High-End Translation by a Triple Qualified Linguist

Legal: U.S. qualified attorney with over a decade of experience in legal practice and translation. Practiced in the Tokyo office of a top Wall Street law firm, with expertise in corporate governance, mergers & acquisitions, securities, capital markets, private equity, and contracts.

Academic: Former Lecturer at Keio University Law School in Tokyo. Award-winning Japanese law scholar with research emphasis in environmental law, disaster response, and contemporary legal issues.

Real Estate: Licensed in Japan as a Real Estate Transaction Specialist, a national credential confirming expertise in zoning regulations, legal aspects of real estate transactions and brokerage businesses, ownership and other interests in property, appraisals and valuation, urban planning, taxation, etc. Owner of a bilingual brokerage in Tokyo.

Education

Harvard Law School, J.D. cum laude

Harvard University, A.B. cum laude in Social Studies

Specialties

• Legal & Financial (commercial contracts, merger agreements, corporate resolutions, securities filings, certificates, transactional due diligence, litigation document review, affidavits, etc.)
• Real Estate (purchase agreements, leases, disclosure documents, mortgages, property deeds, etc.)
• Management & Corporate (board meeting minutes, internal communications, media relations kits, press releases, business plans, presentations, commercial invoices, purchase orders, official records, internal policies, etc.)
• Film & TV (documentaries, dramas, interviews, corporate training videos, anime, etc.)
• Books & Literature (non-fiction, fiction, manga, comics, etc.)
• Medical (chart notes, administrative paperwork, office visit questionnaires, etc.)
• Website & Blog (terms and conditions, privacy policies, marketing copy, UI, articles, etc.)
• Academic (dissertations, theses, and research papers in law, humanities, social sciences, ethics, philosophy, social theory, sociology, anthropology, etc.)
• Travel & Tourism (travel articles, travel guides, reviews, pamphlets, brochures, websites, etc.)
• Music & Song (musical scores, lyrics, music theory, etc.)
• Food, Beverage & Hospitality (restaurant menus, food labels, packaging, product catalogs, signage, etc.)
• Identity Documents (birth and death certificates, family registers, marriage certificates, drivers’ licenses, alien registration cards, diplomas, etc.)

Personal Skills & Interests

• Music - Experienced musician (classical flute, vocal, conducting)
• Religion - Protestant Christian (raised Roman Catholic)
• Personal life - Montessori parent, dog owner, long-time resident of Japan
• Hobbies - Pin collecting, photography, non-fiction book writing

All-in-one Package, Every Time

On all projects, I work side-by-side with a native speaker of Japanese.

Our rates include TEP by native speakers of both languages, eliminating the costly and time-consuming step of having the translation reviewed by a separate native speaker of either the target or the source language. Before delivering our work, we carefully compare the Japanese and English texts to ensure accuracy in both style and content. I polish the English for readability, removing the "stink of Japanese" that so often pollutes hastily-drafted documents, and my partner does the same with documents translated into Japanese.

My partner is an experienced magazine editor and publishing expert, health and wellness entrepreneur, and food and beverage industry insider.

• Former editor and writer for regional Japanese dining and travel magazine
• Health and wellness entrepreneur
• Food and beverage industry insider with a focus on exported Japanese specialty groceries and Japanese cuisine

Past Projects

Together with my native Japanese-speaking partner, I have worked for a diverse array of international clients, from law firms and global corporations to university researchers and individuals, establishing relationships with translation agencies and direct clients around the world.

Why Me?

• I am not a machine. Despite current efforts to eliminate all that is human from language, skilled and experienced translators are here to stay. Try running a Japanese Wikipedia page through Google Translate if you don't believe me.
• I know how to write. Despite the importance of elegance and nuance in writing, many Japanese translations are of the awkward "choku-yaku," or overly literal, variety. Like your high school French teacher always said, translation is about more than matching a word in one language to its equivalent in another. A great translator has internalized this message and writes accordingly.
• I am an experienced attorney. You would pay someone trained in law to write a contract, so why not do the same with its translation? I am an attorney, and I understand that ambiguity is often intentional, that consistency in terminology is essential, that simple terms often carry unexpected meanings, and that there is simply no room for error or guesswork in legal drafting.
• I am a skilled researcher. A great translator relies on her subject matter expertise to comprehend a document and process it correctly into the target language. But there are limits to what we can know, and the mark of a true professional is her ability to find the right answers. I have honed my research skills over many years of rigorous study, delivering results at the highest levels of academia.