Okabe & Yampolsky Translations

Okabe & Yampolsky Translations is a New York City-based firm specializing in Japanese legal translation. We work in no other fields and handle no language pairs other than Japanese and English. Our specialized approach-rare in the translation industry-has allowed us to develop a deep well of know-how, experience and field-specific knowledge, and these in turn enable us to produce better translations faster and more efficiently. Our clients are attorneys, investors, and other professionals in the US, Japan and Europe.

It is customary for translation companies to boast of the impressive number of languages they handle, the wide range of fields in which they work, and the variety of services they provide. In other words, they employ a jack-of-all-trades business model. We work with a single language pair in a single field, and the only service we offer is written translation.

Our IP work generally falls into one of three categories: patent litigation, patent prosecution, and licensing. We assist patent attorneys in all stages of the patent prosecution process, including translation of specifications, correspondence with Japanese clients, prior art documents, information disclosure statements, and office actions.

We regularly assist attorneys working on patent, antitrust, employment, products liability and commercial litigation cases. For cases being tried in Japan, we most frequently translate Japanese briefs and other court submissions into English. For cases being tried in the US, we most frequently translate discovery documents (Japanese to English), prior art in the case of patent litigation (Japanese to English), and briefs and other documents (both Japanese to English and English to Japanese).

Although we have assisted in some major acquisitions of US assets and business by Japanese firms, of late most of our work in this area has been for US and European equity funds purchasing Japanese businesses or assets (predominantly real estate, including trust schemes). We have experience translating agreements associated with joint ventures, tender offers, MBOs, bidding, stock transfers, stock exchanges, and purchases. We assist at all stages of the transaction, most frequently at the due diligence and contract-drafting stages.