Japan
Although not generally placed among the ‘world languages’ by specialists (a status which English, French, Spanish, and Chinese enjoy), Japanese is nevertheless a language of importance worldwide. With 125 million speakers, most of whom reside in Japan, it forms a language family of its own, with no close linguistic relatives apart from the Ryukyuan languages of the southern islands, which include Okinawa.
Structurally unrelated to Chinese, it nevertheless makes use of Chinese characters, called kanji in the Japanese language, around 3000 of which are in common use today.
Two other writing systems, or syllabaries, were developed from the Chinese kanji to create a phonetic way of representing both the actual sounds of the Japanese language and words adopted from other languages. As a result, by some estimates Japanese has the most complex writing system in the world.
We have offered Japanese since 2005, translating arts, business, legal, marketing, scientific, and technical texts, usually in combination with Dutch or English. We also work extensively with Japanese linguistic validation, with a strong, vibrant network of contacts across Japan, focusing on the Kanto and Kansai regions.
We welcome your queries regarding successful translation, proofreading, and editing in this Asian language.