Bowne Global Solutions Supports Development of Japanese-Language Version of Hit Palm Computing Products
LOS ANGELES and YOKOHAMA, Japan — April 27, 1999 — Bowne Global Solutions, a unit of Bowne & Co., Inc. (Amex: BNE), today announced completion of a collaborative project that adapted the Palm Computing(R) platform for the Japanese market.
Bowne Global Solutions and 3Com worked jointly throughout the three-step process of consulting, internationalization and localization. In the first step, the team worked with Palm Computing to redefine the feature set of the Palm Computing product line to appeal to users in the Japanese market. In the second step, the underlying code for the organizer software was re-engineered to support the double-byte characters used in Asian languages. Finally, the software itself was localized into Japanese.
In addition to technical services of its Software Asianization Laboratories, Bowne Global Solutions also provided 3Com a complete array of project management services, technical translation, localization engineering, quality assurance testing, and external beta test management services.
The re-engineered product presents a completely Japanese interface to the user, and introduces a newly developed Japanese input system. Other unique features include an expense tracking application, as well as English-to-Japanese and Japanese-to-English dictionaries. These new functions and applications were developed by Bowne Global Solutions in Japan.
The 18-month project culminated in the February announcement by 3Com of the Japanese platform, which allows development of third-party applications, and introduction of IBM's Workpad PC Companion, the first product to be released on the Japanese platform.
"Bowne supported Palm Computing in all aspects of the Japanization of our product," said Kay Ayaki, product marketing manager, Asia/Pacific, at Palm Computing. "It was especially important to us that Bowne had both the high-level technical adaptation capabilities and the ability to enable and localize all the applications, interface, and documentation for our product."
"Our team is very proud to have collaborated with 3Com to create truly Japanese versions of these best-selling products. We look forward to continuing our partnership with 3Com to help Palm Computing products connect with customers around the world — and to working with other companies developing software for the Palm Computing Platform," said Bob Myers, executive vice president, Bowne Global Solutions.
About Bowne
Bowne Global Solutions (http://www.bowneglobal.com) is an industry leading provider of product localization and content creation and management services to software developers, hardware manufacturers, entertainment publishers and other information technology companies worldwide. With headquarters in Los Angeles and production facilities in every major language center around the globe, Bowne's 700+ localization professionals deliver essential services that enable industry leaders such as 3Com, Attachmate, Bayer Diagnostics, Compaq, Corel, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Lotus, Netscape, Novell, Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Symantec and Visio to conduct global commerce with their international customers.
Bowne Global Solutions is a business unit of Bowne & Co., Inc. (Amex: BNE). Established in 1775, Bowne & Co., Inc., www.bowne.com, is the global market leader in the field of empowering information by combining superior customer service with appropriate new technologies to manage, repurpose and distribute a client's information to any audience, through any medium, in any language, anywhere in the world. The world's largest financial printer, Bowne is also among the leading Internet development companies, offering business solutions, consulting and development services. By providing outsourcing services, Bowne offers its customers an integrated way to design and manage their information flows to take advantage of the latest technologies for creating, storing, moving, presenting and utilizing information in any combination of paper and electronic forms.
SOURCE Bowne Global Solutions
CONTACT:
Donald Plumley, Sr. Vice President, Sales and Marketing, 323-866-1104, [email protected], or Bob Myers, Executive Vice President, +81-45-640-4250, [email protected], both of Bowne Global Solutions;
or
Steven J. Leon, President of Technopolis(R) Communications Inc., 310-670-5606, [email protected], for Bowne Global Solutions