Multilingual Disaster Information for Mobile Phones in Japan

A multilingual disaster information system (MLDI) has been developed to overcome the language barrier during times of natural disaster. MLDI is a webbased system that includes templates in nine languages so that translated texts can be made available immediately. Mobile phone e-mail with graphic text is a useful tool for delivering multilingual disaster information. We assessed the performance of the translation system and the multilingual graphical characters, and found that they are sufficiently useable. We discussed the usage of mobile phones for multilingual disaster information delivery system including Early Earthquake Warning system. Multilingual mobile information and measures is useful for a safe and barrier-free society.