Babel adds 100 staff to Montreal HQ

Just four months after the new Montreal headquarters opened its doors, outsourcing specialist Babel has announced the employment of 100 dedicated staff members, providing full localisation services for North America and beyond.

Babel, which is a Microsoft approved test house for the Xbox system in Europe and North America, also holds developer status with Sony and Nintendo - in addition to being a Java verified test house and a Vodafone Global certification partner.

The company has facilities in Brighton, New Delhi and Montreal, leveraging the talent of over 150 testers in its QA team and translating over a million words per month in the localisation division.

Babel announced the opening of its Montreal offices in September 2005. The new HQ is designed to provide functionality and localisation QA for PC, console, handheld and mobile platforms, as well as J2ME mobile porting and deployment. Support for Brew porting will follow shortly, as the staff roster continues to expand.

Babel MD Algy Williams commented: "Being in Montreal enables us to provide a North American presence for our cross-platform QA, translation and audio services, as well as to deliver a low cost, high quality solution to our clients worldwide. Interestingly, a significant number of our European clients are taking advantage of the great QA rates we can offer In Montreal, given the subsidies available to us."

Babel is increasingly managing the entire process of translation, audio, functionality QA, localisation QA and manual production for individual titles, reducing costs and alleviating any problems associated with using multiple outsourcing firms for the various aspects of videogame localisation and testing.

"The quality and efficiency benefits are very real," Williams stated. "Our clients have one point of contact and we manage the entire process for them."