globalization solutions provider. The acquisition of Transparent's
technology will allow SDL International to further its position as the leading
software company in the fields of globalization and localization, and
dramatically increases the leverage of the Company's existing software and
multi-lingual content management products, namely SDLX and SDLWebFlow.
Commenting on the acquisition, Mark Lancaster, Chairman and Chief Executive of
SDL International, said:
"The acquisition of Transparent's TranscendRT engine and Enterprise
Translation Server technology significantly advances SDL International's
involvement in real time automated translation. We believe that the technology
being acquired offers the most comprehensive and advanced real time
translation technology available on the market and brings forward by several
years our intention of offering a fully automated and accurate globalization
solution. Transparent's technology will compliment our leading multi-lingual
content management and computer aided translation workflow systems.
"These solutions are geared towards companies that use internal Intranets and
B2B web sites, as well as real time email translation functions. This complete
solution addresses the requirements for businesses that have an international
sales and marketing focus. We believe that SDL International is the first
company to combine machine translation technology with computer aided
translation technology and, when added to our workflow solutions and our
complete integration of content management systems with companies such as
Vignette and Interwoven, we will have the ability to provide customers with
the first real time, low cost solution to bridge all multilingual barriers."
For further information please contact:
Mark Lancaster Tel: 01628 410127
Chairman & Chief Executive
Paul Davies Tel: 020 7523 8309
Collins Stewart
Bobby Morse/Louise Bolton Tel: 020 7466 5000
Buchanan Communications bobbym@buchanan.uk.com
louiseb@buchanan.uk.com
Background information
About SDL International:
SDL International (http://www.sdlintl.com) is a leading provider of
globalization solutions comprising products such as SDLWebFlow and SDLX
combined with localization, engineering and project management services. SDL
has offices throughout USA, Asia and Europe, providing B2B global solutions
with state-of-the-art technology and a full-range of in-house translation
services. Clients include multinational companies such as Oracle, Dun &
Bradstreet, Hewlett Packard, eBay Microsoft, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Adobe and
3Com.
About Transparent language, Inc., the Enterprise Translation Server, and the
TranscendRT automated translation engine:
Transparent Language, Inc., (www.transparentlanguage.com) founded in 1990, is
a specialist language technology developer and multilingual e-learning product
company based in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Transparent employs 90 staff and
had revenues for the year ended 31st March 2000 of US$15.2 million. It has
sales offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Hong Kong, and
Paris, London, Frankfurt and Brussels in Europe.
The Enterprise Translation Server and the TranscendRT engine are leading
technologies that enable automated real-time translations to be performed on
internal or external networks. Documents, emails, web pages and chat sessions
can be translated in 23 different language directions. The technology links
directly into Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, Lotus Notes and Sametime, Sybase
Enterprise Portal and performs automated real-time translation of email,
documents, chat, web pages and other content so each participant views all
text in his or her language. Existing clients for this product include
Lucent, Corning Cable, J&R Computer, EBSCO Publishing, EDS and Brady
Manufacturing.
The acquisition includes FreeTranslation.com, an automatic translation
demonstration site that performs approximately 200,000 translation jobs per
day. Also being acquired by SDL International is Transparent's
PlusTranslation.com site, a leading internet translation service bureau
providing fast, efficient and reliable human translation services over the
Web.
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