Knowledgebase

This Knowledgebase contains a collection of questions that users of this Forum have asked over the years. It is regularly updated as more questions and answers are added.

Learn about the problems and issues described by industry professionals like you, and their resolutions by industry experts. Find useful information on:

• International business and business development
• Documentation and cultural issues
• Localization, business aspects, analysis, statistics, vendors
• Software, architecture, development
• Technology and tools

Click on the above list items to go to the specific section or use the Find command in your browser to search for keywords.

International Business

Business Development in China

QUESTION: Knowing that there is huge potential in China, and that there is a lot of government intervention, how does a company begin to enter that market(s)?

ANSWER: China is a big market but very risky. Look at what happened to the US company, Amway. They invested over $100 Million in that country and now they can't even sell because the Chinese government has changed its mind. I'm not trying to discourage companies from penetrating that market, but I want to point out that to minimize the risks, companies should look at China as a long term investment plan. US companies tend to focus on quarterly financial performance but this business model wouldn't make sense for that country.

Companies need to rely on lots of expertise and "localized" marketing effort to put in place a successful business plan, like Kodak has done.

There are a number of consulting companies specialized in providing that kind of support. The US Department of Commerce is a starting point. Refer to Commercial Service, Department of Commerce (DOC) in the Organization page. For specific business/financial information on China refer to the Asia page in the News Archive of this site.

International Economics

QUESTION: I study economics at Tel-Aviv university and I'd like to know if there is something new in terms of economics theories specific to e-commerce. Maybe the "rules" of economic in e-commerce are different than the "rules" that apply in regular commerce? This is based on the observation that e-commerce doesn't have physical boundaries and the number of people using the Internet is very large. Moreover, any user in the world can always obtain "complete information" about products developed in other countries and foreign customers can ask for lower pricing if they can show that similar products are sold at a lower price in other parts of the world. Are all these things causing something new in economics theory?

ANSWER = If I understand your question correctly, you are asking if traditional economic rules apply to the new world of E-Commerce. Well, that's a big topic. E-Commerce is still at its early infancy and it's hard to make any kind of predictions on how it will evolve. You have already observed how doing business over the Internet is changing worldwide pricing policies. For instance, the Internet seems to exert an enormous pressure on US corporations to use the same pricing structure for all their customers, independently from their location. It'll be interesting to see how US Corporations will respond to that pressure over time and how they will make up for the additional cost of localizing their products and services for different customers around the world.

Documentation

Cultural Issues

QUESTION: I am looking to help our Communications Department create collateral material that would be neutral enough, if that is possible, to target all countries. If that is not possible I would like to learn how to make sure that we will not be insulting our prospect international customers with our literature, collateral, Demos etc.

ANSWER: Yes it is possible to create "neutral" documentation for a global audience. The new courseware material I wrote has a complete section about this problem and how to solve it. For more info, refer to the courseware page.

QUESTION: I work at AT&T Labs in New Jersey on a small globalization team. I'm looking for a comprehensive list of numbers, which have unlucky or otherwise negative connotations in countries around the world. I have only seen specific mention of the Western interpretation of 7, 13, 69, and 666, and the Asian interpretation of the numbers 4, 7, 8, and 9. Are you aware of any specific sources of information about numbers, or of any references that might list them? I would be grateful for any leads you could provide.

ANSWER: For cultural issues like numbers, refer to the book:
"Guide to Macintosh Software Localization"
Author: Apple Computer Inc.
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA, 1992
ISBN: 0-20-160856-1

Find more info in the Publications page. I also recommend you contact all of your International offices, subsidiaries, 3rd party vendors, distributors and resellers and get more specific information from them.

QUESTION: I have been working in software localization for over 10 years and have yet to locate definitive sources on collating sequences for European languages. Do you know of any? I am particularly interested in information on the effects of extended characters on the sort results? Hoping you can help.

ANSWER: When we were writing the book "Software Internationalization and Localization: An Introduction", my co-authors and myself got information regarding collating rules for languages other than English by talking to people in the SW industry, including distributors and resellers in Europe and Asia. We also contacted LISA (the Int’l Localization Standards Association), ISO and other official standards organizations (see the Industry Organizations page). Refer to the Collating Sequences section in the book SW Internationalization and Localization that I co-authored; check the extensive Bibliography on page 286 that lists books such as "Keys to Sort and Search for Culturally Expected Results" by Denis Garneau. The Publications page contains more books on this subject.

