Translate Video to Japanese

What to expect when translating into Japanese

Japanese translations mix kanji, hiragana and katakana, with foreign terms written in katakana. Japanese has levels of politeness (keigo) that the translation picks automatically — usually the neutral polite desu/masu form, which suits business and education.

From English to Japanese

English to Japanese reverses word order (the verb moves to the end) and often drops subjects, so translations can be shorter than you'd expect. Translations usually come out in the polite desu/masu style, which suits business and education.

Japanese viewers notice tone. Translations usually come out in the polite desu/masu style, which suits tutorials, corporate and education videos; casual vlogs may sound stiffer in Japanese than in English. Katakana loanwords are common for tech terms, and product names are often written in katakana — check that your brand appears the way your Japanese site writes it.

Because Japanese subtitles are dense in characters but short in length, they're easy to read on screen. Many Japanese viewers are happy with subtitles for foreign content, so consider offering both the dubbed MP4 and the Japanese SRT.

Cost: 550 credits (55.0¢) with a Japanese voice, or 11 credits (1.1¢) for Japanese subtitles only. English is detected automatically; you only choose Japanese.

The Japanese voice track

Japanese often drops the subject of a sentence, so translated lines are frequently shorter than the English and the voice rarely needs to speed up.

Voice, MP4, subtitles and transcripts: 650 credits (65¢). Subtitles and transcripts only: 13 credits (1.3¢).

Japanese subtitles

Japanese subtitles are measured in characters rather than words; streaming style guides commonly cap lines at around 16 characters. The text is compact, but long English sentences can still produce dense lines.

Japanese (日本語) is written in the kanji, hiragana and katakana.

Switch Full translation output off for subtitles only: 18 credits (1.8¢). If the video is already in Japanese, select Japanese as the language instead and the subtitles come back untranslated — see Japanese transcription.

Translating audio files into Japanese

Podcasts and recordings go through the audio translator, which returns a Japanese M4A and transcripts: 1,350 credits ($1.35) with voice, 27 credits (2.7¢) as text only.

Who translates into Japanese

Japanese is spoken in Japan. It's used by companies selling to Japanese businesses, creators publishing their own content for Japanese viewers, and universities with Japanese partners.

Names, brands and katakana

Foreign names reach Japanese in katakana, often with more than one accepted spelling: "Vanessa" can be ヴァネッサ or バネッサ. Many Japanese companies also write their own brand names in Latin letters on packaging and websites, while machine translation may convert them to katakana. Before publishing, compare every product and company name in the subtitles with how your Japanese website or distributor writes it, and use that spelling throughout.

Japanese people named in an English video are harder. "Kenji Watanabe" spoken in English carries no information about which kanji he uses, so the translation can only produce katakana or a guess. Replace those names with the correct kanji, family name first, in the subtitles. Japanese viewers also expect an honorific such as さん after the name of a guest or customer; a line that calls a respected guest just "スミス" can sound abrupt, and adding さん is a small edit with a big effect on tone.

Counting in 万

Japanese groups large numbers in units of ten thousand (万) and a hundred million (億) rather than thousands and millions. One million is 100万 and fifty million is 5000万. A figure can be translated correctly into this system and still be hard to verify at a glance, so check revenue, user and price figures against the English transcript with a calculator. Yen prices have no decimals, dates run year, month, day (2026年10月1日), and quoted speech uses 「」 brackets rather than quotation marks.

Government bodies and some traditional businesses also count years by imperial era: 2026 is 令和8年. Machine translation renders the Western year the speaker said, so if you are localising for a Japanese public-sector client or a formal document context, ask whether they expect era years in the subtitles.

Line breaks in text without spaces

Japanese has no spaces between words, so a player that wraps a long subtitle line can break it anywhere, including mid-word or between a number and its counter. In the SRT or VTT you can insert your own line break at a natural point, usually after a particle such as は, が or を, which gives the reader a complete phrase on each line. The subtitle segmentation guide explains how professional subtitlers choose those break points.

Fonts are rarely a problem on phones and browsers, but older editors and some TVs show empty boxes for Japanese characters. If you see them, the file is fine and the device lacks a Japanese font.

Text in the picture stays English

Titles, labels and lower thirds are untouched: mydubly translates speech only, not text inside the picture. For software demos where the screen is full of English menus, a Japanese voice describing English buttons can confuse more than it helps. Options include re-recording with a Japanese interface, naming the English button in the subtitle line, or leaving English UI where your Japanese users actually run the English version. The article on translating text in the picture compares these approaches.

Budgeting a Japanese tutorial series

If you go with subtitles, the guide to adding subtitles shows how to attach the Japanese SRT on the main platforms, so viewers can switch it on alongside the original audio.

Japanese pre-release checks

• Japanese personal names are in the right kanji, family name first.
• Brand and product names match your Japanese website, in katakana or Latin letters.
• Honorifics are present where a guest or customer is named.
• Large figures are correct in 万 and 億, and yen prices have no decimals.
• Subtitle lines break after particles, not in the middle of a word.
• English menus and captions in the picture are handled in the recording, the subtitles or the description.
• The politeness level stays the same across every video in a series.

Using the tool on this page

• The spoken language is detected automatically; you select the output language — the spoken language itself for an untranslated transcript, or another language for a translation. Files can be up to 2 hours long.
• Only the audio is sent for processing — the video stays on your device — and audio and text are deleted within 30 minutes of delivery (how files are protected).
• You can download a translated video that keeps your music and effects, the translated audio as M4A, a transcript and subtitles (SRT and VTT). Every output, step and limit is explained on the video translator page.