A web-based multilingual parallel corpus collection system for the medical field
Takashi Yoshino, Taku Fukushima, Mai Miyabe, Aguri Shigeno · 2009
We have developed a Web-based multilingual parallel corpus collection system named TackPad for medical workers and foreign patients. The number of foreign visitors and residents in Japan is increasing. However, it is not sufficient to provide linguistic support via medical translators to people who do not understand Japanese. In particular, poor communication may lead to medical errors. Moreover, there are limitations to a medical translator's support. It is difficult to use machine translations in the medical field because of their inaccuracy. A system that uses parallel corpora with guaranteed accuracy appears to be useful. However, a huge amount of parallel corpora related to specialty fields and in several languages is required in the medical field. It would be difficult for a limited number of people to accumulate a sufficient amount of parallel corpora. Therefore, we have specially designed a support system named TackPad for the medical field; this system can accurately register parallel corpora and supply this data to other systems. TackPad adopts a Web 2.0 approach and can be used to tap people's capabilities for knowledge accumulation. The purpose of TackPad is to collect parallel corpora; other systems can use the corpus via the Internet. We have obtained various responses from the result of the trial experiment. The experiment has demonstrated the practicality of the system, for example, people of various age groups and from various occupations can actually use the system.