Translation, interpreting, language, and foreignness in crisis communication policy: 21 years of white papers in Japan
Cadwell, PatrickORCID: 0000-0002-2371-4378
(2023)
Translation, interpreting, language, and foreignness in crisis communication policy: 21 years of white papers in Japan.
In: Declercq, ChristopheORCID: 0000-0002-6687-120X and Kerremans, KoenORCID: 0000-0001-9966-6141, (eds.)
The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Interpreting and Crisis.
Translation Studies
.
Routledge (Taylor & Francis), London, pp. 17-30.
ISBN 9781003207580
Japan, a country of some 126 million people, is exposed to many hazards— including earthquakes, tsunamis, tropical cyclones, and floods— and regularly experiences large- scale crisis events. Japan
also possesses resources and experience that allow it to cope well with many of the crises and disasters that can arise in its hazardscape. The aims of this chapter were to investigate the extent to which translation and interpreting of foreign languages have been present in this coping capacity in recent history using a computerised corpus analysis of an influential policy instrument: Japan’s annual White Paper on Disaster Management.
The chapter continues in the section on “Research context” with a review of literature on crisis translation and interpreting policy and a discussion of Japan’s main policy problems, instruments, and actors. The third section, “Research methodology”, explains how a computerised, monolingual, lexical analysis of a diachronic corpus of policy texts written and analysed in Japanese was conducted. The fourth section follows with a discussion of what the use of Japanese equivalents related to “translation”, “interpreting”, “language”, and “foreignness” in the corpus suggests about policy- making developments in Japan in the last two decades. The chapter closes with conclusions that include a test of findings against the 2021 White Paper, limitations, and suggestions for future work.
Metadata
Item Type:
Book Section
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
crisis communication; translation and interpreting; policy; Japan