QUESTION: Is there a translation guide available from Apple?

ANSWER: I'm not aware that Apple has released a specific Apple Translation Guide, but I'm listing the books that talk about the topic in which you are interested:

Guide to Macintosh Software Localization
Author: Apple Computer Inc.
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA, 1992
ISBN: 0-20-160856-1

Writing Localizable Software for the Macintosh
Author: D.R.Carter
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA, 1991
ISBN: 0-201-57013-0

Refer to the Publications page for additional books on the subject.

QUESTION: I am currently looking for publications about console, video and PC games localization and internationalization. Would you have a list of Web sites, books, magazines or articles on this subject? Thank you very much for your collaboration. I am looking forward to your reply.

ANSWER: Refer to the News Archive section and the Publications page. You'll see the Localization Articles link that will take you to a listing of articles on SW Internationalization and Localization and the multimedia listing. The new TGP Courseware material that I use for my seminars and workshops on SW Internationalization and Localization contains information on this topic. I wrote the instructional material myself because I couldn't find any books on the subject.

QUESTION: Please let me say that you have developed an excellent website! I found a lot of good information, and would like a bit of professional advice. I have decide to begin putting my interests to work for me, and beginning my own consulting business. As such, I would really like to hear about your early days, some of the lessons learned, and any counsel that might be given.

ANSWER: I recommend the following book "The Secrets of Consulting" by Gerald M. Weinberg, published by DORSET House Publishing, ISBN: 0-932633-01-3

QUESTION: Do you know of any source of information about the differences between the Silicon Valley and Boston area's economies?

ANSWER: There's a great book by Annalee Saxenian "Regional Advantage" published by Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-75339-9 that compares culture and competition between Route 128 (Boston area) and Silicon Valley.

Localization

Business Aspects

QUESTION: I am right now investigating the possibility to use Localization vendors to handle the translation of the Help & Documentation files in French, German, and Spanish for future projects. Everybody in the company is fed up with the way the localization has been performed in the past years by using the distributors (a lot of problems), and believes the Localization Vendor is the right solution. I am trying to warn them and make them aware of the risks we have to face by outsourcing to a localization vendor, so that the decision is made with these facts in mind. My question is what are the potential risks/issues we might have to face with a localization vendor? (High costs, project management, quality, etc.). I will highly appreciate your precious expert advice.

ANSWER: Today most of the companies (large and small) outsource all their localization work. Why, because it works better than relying on subsidiaries which typically don’t' have the resources, the time or the expertise to do a high quality translation when requested by the headquarters. Even Microsoft is not using its subs anymore, but localization vendors. You have to select your vendors carefully, after having evaluated their skills. Most localization managers are only interested in using cheap translators, but then they run into serious quality problems. As long as you select a very professional vendor and manage the vendor well and provide the vendor with all it's needed to do a good translation, you have a good chance to deliver quality localized products. Obviously, if the SW is not internationalized before it gets translated and text strings are still hard-coded, this is your problem, not the vendor's problem and you need to fix it before you start the translation. Otherwise the translation will take longer and will cost more than if the SW were first internationalized. Another important factor to consider is when to start the translation. If you start to soon, when the SW is not frozen, the translation will have to go through much iteration and series of updates while the US version gets updated and finalized. If you start the translation too late, your foreign customers may have to wait too long for their localized versions and you may loose some customers if you have lots of competition. Keep also in mind you need to establish a sound localization business plan and strategy.

Localization Business Analysis

QUESTION: I don't know if you remember me, but we were on a panel together at one of the Internationalization Conferences a few years ago. I have just added to my development manager role, the product marketing role and I am looking for data or statistics to assist in the forecasting of increased revenues due to localization. I.E. if I localize this product, I can earn this much more revenue in the target markets, than if I try to sell an English product in the same markets. Would you know of such surveys or analysis that would be useful in justifying or influencing product localization within an organization?

ANSWER: All the data I’ve seen regarding this subject is private. I do this kind of business analysis for companies that want to start their Int'l business or companies that to increase their existing Int’l revenues. It is unfortunate that there's not much public data regarding this topic. Webcom, one of the leading voices in the SW arena, states that "export sales and operations typically account for 50% or more of revenues for the largest SW companies".

