Bowne Global Solutions Hosts First European Automotive Standards Meeting on Translation Quality; Leading Automakers and Suppliers Converge on SAE Event in Germany

    PARSIPPANY, N.J.--Dec. 3, 2001--Bowne Global Solutions, the globalization services division of Bowne & Co, Inc. , today announced the conclusion of a productive first European meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), hosted by Bowne Global Solutions and convened to discuss standard J2450 -- translation quality metric.
    The late November meeting in Wuppertal, Germany, included representation from some of Europe's leading automakers. In addition to automotive producers Volvo Car Corporation, Volvo Parts Corporation, Audi AG, BMW AG, DaimlerChrysler AG, Opel and SCANIA (Ford and Jaguar were represented by their translation vendors/partners), 10 European translation vendors and suppliers to the automotive industry attended, contributing to a forum that sought to reach consensus on translation standards issues affecting the industry.
    J2450, an initiative originally conceived of by US automakers GM, Ford and Chrysler, is one of many quality systems designed to define metric standards for automotive engineering. As one component of a quality assurance process, J2450 provides a measure for tagging translation errors, and produces a weighted score that defines the severity of errors. Industry-wide understanding and agreement on error definitions and classifications is critical for such quality systems to be effective.
    J2450 is considered complementary to the American Society for Testing and Materials standard F15.48, which focuses more broadly on the process of acquiring and managing translation services.
    "Events such as this help automakers and suppliers develop a systematic approach to problem definition and error correction," said Anders Andersson, Volvo Parts Corporation and committee chairman of SAE standard J2450, European section. "It is encouraging that a company like Bowne Global Solutions has taken such an active role in developing specialist understanding of our industries challenges and is contributing to resolve them."
    "Becoming an integrated part of the automotive community is the only way that we feel we can legitimately assist in the industries globalization process," said Julie-Anne Lawlor, VP of European Business Development, Bowne Global Solutions. "Sponsoring forums like this helps all parties in the production process adhere to a set of standard guidelines."
    "The automotive industry is one that our company is committed to," added Carl Glaeser, CEO of Bowne Global Solutions. "We have considerable automotive expertise throughout our global organization and believe that it is an industry that we can contribute significant long-term value to."

    About SAE

    SAE is a non-profit educational and scientific organization dedicated to advancing mobility technology to better serve humanity. Over 70,000 engineers and scientists, who are SAE members, develop technical information on all forms of self-propelled vehicles including automobiles, trucks and buses, off-highway equipment, aircraft, aerospace vehicles, marine, rail, and transit systems. SAE disseminates this information through its meetings, books, technical papers, magazines, standards, reports, professional development programs, and electronic databases.

    About Bowne Global Solutions

    Bowne Global Solutions is the leading provider of comprehensive globalization solutions and technology -- enabling its customers to reach their customers in any part of the world. Bowne's global team delivers international marketing strategy consulting, technical documentation authoring and translation, software internationalization, technology product localization, and web content creation and management combined with machine translation and related linguistic technologies to the world's most respected companies. With this suite of integrated globalization services, Bowne enables industry leaders in the technology product, corporate online learning, automotive, aerospace, medical, telecommunications and digital entertainment industries to compete and grow global market share through locally-relevant, culturally-connected products and services.

    Bowne Global Solutions is a division of Bowne & Co., Inc. , the world's largest financial printer and also a provider of outsourcing services, legal software and digital print-on-demand solutions.