From a retrieval standpoint, the results are greatly improved. Results are returned grouped by language. They can be viewed in their original language or they can be translated using a document translation system. It should enhance their retrieval capabilities markedly. It currently supports English, French, Spanish, and Japanese.
Additional modules can add more languages.
Multilingual systems that rely on machine translation are hindered by their inability to render the same ideas accurately in a second language. The product also takes advantage of its foundation in MNIS s DR-LINK information system. DR-LINK also performs concept mapping and clustering, but it provides, in addition, proprietary lexicons that can expand geographic names such as Europe to include all the constituent countries and cities. Susan Feldman, president of Datasearch, evaluates and writes about information retrieval technologies, and her studies of Web search engines have appeared in Searcher magazine.