Typhoon Hagibis highlights need for multilingual alerts in Japan

SENDAI - 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 Oct. 12, Nhu Hoang, a 27-year-old Vietnamese visiting Sendai, panicked as she could not understand the meaning of "evacuation advisory" in Japanese, in an emergency email issued by the local municipality in the northeastern Japan city."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…READ FULL ARTICLE