SDL buys Trados

SDL International , the world's third-largest translation/localization agency announced today its plans to acquire Trados , the maker of the world's most popular machine translation software.

In the translation industry, this is very big news. The deal will close in July, pending a positive vote by SDL's shareholders.

This deal creates by far the largest globalization technology company. Publicly traded SDL's 2004 revenue was roughly $114 million at today's exchange rate (GBP62.7 million), while privately held Trados reportedly turned over more than $25 million. We estimate that SDL directly invoiced about $5 million in software sales, although it claims that upwards of 50% of its revenue is technology-driven. In any case, this deal creates an independent software vendor that will directly book more than $30 million in globalization tool business this year. If successful in marketing and execution, the bigger company will catch the eye of planners looking for ways to improve their global information life cycle processes and transformations.

For further information, read the complete press release at SDL website.