Japanese translation services from €0.05 per word Japanese translation agency. Three scripts, the right keigo.

Three writing systems in one text
What makes Japanese so demanding

Japanese is one of the few languages that uses three writing systems side by side. Kanji, the characters adopted from Chinese, carry the core meaning of nouns, verbs and specialist terms. Hiragana marks grammar: particles, inflections and the politeness forms known as keigo. Katakana is used for loanwords, brand names and technical terms borrowed from other languages. A single sentence in a business document can contain all three.

For translation this means that fluency alone is not enough. The translator decides for every term whether a kanji compound, a katakana loanword or a paraphrase is the right choice. The same English word can be correct in katakana for a software interface and wrong in a legal contract, where the established kanji term is expected. Our Japanese translators are native speakers who work only into their mother tongue and are specialised in a subject area, so they make those choices with the confidence of someone who reads such documents every day.

Japanese also runs longer or shorter than English depending on the text type, and it has no spaces between words. Line breaks, character spacing and vertical layouts all follow their own rules. Where your document has a fixed layout, our desktop publishing team prepares the Japanese version so it prints and displays as intended.

Keigo: politeness as a business language
Why the register decides how your message lands

Keigo is the system of honorific and humble forms that structures Japanese business communication. It has three main levels: teineigo, the polite standard form; sonkeigo, which elevates the reader or a third party; and kenjōgo, which lowers the speaker. The correct level depends on who writes, who reads and what the relationship between them is. A customer letter, an internal memo and a press release each call for a different register.

Machine translation and non-native translators tend to get this wrong in two directions. Either the text is too casual, which reads as careless or even rude to a Japanese partner, or it piles up honorifics until the message becomes stiff and hard to follow. Neither version damages the grammar, so a reviewer without native judgement will not notice. The reader in Tokyo or Osaka notices immediately.

Before a project starts we ask who the Japanese readers are and how your company already addresses them. That brief goes into a style guide alongside your termbase, so the register stays consistent across every document and every translator who works on your account.

Subject areas and document types
What we translate into and out of Japanese

Japan is a major market for engineering, automotive, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and electronics, and the documentation that travels with those products is regulated and technical. Most Japanese translation requests we receive fall into the following areas. Each is handled by translators with a background in that field, supported by terminology management and a translation memory that keeps recurring content consistent.

Prices and turnaround times
Clear pricing for Japanese translation

Japanese is a premium language pair. There are fewer qualified native translators with a technical or legal specialism than for the major European languages, and the three scripts and the register check add review time. The per-word prices below are starting prices; the final quote depends on subject area, volume, file format and deadline. You receive it in about 10 minutes within business hours, with no hidden surcharges.

Japanese is counted per source word or per character, depending on the direction. For translations out of Japanese we quote per Japanese character, which is the standard in the Japanese market. Turnaround is typically two to three working days for documents up to around 3,000 words; larger projects are split across a team of translators working from a shared translation memory. If you need a contract or a trade fair brochure sooner, express delivery is available and the surcharge is shown in the quote.

Certified Japanese translations
For authorities, embassies and courts

Certified translations are needed whenever an authority has to rely on the translation as a faithful rendering of the original: koseki family registers for marriage or residence applications, Japanese university diplomas for recognition procedures, commercial register extracts for setting up a subsidiary, or contracts and judgments for court proceedings. A sworn translator certifies the translation with a stamp, signature and certification statement. Many Japanese authorities also require an apostille on the original document.

For individuals and companies who need a certified translation of a standard document, the fastest route is our online shop. You upload a scan, pay a fixed price and receive the certified translation by post, with a certified PDF available in advance.

Common pitfalls between English and Japanese
Where machine translation regularly fails

Japanese and English are about as far apart as two languages used in international business can be. The subject is often omitted, the verb comes last, and plural and tense are frequently implied rather than marked. A machine translation engine has to guess at all of these, and it guesses wrong often enough that an unedited output is not fit for a customer-facing document.

Where machine translation does make sense, for example for large volumes of product data or support articles, we use it under ISO 18587 with full post-editing by a native Japanese translator. The post-editing service corrects exactly the categories above, which is why the output is reliable and the unedited engine output is not.

Frequently asked questions
Japanese translation at tolingo