In a bid to plug dwindling¹ domestic consumption by tapping into overseas markets, some of Japan's big-name retailers³ are telling their employees to start speaking English -- or find another job.

为开拓海外市场，弥补日益减少的国内消费，日本一些知名零售企业要求员工开始说英语——否则就会饭碗不保。

As Japan's population shrinks, the country's retailers are increasingly looking to boost sales by expanding abroad and some firms are waking up to the necessity of being able to speak the global language of business in order to succeed overseas.

Rakuten, Japan's biggest online retailer², plans to make English the firm's official language, while Fast Retailing⁴, operator of the Uniqlo apparel（服装，衣服） chain, wants to make English more common in its offices by 2012 and plans to test its employees for proficiency⁵（精通，熟练） .

"It's about stopping being a Japanese company. We will become a world company," Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said last week at a news conference in Tokyo -- conducted almost entirely⁶ in English.

Employees at Rakuten, which hopes overseas sales will eventually account for 70 percent of all transactions made through its websites, will need to master English by 2012 to avoid facing the sack（解雇） .

"No English, no job," Mikitani told the Asahi newspaper.

Other high-profile Japanese companies, including automakers Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor, have announced moves to make the use of English more common in the workplace（工作场所，车间） .

Some experts say the switch to English is healthy but just one of the changes companies need to make to go global.

"What's interesting is that these companies really stand out as pioneers," Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University's Japan campus.

"They have a relatively⁷ new outlook. They realize that Japan is going to need to strike into foreign markets given the dormant⁸（休眠的，静止的） state of its economy," he said.