Eng 
日本語 
Google Translate, DeepL, ChatGPT, Google Bard
What are the best Translators to use for English to Japanese in 2023?
In this guide, we will give our honest recommendations about which translator is best to use for what application.
DeepL
Best for: Translating Japanese documents and files to English or English to Japanese. Drafting phrases or emails. Communicating nuanced ideas that require context.
In the early days of auto language translation – Google Translate was king, but recently, DeepL has gained notoriety and traction for its use of a contextual language model to provide accurate translations.
Strengths: DeepL is very strong in some areas – specifically, taking PDF files that take a large volume of text and providing you with accurate translations.
Things to watch out for / weaknesses: DeepL can sometimes omit important words depending on the prompt it’s given – so if you are using it to generate an important document – make sure you have a native speaker take a look at it.
Google Translate
An early innovator of Japanese-to-English-translation – Google Translate has several key strengths and weaknesses. Where it shines is its ability to use ocular recognition to translate documents from Japanese to English. As an English-to-Japanese translator, it may not be the greatest option.
Strengths / Where it shines: Google Translate has a powerful ocular recognition engine used in real life for on-the-fly translations. You can take a photo and feed it into Google Translate, and Google Translate can output a full translation of a page of text or a piece of paper. This is vitally useful in certain situations related to paperwork that contains a large volume of Japanese text, such as visiting city hall or filing paperwork in Japan.
Weaknesses / things to watch out for: As an English to Japanese translation assistant, it is not the greatest and has a reputation for outputting incorrect language.
If you are typing words into Google Translate – think of it like a dictionary lookup assistant – where if you are translating one word.
ChatGPT & Google Bard for English to Japanese Translation
Recently, with the rise of AI, an attractive alternative to using Google Translate or DeepL is using ChatGPT or Google Bard for translation services.
Both are contextual machine language models that can interpret your meaning and intent and output a culturally nuanced text.
Strengths: ChatGPT and Bard can do MANY things. Drafting emails, reading intent behind the text. You can also alter the tone and readability levels of the information in Japanese. There are many advantages to using these software programs for English-to-Japanese translation – as they are regularly being updated and being trained to be better based on the data that is fed into them.
If you can think of how to ask them how to do something – they can generally do it.
Weaknesses: The prompts that are given to them need to be carefully considered. In our testing, some outputs were too commanding in their tone or were culturally insensitive / inorganic.
The biggest weakness would be if someone who does not speak fluent Japanese were to use them, they would have no way of knowing if what they’ve made is appropriate culturally.
A great tip is to ask the AI to describe its tone for you.
Useful prompts for English to Japanese translation in AI
Here are several useful prompts you can use for English to Japanese translation with ChatGPT and Google Bard
- I am an employee speaking with my direct manager. Rewrite this email for me in Japanese and make the tone appropriate for business without being too formal, including appropriate salutations. INCLUDE ENGLISH EMAIL TEXT
- What tone are you speaking with – is this appropriate for SITUATION DESCRIPTION? If not, please rewrite it to include the appropriate polite language.