From my experience with SW companies located in Silicon Valley, California USA, it is common to derive 40% ~ 70% of total gross revenues from overseas. Some of the major SW publishers use 20% return on investment as a business practice for justifying the decision to localize their product offerings. But I’ve also seen 5% ROI being applied. It also depends on variables such as market conditions and economic factors. If you plan to localize your products for China, you need to formulate your business proposition as a long-term (a decade or so) investment.

QUESTION: I've heard that many US companies go to Ireland to have their products localized? Why?

ANSWER: Ireland has attracted US companies for a long time (e.g. Ashton Tate was one of the first companies to establish an office there) because of cheap labor and tax advantages. There are other regions that have tried to clone Ireland's appeal: the Benelux, the Netherlands, Sweden/Norway, Scotland and the Cote d'Azure (south of France).

Localization Industry Statistics

QUESTION: Where can I find IT market statistics for countries other than the USA?

ANSWER: You can find Global Internet Statistics by Language at Global Reach's site at: http://www.euromktg.com/globstats/index.html

QUESTION: I want to compliment you on the work you have done to advance the industry and the books you have written. I wonder whether you might have any idea of how large the software localization industry might be in the US and worldwide? Who might have done this research?

ANSWER: I'm not aware of any comprehensive study conducted to qualify and quantify the SW Localization Industry around the world. SPA, the Software Publishers Association publishes some interesting research on US global software sales

The problem with SPA and Webcom's data is that they publish total numbers of software sales without making a distinction of how much the localization accounted for the numbers. Another problem is that their numbers are based on data collected from the SW companies that belong to the association. What about the publishers that do not belong to the association?

One of the problems of statistics for the localization business is how publishers define localization. It's not unusual for SW companies to do only a partial localization: for instance, when introducing US software to Japan, many companies decide to keep the user's interface in English and add functionality so that the software can run on   Japanese computer systems. In this scenario, the only component that is translated is the documentation. Later on, when the demand for the product grows, companies may decide to localize the SW components as well. Depending on the country and marketplace, US   companies may not need to translate either documentation or software. This is the case when they sell to Scandinavian countries since English is commonly used in that region.

A comprehensive research on the SW Localization business generated in the world should start with the task of identifying the centers of SW productions such as Silicon Valley, Route 128, Highway 81, Texas, New York, Chicago, Colorado, Canada, Ireland, Telecom Valley France, etc. Statistics should include revenues for partially localized products and should take into consideration that the cost of localization decreases as a percentage of sales depending on the success of the software.

QUESTION: Today, I just attended one electronics and one software show which my company puts on and there were no localizers present, so I gather that localization is a very peripheral portion of the business; for most companies it's probably just a pain and nothing else, since the software market in English speaking countries probably amounts to between 50% -70% of the global market depending on the product. My guess would be that it's only the big global players like Microsoft that need the "40 languages-one release date" slogan to keep on top of competitors. I know that this probably does not sound amusing to the industry but I think it's reality. My personal conviction is that it is most productive to take things for what they are and to work with them from there. Thus, I think the real concern is then, How to gain more respect for the localization industry, how to market and how to promote properly for everyone's benefit, whether the software developers, the publishers, the localizers, the distributors, the end-users and the economy as a whole. In order to do this, it is necessary to co-ordinate the software localization industry globally, so as to do global research, encourage global networking and joint promotion through marketing campaigns and global industry association co-ordination. Sounds easy right?!?!? Wrong! It's very difficult to get industries to co-operate. I see it in my line of work: everyone would rather be the boss of something small than a small part of something big.

ANSWER: Fortunately for the industry there are many companies (Apple, Sun, HP, Claris, Oracle, etc. etc.) that like Microsoft have understood the revenue gain and growth potential of localizing their products early on. There are also organizations such as LISA, the Int'l Localization Standards Associations, that promote standardization and cooperation in the industry. Check the Organizations page for a list of these associations.

Translation Vendors

QUESTION: Are there companies out there that specialize in Web site translation? Who are they? How do these companies usually charge for their services (by the word, project)?

ANSWER: Many localization vendors now offer translation of web pages to attract new business. Carefully evaluate what the localization vendor means by claiming to be "expert" or "specialized" in WEB pages translation. Also evaluate what your web site plan and needs are and find a vendor that can deliver what you need. In other words, are you looking for translation of web pages text, or other services such as HTML/XML coding, internationalization of the site’s layout and navigation system, internationalization of graphics, multi-lingual browser support, setting up demos of localized products?

