Education

Harvard Law School, J.D. Harvard University, A.B.

Our Specialties

• Legal & Financial (commercial contracts and merger agreements, corporate resolutions, securities filings, certificates, transactional due diligence, litigation document review, affidavits, etc.)
• Real Estate (purchase agreements, leases, and disclosure documents)
• Management & Corporate (board meeting minutes, internal communications, media relations kits, press releases, business plans, presentations, commercial invoices, purchase orders, official records, internal policies, etc.)
• Medical (chart notes, administrative paperwork, office visit questionnaires, etc.)
• Website (terms and conditions, privacy policies, marketing copy, etc.)
• Academic (law, academic papers, dissertations, theses, humanities, social sciences, ethics, philosophy, social theory, sociology, anthropology, etc.)
• Travel & Tourism (travel articles, travel guides, reviews, pamphlets, brochures, websites, etc.)
• Identity Documents (birth and death certificates, family registers, marriage certificates, drivers’ licenses, alien registration cards, etc.)

Our Lead Translator

• U.S. qualified attorney** with over a decade of experience in legal practice and translation
• Practiced in the Tokyo office of a top international law firm, with a specialty in corporate mergers & acquisitions and securities transactions
• Native English, JLPT Level 1 (日本語能力試験１級)
• Japanese Real Estate Transaction Specialist (宅地建物取引士)

** We are confident you will agree that our legal experience and knowledge set us apart from the other legal translators, but we must remind you that we are not providing legal services or advice, practicing law, serving as your lawyer, serving as anyone else’s lawyer, etc. Contacting or hiring us does not create a lawyer-client relationship of any kind whatsoever. But we’d be happy to shoot the breeze about your favorite legal topic!

Our Past Work

We have worked for a diverse array of international clients, from law firms and global corporations to university researchers and individuals, establishing relationships with translation agencies on three continents.

Why Hire Us?

• I am not a machine. Despite current efforts to eliminate all that is human from language, skilled and experienced translators are here to stay. Try running a Japanese Wikipedia page through Google Translate if you don't believe me.
• I am not one, but two.
  
  I work side-by-side with a native speaker of Japanese on all projects. Before delivering our work, we carefully compare the Japanese and English texts to ensure accuracy in both style and content. I also polish the English for readability, removing the "stink of Japanese" that so often pollutes hastily-drafted documents, and my partner does the same with the Japanese.
• I know how to write.
  
  Despite the importance of elegance and nuance in writing, many Japanese translations are of the awkward "choku-yaku," or overly literal, variety. Like your high school French teacher always said, translation is about more than matching a word in one language to its equivalent in another. A great translator has internalized this message and writes accordingly.
• I am an experienced attorney.
  
  You would pay someone trained in law to write a contract, so why not do the same with its translation? I am an attorney, and I understand that ambiguity is often intentional, that consistency in terminology is essential, that simple terms often carry unexpected meanings, and that there is simply no room for error or guesswork in legal drafting.
• I am a skilled researcher.
  
  A great translator relies on her subject matter expertise to comprehend a document and process it correctly into the target language. But there are limits to what we can know, and the mark of a true professional is her ability to find the right answers. I have honed my research skills over many years of rigorous study, and even Harvard professors have hired me to do their dirty work.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• What is your native language? English (U.S.) is my mother tongue, as I was born and raised in a monolingual English-speaking household in the United States. My partner is a native speaker of Japanese, born and raised in Fukuoka, Japan.
• Do you support other languages as well?
  
  No. I am a specialist translator, not a translation agency. My clients choose me for my expertise on Japan and Japanese, and I have found that the only way to guarantee high quality is to stick to the languages that I understand best: Japanese and English.
• What if I need my document translated into multiple languages?
  
  I would be happy to work with you to create a masterful JP<>EN translation, and I would recommend hiring translators for each of your other required language pairs separately. I do not provide referrals for other language pairs, as I am simply not qualified to pass judgment on the skill of a translator who works in a language that I do not understand.
• What are your rates?
  
  That's a great question, and it deserves a careful answer. Your project is unique, and my services are tailored to your specific needs. Please drop me a line with more information, and I'll happily provide a detailed estimate.