Meeting notes when you work in Japan and Japanese is not your first language

Why Japanese minutes are hard to read, even when you speak Japanese

• Polite indirection. ご検討いただけますと幸いです can be a request or just a suggestion, and the minutes rarely say which.
• Internal shorthand. Department nicknames and project code names are not in any dictionary.
• No subject. Japanese drops the subject easily. "Will confirm by next time" does not say who will.

English minutes help with all three. They cannot add what nobody said, though: if the owner of a task was never named in the meeting, the minutes will not name one either. The section below on asking for clear minutes is about that.

Getting the minutes in English

1. Someone records the meeting (a Zoom, Google Meet or Teams recording, or a voice recorder).
2. On the upload page, open 詳細設定：タイトル・言語・議事録の形式 (advanced settings).
3. Tick 出力言語を指定する (choose the output language) and pick English.
4. Upload. When processing has finished, the minutes are in English and the 英語翻訳 tab shows the translation line by line.

When you sign up from this page, the sign-up page, the upload page and the result page are in English. The rest of the app (menus, settings, the login page), the error messages the server returns, the emails and the legal pages are in Japanese. A practical way to start is for a Japanese-speaking colleague to do the upload and share the result, or to keep the label list on the English overview page open the first time.

Reading the English minutes with the Japanese beside them

• Start with decisions and action items. They are what you will be asked about at the next meeting.
• Go to the line-by-line translation when you want the reason. The minutes keep only the outcome. The translation shows how the discussion got there, with the original Japanese next to each line.
• Check owners and deadlines with a colleague before acting on them. A wrong owner or date costs more than an awkward phrase in the translation.
• Fix what is wrong. Click a translation to correct it, so the next reader gets the corrected version.

Asking for meetings that produce clear minutes

AI minutes can only record what was said out loud. Three small habits make the English minutes noticeably easier to use, and they are easy to suggest to a Japanese team:

1. Say the conclusion aloud. "So Tanaka-san sends the estimate by Friday, agreed?" puts the decision, the owner and the date into the record.
2. Use the full name of an abbreviation once. The translation can then carry its meaning.
3. One person at a time. When voices overlap, both the transcript and the translation suffer.

If you sometimes answer in English during a Japanese meeting, be aware of this: If the conversation switches to another language partway through a recording, the part after the switch can be missing from the transcript. We recommend keeping each meeting to one language.

Related guides

Frequently asked questions

Can I read the minutes of a Japanese meeting in English?

Yes. When the recording is uploaded with English as the output language (出力言語を指定する on the upload page), the minutes are written in English and each Japanese utterance is translated.

Can I use Kaigi AI myself if I do not read Japanese?

When you sign up from this page, the sign-up page, the upload page and the result page are in English. The rest of the app (menus, settings, the login page), the error messages the server returns, the emails and the legal pages are in Japanese. The handful of labels you need for an upload are listed, with their meaning, on the English overview page.

What if I answer in English during a Japanese meeting?

If the conversation switches to another language partway through a recording, the part after the switch can be missing from the transcript. We recommend keeping each meeting to one language.

Can I fix a translation that reads wrong?

Yes. In the 英語翻訳 tab, click a translation to edit it. The original Japanese sits next to it, so you can check the meaning while you correct it.