Kirk here. Here’s a video that explains why so much rain has been dumped on Kyushu lately. In Japanese, the phenomenon is called “線状降水帯” (senjo kosuitai), which is sometimes translated literally as “linear rainband.” The problem with “linear rainband” is that it doesn’t seem to be an expression that is actually used by meteorologists in the English speaking world. “Training,” on the other hand, does seem to be a term that is actually used in English. The idea is that a train of storms goes over the same area, resulting in inordinate amounts of precipitation in that spot. It’s related to another phenomenon, called “back building.”
I’m interested in the terminology because I’m a language geek and have a special interest in how translations go wrong. NHK got this one right, in my view, but you can find news articles that merely translate the various parts of the Japanese to invent the new English term “linear rainband” – not a good communication strategy, in my view. I’ll refrain from adding links to such English articles because doing so seems to make Facebook replace the main image and link with that article.
