Jupiter COS Forum, London. Today, Mediasurface Limited announced its alliance with SDL International, the global provider of multilingual 'localisation' and translation services. Mediasurface Limited and SDL International have responded to market demand for localised information 'on demand' through an alliance founded on working practices and integration of the two companies technologies.

 The partnership will bring the ability for localisation of content to the desktop of corporate users throughout the world. Based on the powerful content management application offering from European software vendor Mediasurface Limited, business users will be able to submit content for localisation into the language of their choice, through a Web browser-based interface, to the skilled resources, version control and Translation Memory technologies of SDL International.

"Until now, it wasn't possible for a client to use a single, transparent process in completing their multilingual online investment," explained Mark Lancaster, CEO of SDL. "We are thrilled to be able to join with Mediasurface to offer such an 'end-to-end solution' for the International business."

SDL has an unrivalled position in the global technical localisation and translation market, with blue chip clients built up over a decade of experience. The company also has a substantial investment in the tools associated with this activity, such as 'Translation Memory', which forms a major part of their new solution for multilingual Web sites - 'SDLWorkFlow'. It is this module which will be integrated into Mediasurface 2.0.

Mediasurface 2.0 will be used as the application through which users will submit content for translation that is then returned through email or the browser. This model is a further extension of the Mediasurface philosophy that the Web is just one medium for the distribution of information and does not demand that the corporate user's requirements are Web-based, nor that they have Mediasurface installed.

Commenting on the new alliance, Ben Hayman, CEO of Mediasurface, said "Our clients now see clearly that the web is 'world wide' and that local language content delivery is essential. We are currently in discussion with a number of businesses who are looking to bring highly relevant content to the browsers of a widely divergent and truly world-wide audience. Any sophisticated offering on-line will increasingly need to embrace localisation if it is to truly deliver a value service. The ground-breaking work of both SDL and Mediasurface is now providing an exciting way forward to manage and deliver this."

Mediasurface 2.0 enables direct contribution and management of content by everyone involved in Web communications from the first day of installation, supporting content in a variety of formats. Multi-server architecture provides high volume serving and user support, thus allowing the enterprise to focus on the challenges of doing business on the network, and not the challenges of the technology itself.

"I see the greatest opportunity through the working relationship between Mediasurface and SDL," said Piers Hogarth-Scott, New Media Director at Blueberry New Media and a partner of both Mediasurface and SDL. "Between them, they provide a very powerful offering for second generation e-commerce solutions. The challenge that our clients now face is to act global, but think local - in other words, rolling out their e-commerce solutions to local markets, which require local translations. The Mediasurface and SDL partnership will allow this process to be effective, seamless and painless."