Japan to Develop Speech Translation System for Tokyo Olympics

Tokyo, Nov. 20 (Jiji Press)--Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, or NICT, said Thursday that it will launch a group on Dec. 17 for the development of a speech translation system ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. The group will also include such private companies as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. <9432>, KDDI Corp. <9433>, also a telecom carrier, and major machinery makers Hitachi Ltd. <6501> and Toshiba Corp. <6502>. NICT, an independent administrative agency under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, will call on many others to join the group. Medical institutions, railway operators and retailers will be particularly targeted as they will have increased opportunities to communicate with foreigners during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The envisaged speech translation system will mainly cover nine languages--English, French, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Burmese. END