About Us

The “BJ” in “BJ Translations” stands for Britain & Japan, as most of our business to date has involved one or the other. In addition, it stands for Ben Jones, the founder and main translator of the company.

After winning a scholarship to Oxford, Ben went on to study Japanese at Sheffield and then lived in Japan for several years. He started translating full-time when he was the only person to translate 'metabolism' correctly in a test for a Tokyo PR agency. Since returning to the U.K. in 1990 he has been busy translating and interpreting in Britain, Japan and many other countries. He is currently the only non-Japanese person to have been qualified by the Institute of Translation & Interpreting (ITI) for translation into Japanese, in addition to translation from Japanese into English. (Translators are generally advised to translate only into their mother tongue, but Japanese has been Ben's “language of habitual use” for many years, and his written Japanese is reported to be better than that of many less experienced 'native speakers'.) In 2009 he became the first Japanese linguist to be elected a Fellow of the Institute.

Ben was also Coordinator of the ITI's Japanese Network for several years. Any Japanese work we cannot handle in-house is thus given to the best person for the job - based not on pulling a CV from a file, but on knowing the strengths and weaknesses of most of the Japanese translators & interpreters in the UK. Unlike many translation agencies, we do not employ non-linguist “project managers”; you will always be dealing with someone with an intimate knowledge of your requirements.

Over the years, satisfied clients have continually asked BJ Translations for help with languages other than Japanese, and we have gradually taken on more work in Chinese, Korean, Arabic, FIGS (French, Italian, German and Spanish) and the like. We are happy to consider any translation, interpreting or typesetting requirements you may have, whatever the language. If we do not feel confident of meeting your needs to a high standard ourselves, we will simply direct you to whomever we consider the best person for the job, based on our wide experience of the industry.

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