Instant translation in 42 languages! Noriyuki Matsuda, CEO of Pocket Talk: “What we really wanted to create is finally done!

Making a leap forward in his own unique way

When the foreigner behind the counter starts speaking in English, the display in front of him immediately shows English on the left side and Japanese translated in real time on the right side. The display is double-sided, so when you reply in Japanese, the other person can see the English translated from the Japanese. With one of these devices, both parties can instantly see the translated version of each other’s words on the double-sided display.

Pocket Talk X” is scheduled to go on sale this year. It is a stationary AI simultaneous interpreter developed based on “Pocket Talk-Sentio,” software that enables real-time interpretation and understanding of 42 languages spoken by the other party with voice and text in 77 languages. The system has already been tested at airport counters, and Japanese and foreigners who cannot speak Japanese at all are said to be able to communicate without any problems.

There is almost no mishearing. When you see it, everyone says, ‘I want this. I made a presentation at the United Nations, and the UN also asked for it. It has been 10 years since we started Pocket Talk. I think I finally made what I really wanted to make.

Noriyuki Matsuda, 60, president of Poketalk, says, “We are very happy to have finally made what we really wanted to make. The “Pocket Talk” interpreter, which went on sale in 2005 and featured Akashiya Sanma as its image character in 2006, was an explosive hit, with the initial production run selling out in just 11 days. Many Japanese people have a complex about not being able to speak English. With the increase in the number of foreign tourists, there was also a great demand from retailers and other businesses that were troubled by language problems. In this context, many people jumped on the bandwagon because of its amazing translation performance. The total number of units shipped has already exceeded 1.3 million, but Pocket Talk has undergone an extraordinary evolution.

Poketalk was introduced to the world by “Source Next,” a company founded by Matsuda. This is the company that released PC software such as “Surprisingly Fast,” “Tokuchitate,” and “Ikinari PDF. When he decided to start his own company, Matsuda, who had worked as a systems engineer at IBM Japan, set his sights on the field of computer software, but his thinking was completely different from other companies from the start.

Instead of creating software from scratch, I took a product that was popular in the U.S., localized it, and sold it in Japan, but I had no idea how to sell it,” he said.

It was here that Matsuda took a bold step. He decided to go to mass retailers and stand directly in front of them.

All the users were buying our software in Akihabara,” he said. So, I thought, why not sell it myself and listen to their opinions directly?

And he sold not only his own software, but also PCs. It was here that Matsuda encountered a true need.

Trial and Error and New Perspectives

We had a lot of people coming in to buy memory,” he said. When I asked them about it, they told me that their PCs had become heavy after the OS was changed. However, the structure of PCs at that time was complicated, and not many people were able to plug in memory by themselves.

We thought it would be easier if we could make them run faster using software. The result was “Surprisingly Fast,” which became a big hit, selling a total of 6 million copies. In its second year of operation, annual sales reached 3 billion yen. The company also made an unprecedented effort to recruit human resources. The creators of the naming and design were given executive treatment.

What I saw on the sales floor was how important packaging and naming were. Many software companies were doing development in-house and outsourcing the creative side. I reversed this. That’s how we were able to stand out on the store floor.”

What further astonished the industry was the decision to produce a TV commercial for the typing software “Tokucho” at a time when the company had less than 30 employees.

It cost about 1 billion yen, but the effect was tremendous, and sales increased significantly. It also had a positive impact on hiring, and we received 7,000 resumes.

This also had a positive effect on the development of the product in mass merchandisers.

To sell well in stores, it is important to have a large number of copies stacked on top of each other. That’s why we allowed returns (in exchange for stocking large quantities).

Sales exceeded 5 billion yen in five years, and now they are taking on the challenge of breaking the rules of the industry. He declared that software, which at the time was priced at about 10,000 yen, would be priced at the flat 1980 yen price. The industry was uproariously criticized.

Even at a low price, if we sell 5 million units, we can make 10 billion yen. That is why we have prepared 100 titles.

Nine years after its founding, sales exceeded 10 billion yen, and in its 11th year, the company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Mothers market.’ In 2008, the company moved to the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. However, Matsuda misjudged a major change in trends: the shift from PCs to smartphones, the failure of a product using USB flash memory, and the Lehman Shock, which caused a huge loss and nearly led to insolvency. After surviving the crisis, Matsuda decided not to miss the changes in the industry and moved to Silicon Valley in the U.S., the headquarters of the IT industry. That was in 2000.

I think this was a big decision. If I hadn’t moved to Silicon Valley, there might not have been Poketalk. I don’t think I would have been able to think about the possibility of doing something like this and launching it on a global scale.

He has had an interest in English, or at least an awareness of its problems, since he was a student.

I had a hard time studying English,” he said. I had a hard time studying English, and no matter how much I studied, I could never be as good as a native English speaker. I thought it was too difficult for Japanese people to begin with. I thought we needed something magical.”

Noriyuki Matsuda, CEO of the AI simultaneous interpretation device “Pocket Talk”–This is the real “Honyaku-Konjac!

From the May 15-22, 2026 issue of FRIDAY