Japanese interpreting & translation services

Japanese is spoken by about 125 million people and is a major language of technology, automotive, gaming, entertainment, and finance. California has long-standing Japanese American communities in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, Torrance, San Jose, and San Francisco, as well as a large population of Japanese business expatriates. Japanese is a California court-designated language, and Focus Interpreting provides court-certified and medically qualified Japanese interpreters.

Japanese communication depends heavily on register. Keigo, the system of honorific and humble speech, shapes how business negotiations, depositions, and medical conversations unfold, and an experienced interpreter conveys not only the words but the appropriate level of formality. Our interpreters support consecutive interpreting for meetings and appointments and simultaneous interpreting with equipment for conferences and product launches.

Written Japanese combines kanji, hiragana, and katakana, and may be typeset horizontally or vertically. Certified Japanese translation of family registers (koseki), contracts, patents, technical manuals, medical records, and game and software content is handled by native translators, with desktop publishing that manages Japanese fonts, line breaking, and layout.