Names matching

We have a problem of matching names (esp. Company names) from one table to another. One of the table is actually a consignee database. The other is keyed in probably half way around the world and represents the recipient of the item. We need to match both this records. As we all know, data entry of proper nouns always result in spelling errors, acronyns, missing or extra "the"s,"of"s etc. Does anyone knows what's a good way of doing this, short of using an expert system (we only have a 4GL and a database !) ? Would soundex help ?