In this post I’d like to write a little about the Kumamoto City web page. If you would like to learn about information that has been put up on the city’s page but you’re not able to read Japanese, I recommend that you do the following:

  1. Copy the url (http://www.city.kumamoto.jp/)
  2. Go to Google Translate (https://translate.google.com)
  3. Paste the url in and hit translate

Actually, the city has already prepared a machine translation of its page (see image) and this is sometimes included in quake related link collections but I recommend that Google Translate be used instead for the following reasons:

  1. Google translate allows you to quickly and easily compare the English translation with the original Japanese as you read, but the city’s machine translation has no such function.
  2. The city’s machine translated page is a dead end (it does not contain even a link to the original Japanese information).

I plan to discuss this issue and other related issues with responsible personnel in the city government. I will point out to them that, while it is certainly important to provide information in English, Japanese officials should not assume that foreigners ONLY need English and that giving us the possibility of referring to the original Japanese (or of asking a Japanese friend to check the original Japanese for us) is completely unnecessary. I will also ask them if tax payers are paying for the inferior solution currently available on their web site when a free link to Google translate would have done a better job.

– Kirk