Easy to use and no extra charges
The present service is intended for casual, everyday translation rather than business. For example, it’s great for a Japanese tourist traveling overseas who needs to use Chinese, English or Korean to make a reservation for a restaurant or a tour.

The service can be used two ways. Besides phone-to-phone translation, a single smartphone can be used for face-to-face translation. A Japanese store clerk, for example, can use the latter function when talking with a foreign customer.

From late November, face-to-face interpretation will be available between Japanese and 10 other languages: French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai, as well as Chinese, English and Korean.

To use the service either in Japan or overseas, the caller simply requires the free app installed in a DOCOMO smartphone or tablet running Android 2.2 or higher. Calls can be placed to any mobile or landline phone, except for emergency lines such as 110 in Japan.

The service itself is free. For phone-to-phone conversations, the user pays only for the voice call and normal data charges for screen text and voice readouts. For face-to-face conversations, only data charges apply since no voice call is required.

Although free, the service is expected to boost DOCOMO’s operating revenue by generating increased voice calls and network traffic.

Off to a great start, with more to come
Technical development required roughly two years, with the first year spent devising the system and application. The second year was used for fine-tuning based on two trials that involved some 11,000 participants.

The automatic translation service integrates a number of advanced technologies, some developed originally by DOCOMO, a provider of integrated services centered on mobility. At present the face-to-face mode recognizes various accents, such as American, Australian and British English. Going forward, more accents will be added for each language, and interpretation accuracy will be further strengthened for colloquial expressions.

DOCOMO’s automatic translation service was awarded the CEATEC Innovation Awards 2012 Grand Prix by a panel of U.S. journalists attending CEATEC JAPAN 2012.