Hiring me for an audit
I do one thing at a fixed price: an audit of your shipped Japanese product for $980. One flat fee — no retainer, and you don't need a call to get a number.
- CoverageUp to 20 key screens
- FindingsEvery issue listed — the 10 highest-impact written up in depth, with fixes
- Turnaround5 business days
- ReportWritten in English
How it goes:
- Email me the product URL
- I test the actual Japanese product
- You get an English report with screenshots and paste-ready fixes in 5 business days
Implementation fixes and ongoing QA are quoted after the audit.
Where I'm coming from
In 2011 I built websta (webstagram), a third-party Instagram web viewer that reached around 200 million monthly page views at its peak. Before that, in 2005, I co-founded @WIKI, Japan's largest wiki hosting service, and sold it to a listed company in 2019.
I've spent 20+ years doing full-stack web engineering alongside Japanese–English translation work. I read the code and the copy, so findings come with the string and the place it breaks.
Some of the press around websta, 2011–2012: Gizmodo, Business Insider, CNN, THE TODAY SHOW (NBC, 23 Feb 2012), Lifehacker, The Daily Dot.
What a finding looks like
A button label that runs longer in Japanese than its container allows, clipping mid-word on the pricing page. An English string left untranslated inside a Japanese checkout, beside a raw {variable} that never got substituted. Neither of those needs reading Japanese to see — the screenshot carries the whole argument, with the problem marked.
The findings that do hinge on meaning come with a back-translation into English, so you can read what your Japanese page currently says and judge it yourself.
Questions I get
Why not just use AI?
Generation and verification are two different jobs. In most localization pipelines today, the only thing grading the output is the system that produced it.
A string can be correct in the file and still fail on the screen. The translation is accurate but wrong for the context it renders in. The Japanese runs longer than the English and clips inside its container. Formal and plain registers alternate between two steps of the same flow, which reads to a Japanese user the way a contract that slips into text-message tone would read to you. None of that is visible in the strings; it is visible in the running product.
What you get
A report written in English about your Japanese product. Each finding carries the exact location (URL, screen, element), a screenshot with the problem marked, a back-translation into English so you can judge the Japanese without reading it, and a corrected Japanese string you can paste into your files.
The report also states which areas are fine as they are. Most of what I open usually is, and saying so explicitly is part of the deliverable.
Who are you?
Joe Mio, an independent engineer in Japan. The track record is above.
Send me the URL
Include the Japanese pages or screens you care about most, and whether checkout, billing or onboarding is the priority. I'll reply by email; no call required.