Alchemy Software announced the launch of an industry test drive for their Alchemy Language Exchange, a powerful, high-performance translation asset repository that enables global companies to centralize the storage of any translation asset and help accelerate global product launches.

Alchemy Language Exchange incorporates a powerful SOA based repository which allows companies to reuse previously translated material in future localization projects – a critical benefit that guarantees the cost effectiveness of localization projects, minimizes errors and maximizes translation leverage.

Powered by either a Microsoft SQL or Oracle back end, Alchemy Language Exchange uses web services to facilitate web-based sharing of translation memories and collaboration between project managers, localization engineers and professional translators. It comes with a comprehensive web services SDK to enable quick and easy integration with Alchemy CATALYST and other 3rd party tools such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio and digital content management systems.

Tony O'Dowd, CEO and President of Alchemy Software Development said, “Translation memories are seldom shared. The prevailing model for the industry today is to have a vast number of individual TM's dispersed amongst a project team. This leads to lower re-use, inconsistent translations, and drives higher quality assurance and engineering costs. Alchemy Language Exchange addresses this problem head-on”.

“Alchemy Language Exchange is our new web-based platform to help our clients centralize the storage and management of their corporate translation assets. Combining SOA design techniques and web services, it is built on the most established relational database technology available today, giving it a reliability and robustness unmatched by any other TM system”, said Enda McDonnell, Chief Architect at Alchemy Software Development.

Large enterprise clients such as Siemens, Canon and Citrix are joining the industry trial programme and are deploying Alchemy Language Exchange Servers within their existing localization workflows. The Industry Trial Programme will run up until February 2007. It will then be followed by the commercially available product which will consist of an Enterprise Edition and a free Community Edition.

“Alchemy Language Exchange™ will fundamentally challenge the localization paradigm. Leveraging the power of broadband internet connectivity and web services it enables teams of professional translators connect, communicate and collaborate on their localization projects”, said Craig Myers, Vice-President of Sales & Marketing, “this will accelerate the localization process and reduce lead-time to markets for our enterprise clients.”