LISA Intellectual Property Turned Over to ETSI

With the demise of the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA), localization and translation professionals are concerned that its standards continue to be available as a basis for future development. These standards consist of Translation Memory eXchange (TMX), Segmentation Rules eXchange (SRX), TermBase eXchange (TBX), XML Translation Memory (xm:tm), and Global information management Metrics eXchange – Volume (GMX-V). LISA has turned over its intellectual property to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for hosting and maintenance. As a result, the LISA standards will be made available to the public under ETSI's license terms, which are open and royalty-free.

Annette Reilly, chair of the STC Standards Council, noted: “We appreciate the continued open availability of these basic standards for any standards development organization interested in the efficiency and interoperability of language translation workflows.”

Incoming STC Vice President Alan Houser also commented on the announcement, stating, “The ETSI is a global, diverse standards organization, and has committed to making the former LISA-hosted standards available free of charge to the public. Future open standards for language translation will have increasing importance as more global consumers expect localized products and services.”