Web-lingo, was founded by (right) Sonette Hill 13 years ago, provides translation and editing services in 85 languages. According to the company it is experiencing demand for translation services into and from at least a dozen African languages as foreign investment increases throughout Africa.

The company names Microsoft, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, FNB, Development Bank, IPM, NPA, Centre's for Disease Control and Prevention and Oxford University Press among its clients.

The new partnership will enable Rubric to establish a strategic presence in South Africa and throughout the continent where localisation needs are also on the rise.

To localise software means to adapt it for language and regional differences as well as for the technical requirements of a target market. Rubric clients include Amway, Blackberry, Adobe, Cisco, Toshiba and Bose.

CEO Ian Henderson (left)  is the founder of Rubric and oversees the process of creating a better localisation experience for Rubric’s clients. Prior to joining Rubric, Henderson worked in a variety of management and engineering positions at Siemens (Germany), Expert Software and Phoenix Software (New Zealand) and Berlitz (England).

"More companies are seeing the need to localise content into the 10 official South African languages as well as other African languages. South Africa is a major development hub for mobile applications and producers of those applications require extensive automated localisation services. It is our aim to bridge the gap between technology and SA language translations by using technology and enterprise wide terminology management software," says Hill.

Rubric and Web-lingo have already begun to partner on a number of projects for international clients. One project will see the company translate ten million words into the 10 official South African languages. To complete this within the eight-week deadline Hill has retained the services of four project managers, 300 African linguists and 40 DTP specialists.

Since merging with Rubric in February Web-lingo has completed some large projects one of these being for Oxford University Press, where Web-lingo translated 15m words, with a team of 150 translators, and 40 InDesign and Idiom Desktop Work Bench typesetters, with a 90 day turnaround. Languages involved were Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Sepedi, Tsonga, Ndebele, Siswati, Afrikaans, Setswana and Venda.