Nursing exam for foreigners to include English translation+

TOKYO, Aug. 23 Kyodo - The health ministry plans to use English words to explain difficult Japanese terms in the national nursing examination for foreigners from the next test in February, Shinya Adachi, parliamentary secretary for the ministry, said Monday.

A panel of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry will decide as early as
Tuesday on details of measures to help foreign nurses and caregivers understand
Japanese when they take the exam, Adachi said.
The ministry is considering including English translations for technical terms,
including disease names, in the exam, while clarifying subjects and predicates
in Japanese sentences to make Japanese more easily understood by applicants.
''Next year's national exam will be considerably different from the previous
tests,'' Adachi said at a news conference.
More than 1,000 applicants have come to Japan from Indonesia and the
Philippines under the bilateral free trade agreement, but the passage rate for
the exam remains low, as kanji characters and technical terms used in the exam
are believed to pose a high hurdle for foreign examinees.
==Kyodo