Does Echoo handle Japanese honorifics (keigo) correctly?

Yes. You can specify the politeness level in your command settings - casual (タメ口), polite (丁寧語), respectful (尊敬語), or humble (謙譲語) - and the AI will maintain consistent register throughout.

Can Echoo output furigana for kanji?

You can add a custom instruction to include furigana (reading aids) in parentheses after kanji characters, which is helpful for learners.

Which model works best for Japanese translation?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5.2 both excel at Japanese. Claude tends to produce more naturally flowing Japanese for business and formal contexts.

Does Echoo preserve Japanese formatting and line breaks?

Yes. Echoo maintains the formatting of your original text, including line breaks, bullet points, and paragraph structure.

English → Japanese Translation

English to Japanese translation on macOS - natural, context-aware results that handle keigo, kanji, and cultural nuance.

How It Works

Select your text
Highlight the text you want to translate in any application - email, a document, a browser tab, or a chat window.
Press the shortcut
Hit your configured Echoo keyboard shortcut. Nothing is copied to the clipboard and no window opens.
AI translates
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite selects a politeness level and holds it, since Japanese grammaticalises formality in the verb ending rather than in word choice.
Result appears inline
The Japanese is pasted back in place mixing kanji, hiragana and katakana the way native text does, with full-width punctuation.

Example Translation

English (Original)

We would like to schedule a meeting with your team to discuss the product launch timeline. Would Thursday afternoon work for you?

Japanese (Translated)

製品の発売スケジュールについてご相談させていただきたく、御社チームとの打ち合わせをお願いできればと存じます。木曜日の午後はご都合いかがでしょうか。

Translating English to Japanese

Japanese grammaticalises politeness: the same sentence has plain, polite and honorific forms, and the choice sits in the verb ending rather than in a softening phrase. English has no equivalent, so translating a neutral English sentence means choosing a social relationship the original never specified - and the choice has to hold across the whole passage. Word order is subject-object-verb, so the sentence cannot be built until the English one is fully read. Three scripts interleave in ordinary text: kanji for roots, hiragana for grammar, katakana for loanwords, and getting the mix wrong looks like a textbook rather than a colleague. There are no spaces between words and punctuation is full-width. Echoo keeps register consistent instead of alternating between polite and plain.

Recommended Setup

Best model for this pair

Claude Sonnet 4.5 handles English to Japanese best in our testing. Any provider you have configured will work - this is the one to pick if you have a choice.

Voice dictation

Dictation is supported for English, so you can speak instead of typing and have the result translated in the same step.

Tips for Better Translations

Japanese has multiple politeness levels (keigo) - specify casual, polite, or honorific in your Echoo command for appropriate register.

Foreign words are typically rendered in katakana - the AI handles this automatically but you can override specific terms.

For technical content, Japanese often keeps English acronyms (API, SDK) - Echoo preserves these by default.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is recommended for Japanese due to its strong understanding of context-dependent honorific language.

Frequently Asked Questions

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English → Japanese Translation

How It Works

Select your text

Press the shortcut

AI translates

Result appears inline