About

Freelance patent translator. English to Japanese. Based in Kyoto.

My 3-day standard turnaround isn’t about speed. It’s a workflow built to deliver filing-ready Japanese with margin before your deadline.

Background

Joined a Japanese patent translation company in 2019. Spent about 6 years in-house at roughly 2 million words of patent content per year. Most of that time, about 80%, was reviewing translations by colleagues and external contractors; the rest I translated myself.

With ongoing freelance work since, I have now passed 13 million words of patent content overall: 10 million reviewed and roughly 3 million translated.

That reviewer experience is the foundation of my translation today. I learned, at scale, where patent translations go wrong:

  • Terminology drift
  • Omitted reference signs
  • Mis-rendered numerical values
  • Inverted modifier scopes
  • Claim-figure mismatches

In 2025, I transitioned to full-time freelance patent translation.

Built on Language, Not Engineering

I came from Sophia University’s Faculty of Foreign Studies, English Department. A language background, not engineering. That focus is what makes my translation work strong.

Engineers-turned-translators can read circuits and machinery. But the hardest parts of patent translation are grammatical, structural, and interpretive. A patent claim is a legal sentence first and a technical description second.

Reading source English carefully and rendering it precisely in Japanese is what I trained for. Technical fluency followed through years of immersion in patent documents.

My Workflow

I’ve developed my own translation system, and continue to extend it with every project. 12,000+ lines of Python, designed specifically for patent work. Claude AI on AWS Bedrock for the first draft. I check every sentence of the translation by hand.

What’s behind it:

  • A glossary system that locks client-specific terms and prevents bleed across projects
  • Project-start term verification so terminology preferences are agreed upfront
  • Layered automated and AI-assisted quality checks before manual review
  • Translation memory that compounds consistency across your filings
  • A translation-notes file calling out source-text issues — typos in the original, reference-sign mismatches, and passages I had to interpret

What this changes about my work: the drafting layer — typing, terminology enforcement, grammatical normalization — happens before I open the file. The remaining work is the work AI can’t do: interpreting source intent, validating claim scope, catching antecedent traps the system can flag but not resolve.

AI doesn’t replace patent translation expertise. It concentrates my time on the judgment that earns the translation.

No AI training on your content. No data retention. Processed on AWS Bedrock’s Japan-only regions. NDA available on request.

How it all works in detail →

Why Patents

A mistranslated term can shift a patent’s scope. The work demands meticulous, terminology-sensitive thinking. My clients are patent attorneys, IP departments, and translation agencies who cannot afford ambiguity. That responsibility is the work I want.

Working Style

I work best with clients who view translation as part of the patent filing process. Clients who value early identification of source issues, technical accuracy, terminology consistency, and a record of what I caught and how I read the ambiguous parts.

Not a fit: rate-driven volume contracts, projects requiring specific CAT tool mandates, work outside patent documentation.

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Get in Touch

Inquiries from patent attorneys, IP departments, and translation agencies welcome.

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