EN ⇄ 日本語 ⇄ DE
Nakamura & Voss is small on purpose. Three languages, three kinds of document, and one stubborn conviction: a translation isn’t finished when it’s accurate. It’s finished when a reader in Japan or Germany — no English beside them — can’t tell it was ever translated.
Everything about how we work hangs off that last, cold read. This page explains why — and names the work we turn down because of it.
A manifesto is easy to fudge. A claim set isn’t: every word widens or narrows what you’ve promised, and a dependent claim can never outrun the one it hangs from. So here are ours, in the form we know best. Hold us to the literal text.
Read claim 1 first. Everything after it depends on it — exactly how a claim set should behave, and exactly how this studio does.
What is claimed is:
Sheet 1 of 1A translation practice for mid-size manufacturers, comprising:
The practice of claim 1, wherein no patent claim, device label or regulatory sentence ever passes through machine translation.
The practice of claim 1, wherein the finished text is read in Japan or Germany by a reviewer working in the client’s field, with no source document in sight.
The practice of claim 3, wherein any sentence that only makes sense to someone who saw the English is rewritten — not defended.
The practice of claim 1, wherein the client receives the price in writing before work begins, and hears “no” on day one when a deadline can’t be met well.
The practice of any preceding claim, wherein work is declined in any language the practice cannot have reviewed in-country.
No bench of generalists flipping between whatever lands in the inbox. Japanese goes to one desk, German to the other — and English is the common ground both of them have to defend in front of an examiner.
Japanese claims routinely leave the subject unstated and let a single sentence run a whole paragraph. This desk spends its days putting subjects back, breaking sentences where an examiner needs them broken, and deciding — every single time — whether 前記 becomes “said,” “the,” or nothing at all.
| JA | EN | DE |
|---|---|---|
| 係止部材 | locking member | Verriegelungselement |
| 筐体 | housing | Gehäuse |
| 付勢部材 | biasing member | Vorspannelement |
If the JA desk writes “locking member,” the DE desk may not write “latch.” Whoever wants a term changed argues for it in front of you — not quietly on page 212.
German stacks meaning four nouns deep and parks the verb exactly where English readers stop looking. This desk unstacks it into English a US examiner can parse — and builds German that a notified body won’t send back with questions.
Put a translation studio on the US East Coast and something useful happens: reviewers in Japan work through our night, reviewers in Germany work through our early morning, and your file almost never sits still. Here’s a weekday, drawn on New Smyrna Beach time.
A 24-hour day in Eastern Daylight Time. Tokyo reviewers work 8 pm to 5 am. German reviewers work 3 am to noon. Our New Smyrna Beach desk is open 10 am to 5 pm.
Right now it’s 8:52 am in New Smyrna Beach. Awake and reading: the German reviewers.
Edited segments go out east with translator’s notes attached — every open question written down, not remembered.
The Japanese text gets read with the English stripped out. Anything that only works in translation gets flagged.
Same treatment for German — and the German day overlaps our morning, so questions get answered live.
Both reviews are waiting when the door opens. Fixes go in before lunch; your deadline doesn’t lose a night.
Drawn in Eastern Daylight Time. Europe and the US change their clocks on different weekends, so twice a year the overlap slides by an hour — your schedule is planned around that, not surprised by it.
A narrow practice is only useful if it says out loud where it’s narrow. Read both columns before you call — it’ll save us both twenty minutes.
| Ring us if… | Ring someone else if… |
|---|---|
| A claim set has to survive the USPTO, EPO or JPO in a language your counsel doesn’t read. | You need a brochure in twelve languages by Friday. |
| Your declaration of conformity has to match the technical file word for word. | The lowest per-word rate is the deciding factor. |
| Your firmware strings must fit a 20-character display and still mean something to an operator. | You need Korean, Chinese or French. We’ll tell you so on the first call. |
| You want a glossary you own outright — not one locked inside a vendor’s portal. | You’d rather not answer terminology questions. We will have several. |
| You’d rather hear “that deadline is too tight” on day one than on day eight. | Nobody will ever check the translation. Honestly — use a machine. |
No intake portal, no account manager in between. Tell us the language pair, the document and the date it has to be filed — you’ll hear on the same call whether we’re the right people for it.
(203) 996-7740| Mon–Fri | 10am–5pm |
|---|---|
| Sat–Sun | Email only — answered Monday |
Dropping by in person? Call first, so the desk handling your language is in the room when you arrive.
contact@nakamuravoss.com