Kaizen

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Sake Maruta, a general trading company specializing in spirits and other food products. We operate in Japan, China, Korea, and recently started working closely in Australia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Kaizen?

Kaizen is a Japan-oriented company and its owner is Japanese. Not many people aside from native speakers can manage to speak proper Japanese business language, that’s why we’ve been using their language skills to translate documents.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Kaizen is supporting us in formulating business communication with Japanese partners. They managed to translate a few emails, documents, and a PowerPoint presentation that had been initially prepared for the European market. 

Aside from that, we also required an interpretation and adjustment to the cultural patterns of the Japanese business culture. Not everything can be translated word for word. As such, we’ve needed to change phrasing but with nothing being lost in translation.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked only with Mr. Koike (Business Consultant).  As a native speaker, he was responsible to translate content in a way that would be deeply understood by the Japanese side. 

How did you come to work with Kaizen?

There aren’t many companies in Poland that are highly connected with Japanese business so we know each other and there’s a strong emphasis on personal references from one company to another. I think I was contacted by Kaizen a few months before our collaboration with a short introduction to what they do. 

When the time came, we picked up the phone and checked the offers on the market. We had a trial with a few companies and had them do a sample translation of the text that I knew how it should look in Japanese. In the end, Kaizen’s results were the closest to what I was expecting.

How much have you invested with them?

They’ve given us just 10 hours of work so far because everything went well and the documents weren’t that complicated. As of now, we’ve already spent around €400 (approximately $470 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Kaizen in May 2020 and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve gotten positive responses from Japanese partners on sending them the translated documents. This is a closed and hermetic society so getting positive responses is a good measure of success for the translations. Overall, Kaizen matches the expectations of the Japanese side.

How did Kaizen perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate mainly by email. The project management consumes a bit of our time since Kaizen is fully Japanese so we can’t communicate in Polish. Moreover, English communication is also misunderstood at times but it is nothing big or something that causes problems. Generally, we are aware that spending a bit more time on management is typical for multicultural collaborations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a Japanese team, so we could use them to trial how our Japanese partners would react to our material. We made judgments based on the many impressions we got during the translation projects.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s difficult to say if Kaizen has any areas they could improve on. I’m deep into the Japanese culture even if I can’t speak the language so I sometimes can’t see the differences. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s important to have a bit of patience considering that some things require double-checking. Additionally, it is important to ensure that English communication is clear. The more complicated the language is, the harder it will be to translate.