Picture: SLSA
Japanese university students are avoiding designed safe swim areas on beaches and other warning signs due to a language barrier.
That was the finding in a new survey of Japanese students was conducted by Monash University’s drowning prevention researcher Dr Misaki Shibata.
He found that three in five of respondents (wrongly) believed that the area marked between red and yellow flags meant danger and avoided swimming there.
Almost all participants also had trouble understanding common terms on beach safety signs such as submerged objects, shore dump, shore break and rip currents.
It also found that about 60 per cent of respondents did not understand the Japanese word for rip currents: riganryuu.
Japanese visitors are among the highest numbers of international visitor coastal drowning deaths in Australia.
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Dr Shibata says the study highlights the importance of better understanding specific cultural perceptions.
“The results are pretty concerning,” he says of the study’s findings.
“We were alarmed to find that even though the red and yellow beach safety flags are also used in Japan, we cannot assume that the intended meaning of these flags is common knowledge for all Japanese visitors.”
Dr Shibata says most Japanese respondents had studied English for more than six years yet still had trouble understanding the terms used on beach warning signs. This was compounded by the fact that Google has wrongly translated the safety terms into Japanese.
“This study has important implications for how we might make beach safety signage clearer for international visitors with visual icons and colour coding,” he says.
“These visual communications are more reliable warning messages on the beach, especially for those who cannot speak English.”
A research team is now looking at incorporating beach safety information into English learning materials so students can learn them at the same time that they are learning English.
