Tansa Systems licenses Canadian Oxford Dictionary

"Canadians need a dictionary that defines the words used by Canadians and also records how Canadians (not the Americans or the British) pronounce and spell words." Krystyna Ross, Director of the Trade and Reference Division Oxford University Press, Canada

Lakewood Ranch, Fla. (Oct. 31, 2005)

Tansa Systems AS, a provider of advanced text proofing tools available in several languages, is pleased to announce that it has signed a new licensing agreement with Oxford University Press.

The agreement allows Tansa to include the word list from the award-winning Canadian Oxford Dictionary as part of the solutions the company delivers to its customers in Canada. 

"The Canadian Oxford Dictionary is the standard reference source for most of the publications in Canada," said Managing Director Morten Krøtø. "We are very happy to be able to provide our customers in Canada with dictionaries that include the work of the editors at the Oxford University Press."

Because dictionaries inevitably describe and reflect the language and culture of the country in which they are edited, American dictionaries cover American English and British dictionaries cover British English, and both tend to overlook Canadian English altogether.

According to Oxford, because Canada has its own political, cultural, historical, and geographical realities, it has its own words to describe those realities. As a result of Canada's unique history and settlement patterns, Canadian English also includes words borrowed from other languages that do not appear in other varieties of English.

"Canadians need a dictionary that defines the words used by Canadians and also records how Canadians (not the Americans or the British) pronounce and spell words,” said Krystyna Ross, the Director of the Trade and Reference Division at Oxford in Canada. “A Canadian dictionary gives you more than other dictionaries, combining in one reference book information on English as it is used worldwide and as it is used particularly in Canada.”

Tansa’s customers in Canada can now add the word list from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary to their Tansa Text Proofing System, thereby ensuring that their solution includes dictionaries that are relevant to them.

Unlike any other spelling checker you’ve ever worked with, Tansa proofreads your content by looking at the words in context, making it capable of checking not only the spelling of words, but also the usage of words and the style of your writing. Tansa accomplishes this by checking your written text against a dictionary and set of style rules customized specifically for each publication.

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About Oxford University Press (www.oup.com/ca)

Established in 1992, the Canadian Oxford dictionary department became part of a tradition that stretches back in time to the beginnings of the world-renowned Oxford English Dictionary and stretches around the globe to dictionary research programs not only in England, but in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and America.

Living up to that tradition, in 1998 Oxford's Canadian lexicographers published the critically-acclaimed Canadian Oxford Dictionary, which went on to spend over a year on the Globe and Mail's best-seller list. In addition it won the The Canadian Bookseller Association's Libris Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year and Best Specialty Book of the Year and its Editor-in-Chief, Katherine Barber, won the Editor of the Year award. Since then, Oxford’s dictionary department has continued to published excellent reference works that truly reflect English as it is used in Canada.

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About Tansa Systems

Since 1995, Tansa Systems has delivered enterprise text proofing and hyphenation tools to media companies, large corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Tansa has built its reputation by enabling these groups to reduce the number of spelling and usage errors that appear in their printed documents and improve the overall efficiency of their content creation process. Today, Tansa has more than 9,500 users in Europe and North America.

For more information about this press release, contact:

Robert A. Laszlo
President
Tansa Systems, LLC
8374 Market Street, No. 185
Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202-5137

Phone: (941) 373-1966
Fax: (941) 827-9828
E-mail: robert.laszlo@tansasystems.com