Translate an investor pitch deck into Japanese

What Japanese changes in an investor deck

A pitch deck is skimmed: short headings, big numbers, few sentences. In Japanese, all three behave differently.

• Large numbers are grouped in 万 (ten thousand) and 億 (one hundred million), not thousands and millions. "1.2 million" becomes 120万, "10 million" becomes 1,000万, "100 million" becomes 1億. One misplaced zero on the market-size or funding slide undermines everything else.
• Register: Japanese investors expect the polite です・ます style in full sentences, and noun-ending headings such as 市場規模の拡大 rather than a verb phrase. Switching between polite style and plain だ・である style from one slide to the next stands out at once.
• No plurals, but counters: Japanese has a single form, so the counter carries the meaning. "40 customers" is 40社 for companies and 40名 for people. A B2B deck counting its customers as individuals reads as an unchecked translation.
• Three scripts: tech vocabulary goes into katakana (スタートアップ, サブスクリプション), while acronyms such as ARR, CAC or LTV usually stay in Latin letters.

Layout: fonts, line breaks and punctuation

Japanese is written without spaces between words, so software can break a line almost anywhere, except before certain marks: a line must not start with 。, 、 or a closing bracket. A heading that fitted on one line in your source language may split in the middle of a kanji compound, so check every slide title.

• Fonts: if your deck uses a Latin-only brand typeface, the reader's computer will display Japanese characters in a substitute font, with different line heights. Plan a Japanese typeface such as Noto Sans JP, Meiryo or Yu Gothic for the Japanese version.
• Full-width punctuation: 、 and 。 replace commas and full stops, quotations go in 「」, with no spaces around them.
• Dates and financial years: dates read 2025年3月. Many Japanese companies run an April-to-March financial year, so "FY2025" may be read differently from what you intend. State the exact period.
• Team slide: family-name-first order and job titles (代表取締役 or "CEO" left as is) deserve a deliberate choice.

When sending the final version to a Japanese fund, a PDF export of the checked file avoids any font substitution on their side.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not

Your deck goes to Métis, Manuce's finance specialist, which handles the vocabulary of fundraising, valuation, SaaS metrics and projections. At Professional level the translation is ready to send; at Premium it runs through the most advanced engine followed by a cross-review; Essential is enough to understand a Japanese partner's deck internally.

• Accepted formats: PowerPoint, PDF, Word, Excel, plain text, Markdown, HTML, RTF and CSV. The file comes back in its original format, layout included: a .pptx stays an editable .pptx.
• A deck of around 1,800 words (15 pages) is a typical document, delivered within minutes and kept in your client area.
• Japanese carries a surcharge: a ×1.6 coefficient on the per-word rate.

What Manuce does not do:

• A scanned PDF with no selectable text cannot be read.
• Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations. If a Japanese investor asks, during due diligence, for articles of association or accounts certified by a sworn translator, you will need one.
• Manuce does not take glossaries or terminology instructions. To keep a product name in Latin letters rather than katakana, check the free sample and then the full translation.

Preparing the file and checking the Japanese version

A little preparation removes most Japanese-specific errors.

• Send the editable source, ideally PowerPoint, rather than a PDF made of images. A chart pasted as a picture contains no selectable text: rebuild it as text if its labels need translating.
• Spell out units: "2.5 million" rather than "2.5M", "10 thousand users" rather than "10k". The move to 万 and 億 is then unambiguous.
• State periods in full: "January to December 2025" rather than "FY25".
• Decide on currency: if you want amounts in yen, convert them in the source file and note the rate date.

On delivery, check in this order:

1. Every figure on the market, traction and funding slides, recounting the 万 and 億.
2. The counters (社, 名, 件) against what you are actually counting.
3. Headings: noun-ending style, no break inside a word, no overflow from the text box.
4. A consistent polite register from first slide to last.

If you can, have a Japanese speaker in your network read the final version before the meeting.

In practice

1. Export your deck as PowerPoint or a text-based PDF, with amounts and periods written out in full.
2. Upload the file: the quote appears instantly, based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free Japanese sample: polite register, tech terms, product name.
4. Pay, then download the translated deck in its original format.
5. Check figures in 万 and 億, counters, heading breaks and the Japanese font.