Algonquin Studios has agreed to acquire E-merge Strategies, a provider of translation services and software. Algonquin, which developed Buffalo's municipal Web site, will combine E-merge's language services with its site-building skills.

"Our goal is to provide a one-of-a-kind solution for translation and localization of Web sites," Algonquin president Stephen Kiernan said.

The combined company will have sales of about $1.3 million a year and 21 workers, officials said, including six from E-merge. After the Dec. 1 closing, Algonquin will remain in downtown Buffalo, perhaps in expanded space at its current location in the Brisbane Building.

E-merge founder Greg Norton will become Algonquin sales vice president and receive equity in the combined company.

The deal marks how technology companies are developing more advanced products as the Internet market matures.

The global expansion of the Internet means non-English speakers represent 57 percent of the online population, according to Global Reach, a marketing research firm in San Francisco. By 2003, the proportion will be 65 percent, it predicts.

"It's the one piece of the Web market that hasn't been suffering," Kiernan said.

Begun as a design studio that builds individual Web sites, Algonquin is preparing to transform itself into a software developer. Its QuantumCMS software allows companies to maintain and update their Web sites, without having to pay a designer.

QuantumCMS will work with E-merge's Transmerge software for managing foreign-language Web sites, Kiernan said.

"We're trying to move from a dollars-for-hours business into the software product business," he said. If it succeeds, the leap could expand the company's sales tenfold and increase employment.

E-merge has developed sites in Japanese, Korean, Spanish and other languages. Among its clients are Rich Products and Andersen Consulting, as corporations strive to reach audiences in target markets.

Another business opportunity will be to translate North American Web sites for non-English audiences in their own country, Kiernan said.

"Buffalo and Roswell Park don't have a Spanish language component to their Web site," Kiernan said, naming two Algonquin clients.

Algonquin has also signed a deal with a local Web hosting company to resell its page hosting and Internet connection services. PCI in Buffalo will provide the hardware to host Web sites to Algonquin at an undisclosed wholesale rate, vice president Mark Gaulin said.