Microsoft (MSFT) has licensed Basis Technology's Rosette language analyzers for Chinese and Japanese to support the expansion of MSN Search into Asian markets.

The Rosette analyzers are software components that enable information retrieval applications and search engines to understand queries and search web pages in foreign languages.

This agreement extends the existing relationship between the two companies. Microsoft has been using Basis Technology's Rosette Linguistic Platform since the launch of the MSN Search beta in late 2004.

"Multilingual search continues to be a top priority for MSN, and our prior success with Basis Technology's software made Rosette the natural choice for our Chinese and Japanese search systems", said Justin Osmer, Product Manager at MSN.

The Rosette Linguistics Platform uses advanced natural language processing techniques to enable applications such as unstructured data management, document exploitation, business intelligence and text mining for global markets. Rosette's capabilities include automatic language identification; conversion of documents into Unicode; and identification of names, places, and other key concepts.