Konica Minolta to Sell Disaster Information Translation System to Municipalities; Improving Clarity of Communication

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:33 JST, December 31, 2024

Konica Minolta Inc. has developed a system that automatically translates information on disasters and evacuation into foreign languages and will release the system to local governments in fiscal 2025.

The system is expected to be used by municipalities with difficulty securing staff to handle translation work and is aimed to be introduced in 100 municipalities within three years.

While the number of visitors to Japan and foreigners living in Japan has been increasing, smoothly providing of information in foreign languages during disasters has become a major issue.

Currently, local government workers are often responsible for translation, but it can take 30 minutes to an hour to send a single email.

With the new system, names of places, such as mountains, rivers, oceans, and evacuation sites, which are prone to mistranslation, are registered in advance. The system additionally prepares templates such as “Please be careful of tsunami” or “Please evacuate to XX community center.” When a disaster strikes, local government officials can create sentences with Japanese proper nouns and send them to Konica Minolta’s server. The automatically translated foreign-language sentences will be sent in reply.

The translated text is then posted online and distributed via email. The new system takes only one to two minutes to translate text. Because the system uses templates, it is said that fewer mistranslations occur than when using artificial intelligence or translation software.

Hamamatsu, which introduced the system in 2023, has made it possible to handle English and Portuguese. The system’s effectiveness was confirmed with the dissemination of information during heavy rain. Fukuoka, which has also introduced the system, can handle Vietnamese, Nepalese, and other languages.