Hall 6, Booth H 33
LERNOUT & HAUSPIE's iTRANSLATOR™
INTERNET SERVICE DESIGNED FOR SMALL
DOCUMENT TRANSLATION NEEDS
New Service Delivered via E-Commerce for Greater
Accessibility and Affordability; Europe's Largest ISP
Already Signed On to Offer Service
CeBIT Conference, Hanover, Germany - March 18, 1999 -
Lernout & Hauspie (NASDAQ: LHSPF; EASDAQ: LHSP) (L&H™),
a worldwide market leader in speech and linguistic
technologies, products and services announced today a new
L&H iTranslator Internet translation service that has been
redesigned to be more accessible and affordable. The service,
which will be available via Internet Service Providers (ISPs),
portals and corporate Intranets, leverages the Internet's fast,
easy delivery and communication capabilities. The company
also announced that it has already signed its first European
ISP, ESAT, who will offer the service to its customers.
L&H iTranslator Service is a complete solution that employs
L&H's expertise in human translation with its award winning
machine translation software to provide fast, accurate
translation of electronic documents over the Internet. L&H
believes it will be able to significantly reduce the
administrative cost and turn-around time for the new service
because the Internet helps facilitate document and cost
estimate delivery and receipt. L&H expects that the service
will be especially attractive to companies that typically have
documents ranging in various sizes. The service will be
available to one time and repeat customers of all sizes.
In addition to human translation, the service will also offer gist
translations of documents, e-mails and Web pages using
machine translation technology. Human translation will be
available in all major languages, including Western and Eastern
European, South American and Asian languages. Specialized
language domains for vertical markets, such as finance,
computers and medicine, will help increase accuracy of
machine translation.
"The translation industry is experiencing a paradigm shift
resulting from its ability to leverage the Internet for
translation services, such as L&H iTranslator," said Florita
Mendez, president of L&H's speech and language services
division. "This new approach will benefit customers by
providing more easily accessible, reliable and affordable
translation solutions. We believe the translation industry
overall will benefit as entirely new markets for translation will
be created and the existing market will expand."
Major ISP to Offer Service
L&H plans to target major ISPs worldwide to help market L&H
iTranslator to the large, untapped base of potential translation
users. The company has already signed its first ISP, ESAT,
which is one of the largest ISPs in Ireland.
"E-commerce and the Internet have removed time and
distance barriers, turning the world into a global village where
users can conduct businesses and communicate with anyone
in the world," said Dan Herlihy, senior product manager of
Internet services for ESAT. "The only barrier left is language.
We believe we can solve this problem for consumers and
corporate users by offering L&H's easy-to-use, virtually
real-time translation service."
ESAT Net is present in Dublin, Galway, Shannon, Limerick, Cork
and Navan, as well as Waterford, Ireland, providing local point
connectivity to most of corporate Ireland. Its reputation for
Internet technical "know-how" has led to more ISDN and
dedicated leased line customers choosing the company for its
Internet connectivity. ESAT Net is the only Internet Service
Provider in Ireland capable of offering customers integrated
voice, data and Internet solutions over a fibre optic network.
Pricing and Availability
Pricing for the L&H iTranslator service will vary, according to
the size of the document, the language the document is being
translated to and from, the subject of the document and the
desired turnaround time. The service is scheduled to be
available in Q2 1999.
About Lernout & Hauspie
Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) is a global leader in advanced speech
and language solutions for vertical markets, computers,
automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products,
consumer goods and the Internet. The company is making the
speech user interface (SUI) the keystone of simple,
convenient interaction between humans and technology, and
is using advanced translation technology to break down
language barriers. L&H's products and services originate in four
basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR),
text-to-speech (TTS), digital speech and music compression
(SMC) and text-to-text (translation). For more information,
please visit Lernout & Hauspie on the World Wide Web at
www.lhs.com or www.lhsl.com.
This Press Release contains forward-looking information,
including statements regarding L&H's expectations and
intentions concerning the development and commercialization
activities of L&H, certain of its customers, the performance of
their respective products and products under development
and the growth of the potential market for these products.
There can be no assurance that actual results will not be
materially different than those anticipated in these
forward-looking statements. Factors which could cause actual
results to materially differ from those anticipated include
known and unknown risks, including without limitation, the
uncertainty of new product development, including the risk
that newly introduced products may contain undetected
errors or defects or otherwise not perform as anticipated, the
early stage of development of the speech and language
technology markets, uncertainty of market growth, rapid
technological change and intense competition, as well as
other risks set forth in L&H's filings with the Securities and
Exchange Commission. L&H cautions readers not to place
undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements,
which speak only as of the date made. L&H expressly disclaims
any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates
or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in
the L&H's expectations or any change in events, conditions or
circumstance on which any such statement is based.
All product names and trademarks mentioned herein are
trademarks of L&H or their respective owners.
# # #
Worldwide PR/IR: Ellen Spooren, Lernout & Hauspie, (781)
203-5344, espooren@lhs.com
Corporate Comm. US: Audrey Pobre, Lernout & Hauspie,
(781) 203-5341, apobre@lhs.com
Media Contact Europe: Vanessa Richter, Lernout & Hauspie,
(32) 57-22-9518, vrichter@lhs.com
Investor Contact Europe: Annemieke Blondeel, Lommaert &
Blondeel Consultants, (44) 1322-520-180,
a.blondeel@dial.pipex.com
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