Japanese telco Docomo to tackle machine translation with new joint venture

NTT Docomo (“Docomo”) is best known as Japan’s most widely used mobile carrier. Now, the company is also branching into machine translation.

Docomo announced it will create a new company, Mirai Translate, in a joint venture with European translation service provider SysTran and Japanese speech technology firm FueTrek. Initial capital for the venture comes at JPY 990 million (US$ 9.05 million), with Docomo supplying 51 percent ownership, SysTran 30 percent, and FueTrek the remaining 19 percent. Mirai Translate will go live in October.

Docomo says that the new company will specialize in translation for a wide range of topics across multiple industries in English, Japan, Korean, and Chinese. Citing the expected increase in visitors to Japan ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games, Docomo anticipates a strong demand for translation services.

In this deal, SysTran sticks out as the critical piece. According to FueTrek’s company profile, Docomo is a major investor of theirs. The telco actually has a rarely talked about translation service of its own, which means SysTran was brought into the deal in order to make Mirai Translate a viable service.

SysTran’s history stretches back to 1968 and it has long attracted high-profile clients like Xerox, the US Air Force, PwC, and AltaVista Babelfish to its translation service. In fact, Systran even powered Google Translate until 2007 when the search giant turned to its own in-house team.

Despite its longevity, SysTran has not become a household name. It’s most recent financial report shows that its top five customers make up 46.2 percent of its EUR 10.7 million (US$13.6 million) annual revenue. Further, that revenue only boils down to EUR 579,000 (US$734,716) in net income. The partnership with Docomo could help SysTran increase its global profile, however. That EUR 10.7 million in revenue last year? None of it came from Asia.

Revenue projections aside, Mirai Translate will have to answer one major question before it can call itself a success – can machine translation be superior to human translation? History suggests we should be skeptical.

See: Waygo’s point-and-shoot translation app hits Android; next stop Google Glass?

Japanese telco Docomo to tackle machine translation with new joint venture