Japanese Translation for Australian Skilled Visas

What the decision maker is assessing

Skilled migration under subclass 189, 190 and 491 is points tested, and each claimed point must be evidenced. The decision maker cross-checks your skills assessment, your employment history and your identity documents against each other, so internal consistency across translations matters as much as the content of any single one.

Documents most often translated for this pathway

• Degree certificate and full academic transcript for the qualification claimed
• Employment references and independent employment records for every claimed period
• Police clearance certificates for each country of 12 months' residence
• Birth certificate and passport bio page for identity
• Marriage certificate and partner's qualification documents where partner points are claimed
• Registration or licensing certificates for regulated occupations

Japanese specifics for this application

Japanese skilled applicants usually hold complete records, so the work is precision rather than reconstruction: the 学位記 and 卒業証明書 with the transcript, 在職証明書 letters expanded with a duty statement, and consistent Hepburn romanisation across every document and the passport.

Japanese names are written family name first in kanji, with a furigana reading that is often the only guide to pronunciation, while passports carry a Hepburn romanisation that may differ from the reading a family actually uses. Dates on Japanese official documents use the imperial era system — Reiwa, Heisei, Showa and occasionally Taisho — so 平成7年3月2日 must be rendered as 2 March 1995 with the era form retained. We add a formal name-equivalence note where the kanji entry and the passport spelling do not match.

Order of work and timing

Qualifications and employment records are translated first because the skills assessment depends on them, and the skills assessment must be positive before the EOI can be lodged. Police certificates are ordered after the invitation, so they remain current when the case officer reaches the file.

Where these applications stall

• Employment dates in the translated reference conflicting with the independent contribution record
• Claiming partner points without translating the partner's qualification and English evidence
• A skills assessment obtained on one spelling of your name and a visa lodged on another
• Ordering a 戸籍抄本 extract when the application needs the full 戸籍謄本 transcript showing every family member and every annotated change
• Era dates read as Gregorian years, which shifts a date of birth or marriage by decades if Reiwa, Heisei or Showa is left unconverted