Japanese (日本語)

Japanese (ja, jpn) is a world language. Wikidata records about 128M speakers. It is written in hiragana and kana. It is an official language in 2 countries, including Japan and Palau.

Japanese mixes kanji, hiragana and katakana, uses honorific keigo, and has no spaces. Character counts are much lower than English but line-breaking rules (kinsoku) apply.

Text translated from English into Japanese typically becomes 10–55% shorter.

In the United States, 462,405 people aged 5+ speak Japanese at home (Census ACS), and 178,379 of them (39%) speak English less than "very well" — a key indicator of demand for Japanese translators and interpreters.

Translation guides

• English → Japanese translation
• Japanese → English translation

Where Japanese is official

• Japan
• Palau

Rates for Japanese translation

Japanese falls in our east asian band: roughly $0.10–$0.22 per word for general commercial work. These are indicative ranges, not quotes — specialised, certified and rush work costs more, and literary translation is usually priced per 1,000 words.

For context, the median salaried translator or interpreter in the US earned $60,170 in May 2025 (BLS). See salaries by state →

Where Japanese is spoken in the US, state by state →