Language Weaver taps integrators

Integrators have helped Language Weaver cultivate a government niche for its automated language translation product.

The company, based in Marina del Rey, Calif., does 90 percent of its business in the public sector. It has crafted ad hoc and strategic alliances with integrators to help penetrate that market, including a recently announced reseller pact with CACI International. CACI will integrate Language Weaver's software into its Document Exploitation suite, which analyzes information originating in foreign languages.

"Integrators and [original equipment manufacturers] and people with an eye on applications are of vital importance to us," said Bryce Benjamin, Language Weaver’s chief executive officer. "Our products are being integrated by many of the integrators around the Beltway."

Language Weaver develops statistical machine translation software that automates human language translation. Benjamin said the company’s Arabic-to-English translation product, which debuted in late 2003, was the first to garner attention.

The company also offers software modules that provide bidirectional translation for the following language pairs: Chinese-English, Spanish-English and French-English. Language Weaver's unidirectional products provide Somali-to-English and Hindi-to-English translation.

Language Weaver's deal with CACI is the only one involving a Washington, D.C.-area firm. But the company also has government-oriented alliances with BBN Technologies, a research and development firm based in Cambridge, Mass., and SPSS, a maker of analytical software headquartered in Chicago.

BBN uses Language Weaver technology with its Audio Monitoring System, according to BBN's Web site. The system transcribes the audio streams of international TV broadcasts, and Language Weaver translates them into English. SPSS offers Language Weaver's translation software as an option with the latest versions of its text-mining solutions, LexiQuest Mine and Text Mining for Clementine, according to SPSS.

"They are integrating our language capability into their data-analysis tools," Benjamin said, noting that SPSS sells products in the federal sector.

Back in Washington, Language Weaver has assigned a support person to cover the local market. Benjamin said he expects to significantly expand support for D.C.-area partners in the next two years. The company teams with local integrators on a project-by-project basis and also strikes longer-term reseller arrangements in which an integrator embeds the company’s technology in its own product offering.