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Certified Japanese Police Certificate Translation

Get your Japanese police certificate translated into English by a professional human translator, with a signed certification accepted by USCIS, courts and universities. Flat $24.95 per page and a 100% USCIS acceptance guarantee.

You probably do not need this translated

A Japanese police certificate is issued by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters or a prefectural police headquarters, and it is issued in five languages — Japanese, English, French, Spanish and German. If the receiving office reads English, there is usually nothing to translate.

More important: it is issued in a sealed envelope, and it is invalid if the seal is broken. Only the requesting authority may open it. So opening it to have it translated destroys the document you paid for. We would rather tell you that than sell you a translation — check with the office first, and if they insist on a certified translation, ask them how they want the seal handled before anything is opened.

If a translation is genuinely required

Where an office does require one — usually because it wants a certification attached rather than because it cannot read the certificate — we translate the document in full, including every seal and the covering material, and note the languages in which it was issued.

Japanese official documents date by imperial era, so a certificate dated in Reiwa or Heisei is converted individually and both shown. See our Japanese birth certificate page.

What the certificate actually says

These documents are narrower than the English phrase that comes to hand for them. Most state that a specific register — a national criminal registry, a court archive, a police database — holds no entry for the named person as at the date of issue. "Has no criminal record" is a much larger claim: it asserts something about the person rather than about one registry on one day, and it silently covers jurisdictions the issuing authority never searched.

So the wording is translated at the scope the original had, with the registry named as the document names it. Where a certificate says an entry exists, the entry is translated exactly — the offence as classified in that country's own law, the article cited, the sentence — and no attempt is made to find a US equivalent offence, because there frequently is none and asserting one would recharacterise a conviction.

These certificates expire

Almost every country issues these with a validity period, commonly three or six months, and the receiving office applies its own rule on top. A certificate that has aged out will be refused whatever the translation says, and a translation cannot make an old certificate current. If yours is near the edge, order a fresh one before ordering a translation rather than after.

Check two things with the office before you buy anything: how recent the certificate has to be, and whether they want it apostilled — because an apostille is applied to the original document, so it has to happen before the translation, not after. Related: our general criminal record page and our USCIS page.

What USCIS requires

Under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), a foreign-language document must be accompanied by a complete English translation and the translator's certification that it is accurate. Every seal, stamp and marginal note is part of the document, so every one is translated.

State agencies set their own rules — see government agencies — and what our certification states is on this page.

How it works

Upload a photo or a scan of your document, pick the language pair and check out online. You never have to mail originals: a legible copy is all we need.

A professional human translator, never machine translation, translates the document word for word and mirrors the layout of the original. Every certified translation ships with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy that meets the requirements of USCIS, courts and universities.

Your translation is delivered digitally, usually within 24 hours for documents of one to three pages, and same-day delivery is available. If anything needs adjusting, we revise it.

Certified vs. standard translation

A certified translation is a word-for-word translation accompanied by a signed statement attesting to its accuracy and completeness. It is what official bodies require: USCIS, courts, universities and government agencies. Certified translations are $24.95 per page, where a page is up to 250 words.

A standard translation is for business or personal use where certification is not needed, such as CVs, client intake forms or marketing material, and is billed at the same $24.95 per page of up to 250 words.

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