SDL International (London Stock Exchange: SDL), a major globalization products and solutions company, today announced that C.R. Laurence, a leading supplier to the glazing, construction and automotive industries, will use SDL's Enterprise Translation Server to enable multilingual translations of the company's e-commerce website. The site, www.crlaurence.com, will now be entirely multilingual, supporting the original English content as well as Spanish to sustain its strong existing sales to the Latin American market and also French to build market share in French-speaking markets such as Canada.

 With more than 20,000 different products and a full range of value-added services, C.R. Laurence provides a comprehensive catalog of tools, supplies and hardware for numerous industrial glass shops throughout the Americas. C.R. Laurence's fast growing and popular website is accessed by thousands of customers who enjoy the speed and convenience of this point of entry. With rapid expansion into Canada and a history of sales in Mexico and South America, C.R. Laurence needed to communicate with a growing market in their native language.

"The e-commerce site enables C.R. Laurence to extend products and services to global marketplaces as never before. The challenge was to adapt our vast online catalog for customer segments in their own language. But with frequently changing content, human translation was simply not a viable approach to eliminating language barriers," said Dan Roach, vice president of systems at C.R. Laurence. "We needed an economical solution that would provide our French- and Spanish-speaking customers with the same browsing and buying experience that our English-speaking customers currently enjoy. SDL's Enterprise Translation Server was not only cost-effective but delivered translations that did not compromise our content nor our ability to communicate with all our customers."

The Enterprise Translation Server will power translations of the entire catalog, which comprises the bulk of the C.R. Laurence e-commerce site. Experienced, in-house translators will translate static content, such as the home page, corporate information, articles and press releases. Web visitors will be routed to the English-language site on default, but icon flags will provide quick access to the Spanish- and French-language sites.

"More and more companies are realizing that local language content improves the opportunity for worldwide sales on the Internet," said Mark Lancaster, Chairman and CEO of SDL International. "Yet, language translation is one of the most complex steps in the globalization process. 'Enterprise Translation Server' substantially eases the cost burdens for organizations such as C.R. Laurence, enabling them to compete on a global scale."

About C.R. Laurence

C.R. Laurence is a leading supplier to the glazing, industrial, construction and automotive industries. Offering more than 20,000 different products, the company serves their marketplace from 19 locations throughout North America and Europe. For additional information, contact C.R. Laurence at +1 (800) 421-6144 or visit the website at www.crlaurence.com.

About Enterprise Translation Server

Enterprise Translation Server is a real-time translation system that enables instant cross-language communication, collaboration and commerce in multiple languages. The product translates up to 3 million words per hour (depending on network and client speed) and performs translations for up to 26 language directions, such as English to French, Japanese to English and Russian to German, covering translation between languages used by 90 percent of all Internet users. Although translations generated by Enterprise Translation Server are not perfect, they provide the context for a 'gist' of the meaning and, more importantly, provide such translations very fast. Customized and domain-specific (business, law, etc.) plug-in dictionaries can be used to improve overall real-time translation quality. For more information about the SDL Enterprise Translation Server, please click here.