Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG is developing a computer-assisted translation system in Spain. The project is based at its Software Development Centre in Barcelona and Siemens hopes to market the system this year. The team in Catalonia is being supported by Siemens Nixdorf in Germany and by a grant from the Ministry of Industry as part of PEIN III the Third National Electronic Information Plan. The system will include translation from English and German into Spanish and vice-versa, as well as Castilian (Spanish) into Catalan. A representative of Siemens Nixdorf in Spain says the system is being treated as one of Siemens’s most important office automation modules and claims that it is truly innovative, in that complex algorithms are being incorporated that analyse each word within its context, and thus it could be described as an intelligent automatic translation system. Siemens is looking to interest large corporate organisations and businesses in the system, such as the Foreign Ministry and companies in the electronics field, which have reams to translate every year. Universities are also a target and the University of Leon could well be the first customer.
