Japanese telecom operator NTT DOCOMO has floated a joint venture with SYSTRAN International and FueTrek to set up a joint venture to develop and market machine translation technology and services.
Mirai Translate will be the name of the new company.
Mirai Translate will have a capital of 990 million yen and nearly 15 employees. The company will be headed by Minoru Etoh as its president.
The equity stake of NTT DOCOMO in Mirai Translate will be 51 percent, while SYSTRAN International and FueTrek will have 30 percent and 19 percent stake, respectively.
The joint venture will be established in October.
The new company will develop highly accurate machine translation software capable of satisfying diverse needs, from the translation of business documents to conversation-level communication required by tourists.
Leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, the number of foreign visitors to Japan, as well as the number of Japanese going overseas, is expected to increase dramatically.
The joint venture will initially develop technologies to translate between Japanese and three other languages — English, Chinese and Korean — with future plans to translate between Japanese and other widely used Asian languages such as Vietnamese and Indonesian.
