I recently learned about “Kumamoto ShakeOut” earthquake drill. It is part of a national campaign, which seems to be based on a program from the United States that has gone international (http://www.shakeout.org). It sounds like a good idea but a had a hard time explaining what “shakeout” means we I got a couple of questions from colleagues at my university. The relevance of the word “shake” is easy enough to explain but the relevance of the term “shakeout” is pretty hard. Here’s one dictionary definition:
“a period or process in which the relatively weak or unessential are eliminated”
I think the idea is that the “shakeout” will “separate the men from the boys,” that is, show who’s prepared for an earthquake and who’s not. Or, to put it differently, the use of the term “shakeout” implies that if you don’t participate you may be left behind in some sense. This is clever in English but I think there must be a lot of Japanese people who are puzzled by the meaning and relevance of “shakeout” in this case.
One characteristic of communication in Japan might be described as a heavy burden on the receiving end. It often seems to me that senders of messages here feel little obligation to make things clear and that people assume that the receiver of the message should figure things out. The use of “shakeout” in this case strikes me as one such example. The website explains that “ShakeOut” is an “invented” term (which is not exactly true) that means “simultaneous disaster prevention drill” but anyone who looks the term up in an English dictionary is bound to be confused by the disparity between that explanation and the definitions dictionaries offer:
シェイクアウト訓練とは、世界中で行われている新たな訓練で、「ShakeOut」は、造語で「いっせい防災訓練」と訳されています。
Instead of just converting English into katakana, I think it would be better to come up with a clever Japanese phrase that is meaningful to Japanese speakers.