Japanese Language Services in the UK

About Our Japanese Services

Japanese is spoken by around 125 million people, almost all of them in Japan, with smaller communities in Brazil, the United States and elsewhere formed through emigration. It belongs to the Japonic family, whose only other members are the Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa; a wider relationship to other families has never been proven. The writing system combines three scripts: kanji, characters borrowed from Chinese, and two syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, used side by side in ordinary text. Standard Japanese is based on Tokyo speech, but regional dialects remain strong, with Kansai speech from the Osaka and Kyoto area the most widely recognised. The language uses an elaborate system of honorifics, so the form of a sentence shifts according to the social relationship between speakers.

Prism Linguistics provides Japanese translation, interpreting and transcription across the UK in 300+ languages. Whether you need a certified document for the Home Office, a court interpreter, an NHS appointment or a business meeting, our vetted native-speaker linguists are ready to help.