My friend is coming to Japan for a few months, so I’m trying get him set up with places around Tokyo where he can do daily shopping, check information, etc. But so many of the sites that offer an English version are terrible.
One example is Gransta Tokyo. The japanese site has maps and lists all the shops and information you’d expect from their website. The English version seems to list about 1/3 of the shops for some reason.
Another is Lumine. The English version is one page telling only the store hours and how to get there.
I’m not saying all Japanese sites should have English versions, but if a huge company is bothering to put a link for foreign languages, why not at least make it good? It would be better if they didn’t bother.
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I love the ones where they have the websites with complete functionality in Japanese, and then when you switch to English, you get the stock market profile, the CEO’s success story, bullet points about the company’s history, a contact us page, but no functionality where you can buy stuff!
It’s hilarious.
Japan is the Galapagos of Websites… text imbedded in images, un-clickable of course etc
There aren’t anyone maintaining the English version so it stucked in the state it was initially.created.
……reasoning?
There are a lot of reasons, but all down to the major issue : Japan is ruled by granddads. As they are on the lead of companies, the IT will be as :
– We’ve done like this since the 90’s, why change?
– New frameworks, UX, mobile versions? What is all that? Is this even useful?
– Foreigners? Meh.
– And tourists come with tourists agencies, so no need for B2C interface, right?
If you have a good way of developing a website with new tools, you can easily provide a multilingual adaptative website, working 24/7 working flawlessly without much human needs. But just look at the JR websites where you can’t book a ticket from 11PM to 5AM and you’ll understand the boss, after the 20th time the commercial director may tell that an English version would boost the company, will ask for an “Basic English website” like he would have asked to create an English flyer to put at the entrance of a shrine/castle.
English versions of website are simplistic so they can be easily edited by someone with no webdev skills and they had all the text translated by the one OL in the office who has been going to weekly eikaiwa lessons for 3 years. And then she forgot about it or got moved elsewhere and the site never gets updated.
Just use the google translate extension for your browser. It’s also not perfect obviously but better than the English sites usually. The worst is when all the text is graphics so it’s unable to translate it, then you can take a screenshot and plug it into google translator’s image translator
TIME. MONEY.
99% of customers in Japan are Japanese, speak and read Japanese. These companies are either required by laws or rules, encouraged, or feel the need to provide something for the international crowd. So, like all companies, they’ll provide that as cheaply and easily as they can. That all takes time, it all costs money.