Japanese

EHLION's high-quality Japanese translations ensure that the content and materials produced by your company get your message across clearly and professionally in the Japanese market. Does your company export equipment or systems to Japan? We can deliver precise and accurate translations of your technical documentation in Japanese. And if you would like all your materials perfectly typeset in the layout and specifications of your choice, our experienced DTP team is also on hand to help. Our language professionals translate content both from and into Japanese.

Japanese | 日本語 | [njihoŋgo]

Did you know...?

Did you know that the hardest thing about mastering Japanese is not its grammar or pronunciation, but rather learning how to correctly use the system of honorifics? In Japanese, different words and verb forms are required depending on whether the sender or the recipient of the message is considered to be of higher rank. The gender of the speaker or author also has an impact on the degree of politeness used.

This is obviously a very significant issue when preparing materials for Japanese business customers. Respecting perceived disparities of rank between the provider and the customer is essential, so there are an astonishing number of different ways of writing simple phrases such as "we" and "our company". This is just a small selection: wareware/我々(we), watakushitachi/私たち (we), watakushidomo/私ども (we), Ichido/一同（all of us), Tosha/当社 (our company), Hesha/弊社 (our company) and so on! There are just as many variations on words such as "you" and "your company", and since all verbs and nouns also differ according to context, there are virtually endless ways of combining and configuring sentences. Even Japanese people sometimes find it difficult to hit the right note and risk causing offense or being chastised for having bad manners.

FACT FILE Japanese

Estimates put the number of Japanese speakers at around 125 million, almost all of whom are native speakers. In addition to people in Japan, Japanese is also spoken by immigrants in the USA and South America. Few people learn Japanese as a foreign language. Even today, there is uncertainty as to how the Japanese language developed and how exactly it should be classified. The Japanese writing system uses Chinese characters and two syllabic scripts. Japanese also uses a wide range of suffixes that have a similar function to declensions, conjugations and prepositions in other languages. The National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics which was founded in 1948, publishes manuals on Japanese language and linguistics and is responsible for conducting research into the Japanese language. However, the stewardship of the Japanese language is the responsibility of the Japanese Ministry of Education.