Translate Japanese Speech to English — Voice Translator & Transcript

Upload Japanese audio (MP3, WAV, M4A) or video (MP4, MOV). Auto-detect handles standard Tokyo Japanese (Whisper Tier 1, ~8% WER on FLEURS-JA per arXiv:2212.04356). Set target to English. Export as TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT with speaker labels and timestamps preserved. Free 30 min on signup. Regional dialects (Kansai, Tohoku, Kyushu, Okinawan) handled with variance — see dialect scope section.

Same workflow. 'Translate Japanese speech to english' (speech framing) and 'translate Japanese audio to english' (audio framing) describe the same job. Japanese SERP heavily favors 'speech translator' phrasing (~210/mo primary) — voice and audio framing route to the same tool. Upload → auto-detect Japanese → English target → export.

Yes, at near-Tokyo quality. Kansai-ben (Osaka, Kyoto region) is well-handled by Whisper due to widespread media presence — Osaka comedy, Kansai drama, Kyoto documentary. Expect 2-5% higher WER than standard Tokyo Japanese but Kansai output is reliable. Heavy specific-city dialects (Kobe-ben, Wakayama-ben) drop slightly more.

Whisper transcribes keigo correctly at the word level — sonkeigo (尊敬語, respectful), kenjougo (謙譲語, humble), and teineigo (丁寧語, polite) verb forms come through the transcription stage intact. Translation to English captures the wording but often loses the register nuance — English lacks a comparable politeness system. Formal Japanese business speech gets translated to formal English; casual speech to casual English; but the fine-grained keigo hierarchy (which conveys speaker-listener social relationship) largely doesn't translate. For cross-cultural business or academic work where politeness matters, budget for bilingual review to add cultural notes.

Usable for fan-sub drafts, not for broadcast subtitles. Anime and manga-style speech has specific patterns: onomatopoeia (擬音語, オノマトペ), verbal tics (~だぜ, ~かしら, ~のじゃ), exaggerated voice-actor performance, and character-specific speech patterns (role language / 役割語). Whisper handles standard dialogue well but struggles with heavy stylization. Voice actor performances (exaggerated pitch, character voices) reduce ASR accuracy. Onomatopoeia translates literally rather than idiomatically. Fine for fansub drafting; for professional anime subtitle work, use specialized anime translation services.

Tier 1 on clean Tokyo Japanese. Whisper Large-v3 FLEURS-JA benchmark: ~8% WER. Neural translation on Japanese↔English: 15-25 BLEU on standard WMT test sets (harder than European language pairs due to grammar/syntax distance). Combined pipeline: ~82-88% word-level accuracy on clean audio. Drops on: keigo-heavy content where cultural context matters, regional dialects (Tohoku, Kyushu, Okinawan), anime/character speech, and music-heavy audio.

Yes. LINE is Japan's dominant messaging app (95%+ smartphone penetration in Japan). LINE exports voice notes as .m4a or .opus. Long-press the voice message → Save (varies by client). Upload to VexaScribe — source auto-detects as Japanese, target = English. Common workflow: Japanese-American diaspora processing voice notes from family in Japan, English-speaking Japan-based teams processing voice updates from Japanese-speaking clients.

Tier 2-3 (first-draft to draft-quality). Tohoku (東北弁, northern Japan) has distinct phonology from Tokyo Japanese — expect noticeable accuracy drop. Kyushu (九州弁, southern Japan) — moderate accuracy drop. Okinawan (沖縄口 / Uchinaaguchi) — separate language family (Ryukyuan) from mainland Japanese, treat output as draft only. Most speakers of these varieties also use standard Tokyo Japanese in media/business contexts — if possible, record in standard for reliable transcription.

Yes. Reverse direction: upload English audio, source auto-detects as English, target = Japanese. Output uses standard Tokyo Japanese in mixed kanji/kana. Common workflow: English brand content → Japanese for Japan market localization, English e-learning → Japanese for Japanese-market compliance, English YouTube → Japanese subtitle overlay.

Yes on the free tier — 30 minutes of transcription + translation on signup, no credit card. Translation included on all plans. Premium tier (higher-accuracy internal model) available at 1 credit per 5,000 characters for client-facing content.

Yes. Upload MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV — VexaScribe extracts audio, transcribes Japanese, translates to English. Export SRT for English subtitles on Japanese video. Common use case: Japanese YouTube / Nico Nico Douga content localization for English audiences, business meeting recordings, academic conference talks, anime episode fan-sub drafts.