He Talks the Talk - In Any Language
By Danialle Weaver

If you've got a yen to surf the Web in Japanese, your computer must first learn the language. That's where George Durr can help.

Durr is president of AsiaSoft, a fast-growing software distributor in Vero Beach that sells and supports more than 600 Asian language technology products.

You name it and AsiaSoft sells it: operating systems, database programs, word processors, Web browsers, network software, graphic tablets and voice recognition systems, to name a few.

Demand is brisk. In 1996, sales were on track to hit $3.5 million, double 1995's revenue.

AsiaSoft (www.asiasoft.com) is prospering because multilingual computing is difficult and expensive. "Chinese, Japanese and Korean are unique because each character requires two bytes, where in the other languages, it's only one," Durr says. "People who want a small number of Asian characters in an English document don't realize what an investment it would be just to get those couple of characters in."

That investment can include special operating systems, printer drivers, fonts, image-setters and proofing devices. And they are not cheap: AsiaSoft sells the simplified Chinese version of Quark XPress for the PowerMac for a cool $1,995 - about three times the regular retail price. A Chinese version of Photoshop 3.0 retails for $1,195; a laser printer with 15 Chinese fonts costs $16,000.

Besides Far Eastern languages, AsiaSoft also carries a smattering of Arabic, Hebrew and Cyrillic software and may soon carry Vietnamese, Thai and Indian products.

Customers include government agencies, schools and commercial printers, other businesses and individuals, primarily students. They hail from Australia, Canada, Europe, Indonesia, South America and the United States.

Durr, a 62-year-old Greenwich Village native, sold English-language software in Canberra, Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore for three decades. A former General Dynamics vice president, Durr helped start U.S.-Asia Commercial Development, a Seoul company with a Florida Department of Commerce contract to develop business opportunities in Florida for companies and individuals in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. He initially settled in Palm Beach to stay with his father but then moved north to Vero.

Durr says he "preferred Vero Beach simply because the quality of life is better" and says he likes Vero Beach's proximity to Melbourne before Florida Technical Institute, which is based in the latter city, draws Asian students and offers a labor pool of trained workers.

In April 1991, Durr founded AsiaSoft, which began adapting American software for the Japanese and distributing Apple's Japanese software. AsiaSoft's business shifted to software distribution because large companies no longer farm out "software localization" tasks to boutique firms.

AsiaSoft has 10 full-time and four part-time employees fluent in Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Indonesian. The 3,000-square-foot office is above a furniture company. Durr's wife, Seong, is Korean and works on AsiaSoft's Korean programs. Durr's son Richard, 36, is vice president of sales and support.

Customers are pleased. "I have never heard a single complaint" about AsiaSoft, says John Crow of Atlanta's Magic Brain Consulting, a multilingual consulting firm and AsiaSoft distributor.