How to translate a Japanese PDF to English

How to translate a Japanese PDF with LoreAI

1. Keep the pages of one document in one PDF. A transcript, a contract or a family register of several pages goes in as one upload, so the Word file keeps the page order.
2. Create a free account and upload the PDF. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages and 3 MB. A scanned PDF and a PDF with selectable text both work.
3. Choose English. Leave the source on Auto-detect. LoreAI recognizes Japanese, including pages that mix kanji, hiragana, katakana and Latin letters.
4. Download the Word file. Tables come back as Word tables, and a vertical page comes back as ordinary horizontal paragraphs.
5. Fix era years and names. Decide how the English version shows them, then make every page match. The sections below show what to look for.

What our test of a Japanese PDF showed

On November 3, 2026, we ran specimen-transcript-ja.pdf through LoreAI three times. It is a scanned two-page PDF with invented names. Page 1 is a horizontal university transcript with a grade table. Page 2 is an employment certificate (在職証明書) set in vertical columns, with kanji numerals and the formal numerals used for money.

Vertical page

Read in the right order, from the right-hand column to the left, in all three runs.

Kanji numerals

令和五年四月一日 became 1 April 2023, or 1 April, Reiwa 5 in the run that kept eras. The formal 弐拾八万五千円 became 285,000 yen every time.

Era years

Converted in two runs, so 平成10年4月2日 became 2 April 1998. In the first run they stayed as eras, as in 2 April, Heisei 10.

Name order

Sato Kenta, family name first, in two runs, and Kenta Sato in one.

Romaji

さとう came back as Sato, with no macron or h for the long vowel.

Kanji in brackets

Not added in any run. The names and the university came back in English only, and the small furigana above the name were left out.

Grades

秀, 優, 良 and 可 became Excellent, Very Good, Good and Pass, the same words used for the grading key printed on the page.

Every date that was converted was converted correctly. The risk is mixing styles, because one run of a long PDF can treat two pages differently from a second run. Read the whole Word file once for era years and once for name order before you use it.

Vertical Japanese and PDFs with selectable text

Vertical writing (縦書き) runs top to bottom in columns that start on the right. You find it in older certificates, letters, books, newspapers and many company documents printed in Japan. In our test the vertical page came out as left-to-right English paragraphs, in the column order of the original.

Numbers in vertical text are often written in kanji, such as 二〇二三 or 十五日, and money on contracts and receipts often uses the formal characters 壱, 弐 and 参, which are hard to alter. LoreAI wrote them as digits in our test. Check each amount against the original, digit by digit.

A PDF with selectable text, such as a report exported from Word, works too. We tested a scan. If you only have a photo of a page, the Japanese image translation guide covers photos, seals and the koseki in more detail.

Era years, name order and grades to settle before you send it

Japanese records count years by imperial era. A US reader needs the Western year, and a few receivers also want the era as written. Pick one style for the whole file, for example 1 April 2019 (Heisei 31), and apply it everywhere.

For names, use the spelling and order in the person's passport, and say once which part is the family name. If the receiver needs the kanji, add them in brackets after the first mention, as in Sato Kenta [佐藤健太], because LoreAI did not add them in our test.

Grade words such as 秀 and 優 have no fixed English equivalent. Keep the grading key that many Japanese transcripts print, as our specimen did, so a credential evaluator can read the scale for themselves.

Japanese PDFs for USCIS and the US Embassy

For USCIS, any document in Japanese comes with a full English translation that the translator certifies as complete and accurate, plus a statement that the translator is competent to translate from Japanese into English[2].

For an immigrant visa, the US Embassy in Japan asks for an original or certified copy of the family register (koseki) that shows the date and place of birth and the parents, with an English translation certified by the translator. It recommends a koseki issued within three months[3].

LoreAI is not a certified translation service and does not sign translations. A person who reads Japanese checks the Word file against the PDF, fixes era years and names, and signs the certification. The certificate of translation template has wording to start from.

Questions people ask