Translate a privacy policy into Japanese

How a Japanese privacy policy reads

Japanese privacy policies are almost always written in the polite です・ます style, and they avoid a second-person pronoun. "You" becomes お客様 (the customer), ユーザー or 利用者 (the user), depending on the service; "we" becomes 当社 (our company). "We may share your data with our service providers" therefore reads 当社は、お客様の個人情報を業務委託先に提供することがあります。

What changes for this document in particular:

• no spaces between words, full-width punctuation 、 and 。, full-width brackets （ ）;
• no grammatical plural: "your data" and "a data item" look the same, and context does the work;
• dates run year-month-day: 2024年4月1日制定 for the effective date, 改定 for a revision;
• numbered articles (第1条, 第2条) are common in Japan, but the translation follows the structure of your file.

Japanese usually needs fewer characters than English or French, yet each character is wider, so a narrow column or a cookie table may wrap differently from the original.

APPI vocabulary: translation is not compliance

Data protection in Japan is governed by the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI, 個人情報の保護に関する法律), supervised by the Personal Information Protection Commission (個人情報保護委員会). Its concepts do not map one-to-one onto the GDPR, and Japanese readers recognise them:

• 個人情報, 個人データ and 保有個人データ are three distinct tiers under the APPI, whereas a European policy simply says "personal data";
• "special category" or sensitive data corresponds to 要配慮個人情報;
• disclosure to third parties is 第三者提供; purposes of processing are 利用目的;
• transfers outside Japan are 外国にある第三者への提供.

A faithful translation says what your source says. If your policy does not cover APPI rights or a contact point for requests and complaints (お問い合わせ窓口), the Japanese version will not cover them either. If the policy is meant to apply to users in Japan, have the substance reviewed by a lawyer familiar with Japanese law.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not

Your policy goes to Themis, the engine specialised in legal texts. You upload the file (Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, plain text, Markdown, HTML, RTF or CSV), the quote appears straight away, based on the exact word count, and one paragraph of your own text is translated free at the level you choose. Use it to check how "you" and "we" have been rendered and whether your company or app name has been kept as you want it.

For a typical policy of around 2,500 words, the translation arrives within minutes, in the original format with its layout, and stays in your client area. Japanese is a surcharged language: a ×1.6 coefficient applies to the per-word rate.

What Manuce does not do:

• it does not produce sworn or certified translations; if a partner or authority requires one signed by an accredited translator, you will need a sworn translator;
• it cannot read a scanned PDF (an image with no selectable text);
• it does not adapt the legal content to the APPI: it translates your text.

Preparing the file

• Selectable text: if all you have is a scanned PDF, go back to the source document (Word, HTML) or a PDF exported from it;
• Current version only: remove superseded wording, struck-through text and review comments, which would otherwise be counted and translated;
• Italics: Japanese typography rarely uses them and slanted kanji read poorly. If your definitions are italicised ("Personal Data"), plan to use bold or the corner brackets 「 」 in the Japanese version;
• Contact details: address, data protection officer's email, name of the responsible entity: correct them in the source, then check them in the translation;
• Web page: if you upload the HTML, save it as UTF-8; once translated, make sure the page declares lang="ja", which helps browsers pick a Japanese font.

Checks after delivery

• Fonts: open the Word or PowerPoint file on a machine with a Japanese font installed; without one, characters show as empty boxes. If you re-export to PDF, make sure the fonts are embedded;
• Line breaks: 。 and 、 should never start a line; look closely at narrow columns and the cookie table;
• Consistency: one source term should give one Japanese term throughout, for instance 個人情報 everywhere rather than switching to 個人データ where your text draws no distinction;
• Spelling: both Cookie and クッキー are used in Japan; keep only one in the document;
• Native review: have a Japanese speaker read the final version, at least the sections on individuals' rights and transfers abroad.

In practice

1. Start from a file with selectable text (Word, HTML or an exported PDF), current version only.
2. Upload it, choose Japanese and a level: the quote appears immediately.
3. Read the free sample: how "you" and "we" are rendered, your company name, the です・ます register.
4. Pay, then download the translated file in its original format.
5. Check fonts, line breaks and APPI terms; have the substance reviewed if the policy applies in Japan.