Translate a Product Catalogue into Japanese

What Japanese changes in a catalogue

Japanese catalogue copy mixes three scripts, each with a job. Kanji carry meaning (素材, “material”), hiragana carry grammar, and katakana handle loanwords, which are everywhere in product vocabulary: “stacking chair” becomes スタッキングチェア, “cushion” クッション. Brand names usually stay in Latin letters.

• Register: descriptions are written in the polite です・ます form (軽量で持ち運びに便利です。). Headlines tend to be short noun phrases: “Free delivery” becomes 送料無料.
• No plurals, but counters: Japanese has a single form. “Available in 3 colours” reads 全3色, “pack of 4” 4個セット, with a counter word that depends on the object (個, 枚, 本, 点).
• Full-width punctuation: comma 、, full stop 。, quotation marks 「」, and no spaces between words.
• Conventions: dimensions are given as 幅×奥行×高さ (width × depth × height), dates as 2025年4月1日, and digits in prices and measurements are usually half-width.

Layout: fonts, line breaks and space

Your file comes back with its layout intact, but Japanese behaves differently from European languages inside a text frame. Three things to watch.

• Fonts: a Latin typeface has no Japanese glyphs. If your design specifies one, the software substitutes another font, which may clash with your brand look. Choose a typeface that covers Japanese in your document.
• Line breaks: without spaces, a line can break between almost any two characters, yet Japanese typographic rules (kinsoku) forbid, for example, a 。 or a ー at the start of a line. Long katakana words such as ステンレススチール wrap awkwardly in narrow columns.
• Space: Japanese uses fewer characters than English or French, but each one fills a full square. A short label may still overflow, while a paragraph may leave a gap. Check product tiles, price badges and specification tables.

Manuce keeps the orientation of your design, so horizontal text stays horizontal. A vertical (tategaki) edition, common in some Japanese print material, is a job for a designer.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

The catalogue is translated by Calliope, the marketing and sales engine, which tells a selling point apart from a technical specification. Accepted formats: Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, plain text, Markdown, HTML, RTF and CSV. The file returns in its original format, layout included. A typical catalogue of around 10,000 words (about 40 pages) is delivered within minutes and kept in your client area.

Japanese carries a surcharge: a ×1.6 coefficient applies to the per-word rate, based on the exact word count of your file. For a catalogue that goes to customers, the Professional level is the sensible choice.

What Manuce does not do:

• it cannot read a scanned PDF (an image with no selectable text);
• it does not convert your prices into yen or your clothing and shoe sizes into Japanese sizing; it translates the text as written;
• it does not produce certified (sworn) translations, which a catalogue rarely needs but some regulatory documents do.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Catalogues are often built in desktop publishing software whose native format is not on the list. Export to a PDF with selectable text or to Word: if you can highlight a word in the PDF, Manuce can read it.

Before uploading:

• sort out prices yourself: in Japan, prices shown to consumers must include consumption tax (総額表示); if your list shows another currency or net prices, adapt it in the source or after translation;
• keep SKUs (REF-2041-BL) and barcodes in cells or boxes separate from descriptive copy;
• mind sizes: a European or UK “M” does not necessarily match a Japanese “M”.

Use the free sample, one paragraph translated at your chosen level, to check what matters most: how brand names appear (Latin letters or katakana), the tone of your headlines, and consistent polite forms. If a name must stay unchanged, check it in the sample and again in the delivered file. For cover slogans, a read-through by a native speaker you work with is a sound habit.

In practice

1. Export the catalogue to a text-selectable PDF or Word, with prices adapted to the Japanese market.
2. Upload the file: the quote appears straight away, Japanese coefficient included.
3. Read the free sample to check brand names, tone and polite forms.
4. Pay, then download the translated catalogue in its original format.
5. Check fonts, overflowing text and line breaks before printing or publishing.