First clarify your plan and then shop around. Vendors tend to over-sell their capabilities and know-how. For a listing of quality translation services visit the Localization page.

Some localization vendors charge by word, others by page. Others charge an hourly fee depending on the task.

Your selection criteria should include important factors such as quality, experience, track record of customer satisfaction, consistently meeting deadlines, good business cooperation and communication. Don't rely on pricing only. If you select a vendor only because offers the cheapest rates, you may regret the decision later on, during the actual project.

One alternative to using traditional translation agencies is to rely on independent professional translators (professionals that do not work for translation agencies). Refer to the list of professional translators at the Translators page. Some Localization vendors may try to maximize their profits by hiring junior and inexperienced translators who are less expensive than senior translators. Always check the background and references of the translators you want to hire. If you hire a Localization vendor, ask them to provide you the curriculum of the translators they will use to handle your project. Select translators with many years of experience and who are familiar with your products and industry.

You’ll find more information in the courseware material at this site.

Software

Architecture and Development

QUESTION: My company is moving towards internationalization, and is considering the usefulness of using the I18N (Internationalization) model. Our OS platforms will be SCO UNIX, OS/2, and all flavors of Windows. Windows does not seem to have very nice I18N (Internationalization) support at the library (C or DLL) level. The other OSs do have it.

ANSWER: I don't understand why you say Windows does not seem to have very nice i18n support at the library (C or DLL) level.

In Windows 32 there's an extensive NLSAPI. WINDOWS.H defines generic data types, TCHAR, LPTSTR, TEXT macros that resolve to an ANSI or UNICODE type depending on compiler flags. With generic declarations it is possible to maintain a single set of source files and compile them for Unicode or ANSI support.

MFC3 and Visual C++2 run-time libraries support ANSI, multibyte and Unicode text processing. In Win32 you can store multiple languages of a given resource in a single EXE or DLL, search for resources based on type, name and language. There are a variety of locales types for date, time, currency, calendar and other country conventions support. And more and more APIs for Int'l support.

Technology and Tools

Development Tools and Translation Tools

QUESTION: We are in the middle of internationalization/localization process of our product. Our source code is written on Borland C++ v. 5.1 wherein a) the client-side of our products running on Windows (NT/95/98) b) the server-side are running on IBM AIX 4.3 and Windows NT. There is a plan to port the said server-side on the other UNIX flavor. What kind of localization kit are you recommending beside your flagship product that we could use for coding, testing, and reengineering our source code?

ANSWER: Based on my experience, these are the localization development tools I recommend:
Global C is a powerful run-time library that enables your software developers to create single-source applications that are cross-platform portable and multilingual. Using Global C, developers build a single application code base that is free of language dependencies. Language-dependent data is stored in decoupled resource files which are created and updated by linguists, then compiled into resource files. Global C currently supports seventeen major operating systems including (Windows 3.x 95, NT, NT on Alpha, OS/2, AS400, MVS, Solaris and other major UNIX derivations) and virtually all spoken languages. Its run-time library assures developers that their programs are ready for translation regardless of language, OS or code set. JAVA is also supported.
Global Checker is designed to save developers time during the multibyte enabling process. It first scans any C and C++ source file, then identifies and reports any potential National Language Support (NLS) issues in the source code. Solutions are then suggested through an extensive on-line Help system. Although some of the architectural-level issues may require direct intervention, Global Checker automates the process of quickly isolating most embedded NLS bugs. This saves your developers valuable time and money. A developer with little NLS experience can quickly scan large amounts of code, thus speeding your product to market. Global Checker also serves as a QA tool for acceptance testing to ensure that previously enabled code remains NLS enabled. Many companies have been using the above tools (e.g. Oracle, Sybase, PeopleSoft, Red Brisk Systems, Phone.com, Sagent Technologies, etc.) If you like I can ask the developers to provide you with an evaluation copy of Global C.

QUESTION: I'm looking for a tool to localize two of our Unix software products into Japanese. Each product has a 296 page user's guide, installation and release notes, and on-screen message files for the applications. There is no GUI. I'm looking for translation as well as QA assistance. We have a Japanese distributor who will help with testing the final work.

ANSWER: Visit the tool section of this site. There's the description of an object-oriented tool for cross platform, I18N development called Zinc as well as information on many other tools with similar functionality.

