While the Esprit program has largely funded basic scientific research in a variety of disciplines, there is one notable example of market-ripe products emanating from an Esprit project. According to Gerhard Heyer of prime project contractor Triumph Adler (TA), a number of the software modules developed within the framework of the Esprit III Translator’s Workbench II project are now commercially available. These include an electronic dictionary shell, for which a range of basic and specialized dictionaries are available (TA), a translation memory (TA and Fraunhofer Gesellschaft), and a document comparison tool (Siemens Nixdorf). All of these products run under Windows and can be used with standard wordprocessors.
    Additional modules are currently under development by the other members of this international consortium of industry and academia and should be ready shortly.
    Later this year, Triumph Adler will be launching a TWB integrated package built around a Microsoft Word For Windows-based translation editor and a workbench manager. It will include the components previously mentioned and an interface to the terminology management package KeyTerm, developed by CAP debis. By funding a maximum of fifty percent of projects like TWB, the Commission thereby renounces any commercial interest in resulting products. The recipients, however, are obliged to market these products, at their own risk, within a given period of time or else can be required to sell the rights to a third party. Is TWB the first in a long line of “working” software developed with Community participation?

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