“Easy Japanese” in Emergency Relief and Its Implication for China

Wang Juan and Qu Zhiqiang

Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning ›› 2020, Vol. 5 ›› Issue (5) : 57-66.

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Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning ›› 2020, Vol. 5 ›› Issue (5) : 57-66. DOI: 10.19689/j.cnki.cn10-1361/h.20200505

“Easy Japanese” in Emergency Relief and Its Implication for China

  • Wang Juan and Qu Zhiqiang
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Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-2019 has become an international crisis for public health, requiring extensive responses from the central governments. For multilingual countries like China, language issues loom large in the emergency responding apparatus. In this paper, Japan’s experience of developing “Easy Japanese” for emergency relief is examined in order to provide a practical reference to China’s language solutions to emergencies. At the end of last century, Japan began to develop “Easy Japanese”, a simplified version of Japanese aimed for easy communication in emergencies, and has been regularly revising it. Our overview of “Easy Japanese” consists of the background of its development, the targeted audience, its basic characteristics and the operational mechanism. Based on the experience of Japan, the author provides reference for the construction of emergency language mechanism in China, to further improve the construction of emergency language corpus to promote the development of empirical research, and to refine the characteristics of emergency language and expand the application field. With the help of the government, we will build an all-round normal cooperation system. These measures may help China improve its language responses in emergencies.

Key words

Easy Japanese / emergency relief / emergency language / public emergency / disadvantaged language group

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Wang Juan and Qu Zhiqiang. “Easy Japanese” in Emergency Relief and Its Implication for China[J]. Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning. 2020, 5(5): 57-66 https://doi.org/10.19689/j.cnki.cn10-1361/h.20200505

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