QUESTION: I am looking for any information that you may have in regards to translation tools for SGML file formats. I have recently conducted a in depth evaluation into the Trados products of translation tools and have found them to be short of our goals with SGML files and translations. If you have any information on tools or utilities it would be most appreciated.

ANSWER: Do you want to find out if there are any commercial translation tools that understand SGML tags and ignore them so that it is possible to translate SGML encoded text?

If that's the case many of the tools described in the Tools page are currently supporting SGML and HTML. By the time you read this, Trados Tools will already include SGML and HTML support.

If you're looking for a powerful SGML text editor, try CheckMark by OmniMark Technologies Corp, formerly Exoterica Corp. which claims to be the dominant SGML conversion product.

QUESTION: Could you please send any and all information that you have on Logos Machine Translation software capabilities?

ANSWER: Logos System is a multi-language machine translation running on SUN workstations. Its main components are:

1. Collection of language-neutral SW elements
2. Databases for source and target data containing Morphology, Dictionaries, Grammars and Semantic Tables for each of the supported languages.
3. User Interface

ALEX is an expert system that automates operations such as dictionary updating. With Alex you can create sub-dictionaries within the main Logos dictionary.

SEMANTHA is the tool to update the Semantic Rulebase, known as the Semantic Table. You can activate or de-activate rules for a particular verb and so on. With Semantha you can create deep structure rules, meaning a single grammatical rule can be applied to many surface structures and variations in part of speech.

The translation process in the Logos system is a mapping operation driven by contrastive linguistics instead of by formal and generative grammars for target languages. Logos believes that this approach is closer to the mental process of a human translator.

Logos Client is a gateway to Logos server automatic translation. From a MS Windows or OSF/Motif environment, Logos client sends documents to the server and retrieves translated documents.

Logos Server is a Unix based application that uses semantic and neural net technology to produce quality translation. It supports seven language pairs: English to German, French, Italian, Spanish and German to English, French and Italian. I know that the company is also working on supporting other languages.

For an example of the translation quality you can obtain from Logos machine translator system, refer to the Tools page. You'll see a list of translations that were done by different localization tools and human translators. Check the French translation done by Logos versus the translation done by Globalink tool. Desktop localization tools such as Globalink lack the sophistication to approximate a translation done by a human translator. That's why these desktop translation tools cannot give you the same quality you can expect from a machine translator system.

QUESTION: What machine translator tool do you recommend? Do you know Systran’s product? What about desktop translation tools?

ANSWER: Machine translation systems are improving, but still require lots of pre-editing and post-editing for the translation to be accurate. These systems are only effective on very limited content domains. They usually don't perform well when translating email or out of context material. SystranSoft is a machine translation system like Logos. Logos only covers the main European languages. The CIA has used SystranSoft for some time, therefore SystranSoft had the opportunity to develop more languages.

Regarding desktop translation tools such as Power Translator by Globalink, they don't do a good job when translating. They can give a rough idea of what the text to translate is about. You can use them for small letters or brief documents or emails. Professional translators do not use desktop tools because they are not designed to understand the grammatical rules and syntax of natural languages.

On the contrary, professional translators use translation memory tools like Trados MultiTerm to manage the translation of the Glossary and terminology of your documents.

On the Mac platform, then you have AppleGlot and GlotEdit tools. For additional information, refer to the Tools page. The new Courseware Material for the SW Industry I wrote also contains an extensive chapter on the most recent tools.

QUESTION: I’m looking for a Dictionary English/Chinese available for the Mac.

ANSWER: Apple developed Apple Advanced Chinese Input Suite product (ACIS).

It’s a Chinese input solution with both speech and handwriting recognition for input in traditional and simplified Chinese. It is available in the US for $165 including the Apple Dictation microphone, from AsiaSoft 1-800-882-8856.

QUESTION: We are a software company that localizes a number of products into a variety of European and Asian languages. We are interesting in changing our handling of strings and other localizable resources in our system, which is quite large. Currently, although we rigorously separate localizable materials into separate files and integrate translated software builds completely into our build process, our materials and processes are very complex to mange, to convey to translation companies, and to test. We use an Access database for our terminology, but this has been problematic for a number of reasons. One of these is that DBCS and non-1252 code page issues require different versions of Access running on different national versions of Windows. We would like to simplify our process and variety of file formats by taking a database approach to managing all of the strings and to integrate the database into the build process. We are looking for a database and set of associated development tools that can handle all kinds of scripts - probably, therefore, in Unicode, and can do this while running under NT 4.0. Can you suggest any possibilities for this? Thanks for your help.

