Japanese Translation Services

Japanese Translation

Since the technology boom of the 1980's the need for Japanese translations has rocketed and now there are over 130 million Japanese speakers worldwide.

All the translators who work for us are based in-country, which means that they live and breathe the language and the culture. This can be very important when it comes to Japanese translations as some dialects such as Tsushima can be unintelligible to other Japanese speakers.

To ensure that your translated Japanese documents are as accurate as possible, we follow very stringent guidelines:

• Only trained and experienced translators will work on your documents.
• You will have an experienced Project Account Manager dedicated to your work who will make sure you get the right translation for your target audience.
• Specialist documents will only be translated by translators who have proven experience with the required area of expertise.

English to Japanese Translation

The process of English to Japanese translation poses many difficulties to the inexperienced translator for both grammatical and cultural reasons. As all our English to Japanese translators are based in Japan and are highly experienced, they are well aware of these differences.

English and Japanese Word Order

Aside from the obvious dissimilarity in appearance, one of the biggest linguistic differences is that the word order in Japanese does not follow the English.

For example in the sentence "I drive the car which my father bought for me on my birthday". When translated into Japanese, the word order would be "I on my birthday my father (for me) bought the car drive" ('for me' would be omitted because it is obvious). This example shows that if this sentence was translated directly word-for-word, it would make no sense to the Japanese reader.

Another difficulty posed for English to Japanese translation is that different words and/or expressions may be used for a sentence depending on the situation. For example, if you are talking to your boss about his wife and your wife, you have to use different words for his wife and your wife whereas if you are talking to your very close friend (the same age as you) about his wife and yours, you will be using completely different words for his wife and yours than in the previous situation. The style of sentence will be completely different as well.

This is a perfect example of how important it is for you to give us as much information as possible so your translator can use the right style of language and words for the right situation.

Japanese Writing Styles

"desu/masu （です・ます調）" and "da/dearu （だ・である調）" are the two basic writing styles in Japanese. Since the tone of these styles is completely opposite, it is vital to select the style you would like your Japanese translator to use depending on the type of document or the intended audience.