Suggestions for Communication of Information for Multicultural Co-Existence

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to propose measures required for promoting coexistence with multi-culture residents (MCR). In this chapter, the plans and ordinances established by the local governments in Japan were focused. As a result, majority of the local governments targeted for the survey had declared the need for multicultural co-existence and multilingual communication of information in their plans. Further, on the web operated by the local governments, machine translation was used. However, the study revealed that there were no local governments that communicated ordinances on the web in multiple languages. Not being informed about ordinances is detrimental to the daily life of foreigners residing in the local community and further can become the cause of increase in troubles with the Japanese in the local community. Therefore, this chapter proposes that the concerned local governments translate the ordinances ranked higher in the system of all ordinances on a priority basis and collaborate with the MCR to generate more precise expressions.