ANSWER: There are no "out-of-the-box" tools solutions on the market that I know of that could solve your problem completely, without any special customization.

If you take care of all conversions to/from your variety of formats and presents a single-format database, I should be able to work with the vendor of a new tool called DejaVue (DV) and arrange for something.

The idea could be to build DV projects reading the source material from your database, instead of from a collection of .doc, .RTF, etc. files. You should be more specific on your requirements so that I could elaborate a more specific proposal from this vendor's tool.

In any case, this is not included in standard DV package and requires development for which DV's vendor would have to charge something. The only documentation available is the product's help file. 

QUESTION: We are considering Translation memory tools and particularly like Trados and Atril’s products. Any advice?

ANSWER: Trados benchmark is becoming very popular among professional translators and I personally know of many Localizers and Translation agencies that are happy with this product’s features. It's also handy for updating and maintaining website content in different languages.

QUESTION: I’m looking for Localization Tools to be used by our distributors. All products that we are, or will be, localizing are 32-bit Windows (95 & NT) native code. This is the only platform we support for the tools we'll be localizing. They are being translated currently into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese. A few other languages such as Thai, Korean, and Dutch may follow. Our code is "partially" Unicode compliant (I'm not sure what that means unless I sit with one of our programmers). All of the translation work is being done by each of our distributors for their country. I explain our current localization process. Our company provides our distributors with the Windows resources, the distributors localize them, then recompile and link the translated files (using MS Visual C++), to make their own product, so to speak. This process has been difficult and had some problems, although we've been partially successful with Japanese and German so far. But I would like a more automated way if there were one that works. One of our products, Quest, is fully ActiveX enabled, so we need to be able to translate all of its ActiveX controls. The others of our products are much less complex, although they are very large applications. We fell upon AppLocalize last month and were very encouraged. It works quite well, and through a few serious problems, the AppLocalize tool’s developers have been incredibly responsive to work with us. But there are still some problems and the software is a little awkward to learn. And since we'd be buying a copy for each of our distributors to use to translate our software, we want to make sure we are making the right choice before jumping in with both feet. We want our distributors to be able to take our executables and completely localize the software themselves, with as little support from us as possible, and hopefully without having to recompile and relink our programs. Then I was led to your website: I don't know any of the software packages you list. I used to work at ALP Systems, now Alpnet, back when they were involved in machine translation 15 years ago, so my only experience is with translation of text, not software. Some of our distributors are one-man shows, others are teams of developers working together to translate the software, documentation, etc. Whatever we buy will never be used by our customers, just our distributors, which in some regards could be considered our own company although they are of course a long way away. Our process is quite well defined, but not at all automated with software localization tools--this is something very new to us and we have never been exposed to options until we fell upon AppLocalize, and now your website.

ANSWER: From what you describe, you/your product team should do well with Corel Catalyst.

Catalyst is not just a tool. It is a new and faster approach to localizing SW. It's an integrated sw development, testing and project management environment that facilitates and expedites your developers, testers and translators' work.

Translators work on a WYSIWYG environment that shows your app's menus, dialogs, and other components such as the help file as they will appear in the Localized product. There's a QuickSpell feature and a Glossary for producing consistent translation.

The Validate Expert feature can detect common localization problems such as truncated dialogs, clipped dialog boxes, missing or duplicate mnemonics, thus reducing your testing cycle. You just need to click on a validation error in Catalyst workspace to open the resource that has a bug.

Catalyst Leverage Expert is the memory translation component that allows you to re-use previously translated SW text strings. Other features are fuzzy string matching and automatic expansion of dialogs.

The Pseudo Translate Expert allows your engineers to identify untranslatable strings, attach notes to special resources, discover if your app doesn't support accented characters, etc. You can also set the expansion of your app's strings to a certain percentage. With Catalyst you can directly localize resources stored in executables, thus reducing lengthy compilations and builds.

The Management feature helps your product team with project coordination tasks and version control.

Catalyst will also allow your developers to create their own resource editors for non-standard resource types. There is a SW Development Kit with full documentation of catalyst API so that your Visual C++ developers can create custom editors using Catalyst Custom Editor Wizard.