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NICT REPORT 55Research HighlightsAiming for further translation accuracy in the medical fieldAugmenting VoiceTra with translation data from the MSD Manual (medical diction-ary)Eiichiro Sumita: Advanced Speech Translation Research and Devel-opment Promotion CenterCREATEIn recent years, the use of arti-ficial intelligence (AI) in speech translation technology has been actively researched, and products and services based on this research have also started to appear on the market. The VoiceTra*1 system figure developed by NICT uses AI to provide highly accurate multilingual speech translations on various themes such as tourism, healthcare, and shop-ping. Nowadays, the number of foreign visitors to Japan is growing year by year, and there is a growing need for medical translation services when these visitors fall ill during their stay. There is consequently a need for multi-lingual data covering a wide range of medical conditions in order to provide more robust translations in the medical field where precision is particularly im-portant.Under these circumstances, NICT and the pharmaceutical company MSD K.K. (based in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) have agreed to provide data in ten languag-es from MSD’s digital medical diction-ary (MSD Manual Consumer Version)*2 for use in Translation Bank (a transla-tion data collection initiative being un-dertaken by the Ministry of Internal Af-fairs and Communications and NICT), and to cooperate in the strengthening of the AI speech translation engine. Through this joint eort, the quantity of medical translation data in VoiceTra has been increased by a factor of 3 or 4, and we can expect a substantial im-provement in translation accuracy. In the words of Dr. Eiichiro Sumita, a NICT Fellow who has been research-ing speech translation at NICT for many years,“As part of the global communi-cations plan of the Ministry of In-ternal Affairs and Communica-tions, NICT is promoting speech translation technology that is more precise and supports more languages and disciplines. By training a voice translation system with the MSD manual, which has been collecting the latest medical information in multiple languages for 120 years, we can expect to “We can expect to make great prog-ress overcoming language barri-ers in the medi-cal eld.”make great progress overcoming language barriers in the medical field.”An updated version of VoiceTra re-flecting the MSD manual data is scheduled to be made available in the fall of 2018. Footnote*1 VoiceTra:A multilingual speech translation app devel-oped by NICT. Provides highly accurate speech translation in 31 languages for free. http://voi-cetra.nict.go.jp/*2 MSD Manual:A comprehensive medical dictionary provided by MSD for the benet of society. Widely used throughout the world, and has been translated into 10 languages. https://www.msdmanuals.com/en-jp (Note: MSD is a trade name of Mer-ck & Co., Inc., with headquarters in Kenilworth, N.J., U.S.A.)