A multilingual website offering earthquake and tsunami information was launched on March 17 in Japan.
The site at http://equinfojp.net was designed in ten languages –Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Indonesian,Vietnamese, Indonesian and Thai.
The site,established by the Tohoku Area Pacific Offshore Earthquakemulti-language support centre, which was set up by the NPO (Non-ProfitOrganisation) based in Otsu, Shiga prefecture in western Japan aims toprovide updated multilingual information on the earthquake and tsunamias well as gather information about foreign residents in the disasterarea.
At present, the centre uses some 15volunteers to post all sorts of information – from everyday tips to waysto respond to nuclear disasters.
Apart from thesite, the centre also established hot lines in the four languages ofEnglish, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish and plans to expand the numberof languages./.