Jaap van der Meer interviews Rory Cowan and Mark Lancaster

Surprised by the recent shake-up in the translation industry? The SDL acquisition of TRADOS and the Lionbridge acquisition of Bowne Global Solutions. No, it was about time something big happened. Wasn't it? The previous round of mergers and acquisitions did not change very much, except for the cosmetics of creating some fatter players. The same old pre-occupation with translation being an artistic craftsmanship dominated the heart and soul of every language service provider, large and small. That paradigm is now broken down very fast. The industry leaders have spoken.

The foundation for TAUS (Translation Automation User Society) was laid in a Round Table meeting on November 18, 2004 at the Localization World Conference in San Francisco. Delegates from fifteen companies - all corporate users of translation services and technologies - joined for a full day brainstorming on issues around translation automation. The day turned into a great success. The open discussions and the sharing of experiences and insights helped the participants in the meeting to be better informed and prepared for their own implementation of authoring, translation and globalization technologies.