Japanese is the official language of Japan, which has a population of over 125 million. Japan consists of over 6,800 islands, suffers 1,500 earthquakes each year and has the highest life expectancy in the world, with over 50,000 citizens over 100 years of age.

There are also around 2.5 million people of Japanese origin spread across the Americas, most notably in Brazil, many of whom speak Japanese as their first language. There is also a sizeable presence of Japanese expatriates in major world cities including London, New York and Paris. Although the 9th most spoken language in the world, Japanese is not one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

The Japanese Writing System

• • Hiragana is syllabic and the most original writing system in Japan. It is used for simple words, conjugations, particles and children’s literature as it is the first set of writing which is taught.

• • Katakana is used to write foreign words.

• • Kanji is based on the Chinese writing system and consists of about 2000 signs.

• • Recently, romanji – a romanization of Japanese words – has developed, too.

But whatever your requirements, our Japanese translation experts  will assess your documents on style, content, technical specialisms, etc. Your document is then loaded into project management software and sent to native-speaker translators selected specifically for your project.