Japan is a close and long-standing market for Chinese exporters, and the shared writing history makes this pair deceptive: the characters look familiar, and that is exactly where mistakes come from.
Every language pair has its own failure modes. These are the ones that decide whether a Japanese deliverable is usable.
Kanji and Chinese characters overlap in form and diverge in meaning. Terms that look self-evident to a Chinese reader can carry a different sense in Japanese, and a translator working from resemblance rather than knowledge will not notice.
Japanese encodes politeness in the grammar. The level chosen for a user manual, a contract and a marketing page is not the same, and getting it wrong reads as a category error rather than a stylistic slip.
Line-breaking rules, mixed script runs and occasional vertical setting mean Japanese DTP is a separate task from the translation itself.
These are not languages we source ad hoc. Japanese is taught as a degree subject at Chinese universities and has been for decades, and there is continuous movement of students, professionals and long-term residents between China and the countries where it is spoken. That is the pool the work is staffed from, and it is why the rate reflects the Chinese market rather than an agency markup.
Written by linguists living in the Chinese market, so the output reads as though it was written for its reader rather than translated toward them.
The Chinese source is read by people to whom its vocabulary is ordinary; the Japanese is produced or reviewed by a native speaker at L3 and L4.
Every entry below is a project we have published, with the language direction as recorded on the case study itself.
USD per 1,000 source words. Published in full — no quote request needed to see a number.
| L1 · Angel AI Review | L2 · Angel Pro | L3 · Angel Premium | L4 · Angel Global |
|---|---|---|---|
| $28 | $55 | $92 | $129 |
Every language on the rate card, plus audio-visual work: see full pricing →
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