Society

Tokyo's Minato Ward offers website information in 108 languages

May 01 (NHK) - Tokyo's Minato Ward has expanded a multi-language information service on its website to 108 languages from previous four. Around 17,000 people from about 130 countries live in the ward.

The municipal government conducted a survey last year on their multilingual services. Officials say many answered that they rely on the ward's webpage.

The officials began enhancing the language services of the website so that more foreign residents can get information on things such as vaccination programs, childcare support and garbage collection in their native language.

The service expanded in scope from four languages, namely Japanese, English, Simplified Chinese and Korean, to 108. Those languages include Ukrainian and Arabic.

It makes use of advanced AI translation and recognizes the language settings of a smartphone or a computer to automatically change the language of the website.

Officials say most of the native languages of residents of the ward are covered.

Minato City Homepage / 東京都港区ホームページ

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