Deadly Typhoon Hagibis highlights need for Japan to issue alerts in multiple languages

Some municipalities hit by major disasters in the past now offer multilingual services, such as emergency emails that have been translated in advance

But many do not offer such services, meaning non-Japanese living in those areas are unlikely to be informed about impending doom

2-MIN READ2-MIN

A woman looks out the window of her badly damaged home at the devastation in Nagano caused by Typhoon Hagibis. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 3:30pm, 25 Oct 2019Updated: 3:30pm, 25 Oct 2019

Alerts in Japanese warning about deadly Typhoon Hagibis left many foreigners confused as to whether they needed to evacuate, underscoring the need for multilingual services.

When Hagibis made landfall on October 12, Nhu Hoang – a 27-year-old Vietnamese national visiting Sendai – panicked as she could not understand the meaning of the “evacuation advisory”, an emergency email written in Japanese she had received that was issued by the local municipality in the northeastern city.

Members of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces inspect the damage in Marumori, northeastern Japan after the area was inundated by Typhoon Hagibis. Photo: Kyodo

“English would be very useful” at times like this, said Hoang, who lives in Tokyo.

The typhoon left more than 80 people dead and the torrential rain it brought caused numerous embankments to collapse, flooding tens of thousands of homes and large areas of farmland.

Some foreigners contacted the Sendai Disaster Multilingual Support Centre, run by a local tourism association, as it offers information in English, Chinese, Korean and simplified Japanese during natural disasters.