Easy Japanese News Services

There has been an increase in the number of foreign-born residents in Japan, and this trend is expected to continue. Among these non-native residents, many feel that their limited comprehension of the Japanese language prevents them from understanding TV and radio programs. Many of them, however, have a command of a certain level of conversational and written Japanese. Taking advantage of their ability, municipalities are developing means to provide information in easy Japanese, in addition to foreign languages.

With the view that providing easy Japanese news on web pages and by other means will be a useful service for non-native residents, we initiated research related to this field. The first phase of this research involves an examination of standards for rewriting the regular daily news to make it easier to comprehend. Currently, we are working to establish a guideline for using the vocabularies and grammar covered in the primary levels, Level 3 and Level 4, of the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test^*1. However, this would limit the vocabulary to the approximately 1,600 words used in daily conversation, making it too restrictive to address a news item without the use of advanced level expressions such as "… to iukotodesu" (to repeat hearsay). This issue was handled by retaining frequently used words and technical terms instead of replacing them, along with providing a glossary that explains their meaning in easy Japanese. We have decided that some of the advanced level vocabulary must be used.

A conceptual service image of this easy Japanese news was exhibited at this year's STRL Open House (Figure 1). The figure shows the original news item on the left and the easy Japanese version on the right. The easy Japanese news has the following characteristics, in addition to simpler sentences.

1. All Kanji characters (Chinese characters) are displayed with the pronunciation in Hiragana (phonetic).
2. Words registered in the dictionary are underlined, with the description displayed in the lower-left corner upon a click of a button or mouse.
3. Biographical and geographical names in a sentence are shown in color.
4. It allows users to listen to speech read by an announcer.

Through these tools, we will work to provide easier-to-understand services for foreign-born residents. Our future work will include a verification of the effectiveness of re-writing, fullscale research involving a news comprehension experiment with foreign-born subjects, and the development of a rewrite assistance tool to reduce work time.