御社 or 貴社: the business-Japanese distinctions machine translation flattens

Japanese has several pairs of words that mean the same thing in English and are not interchangeable in Japanese. Translation engines have to pick one. They pick by frequency, not by situation, because they have no information about the situation — and that is how a fluent, grammatical email ends up reading as machine output.

Here are the distinctions that come up most in ordinary business correspondence, what each pair actually encodes, and why the choice is not a matter of politeness level.

御社 or 貴社 — which is correct?

Both mean “your company”. The distinction is medium: 貴社 (kisha) is written, 御社 (onsha) is spoken.

In an email, a letter, a proposal document or a contract, use 貴社. In a meeting, on the telephone, or in a video call, use 御社. Neither is more polite than the other. Getting it wrong is not rude — it is the specific error a non-writer of Japanese business email makes, which is a different and more damaging signal.

This is the pair machine translation gets wrong most often, precisely because the correct choice depends on a fact the translator was never given: whether the output will be read or heard.

弊社 or 当社 — how do you refer to your own company?

弊社 (heisha) is humble and outward-facing. 当社 (tōsha) is neutral and reads oddly in a first approach.

When you are writing to a prospective customer, partner or supplier, 弊社 is the safe and conventional choice: it lowers your own company slightly, which is the expected posture toward an external party. 当社 is neutral — appropriate in internal documents, press releases, terms and conditions, or where the company speaks institutionally.

Using 当社 in a cold approach is not offensive. It reads as slightly institutional and impersonal, in a context where convention expects deference. Small effect, but it accumulates with the others.

There is also 小社 and 弊店 for particular contexts, and 私ども as a softer alternative. If in doubt, 弊社 is almost never wrong outward-facing.

様 or 御中 — how do you address the recipient?

様 (-sama) goes after a person’s name. 御中 (onchū) goes after an organisation or department when you do not have a person.

You never use both. 株式会社山田 御中 is correct when writing to the company generally. 株式会社山田 営業部 田中様 is correct when writing to Mr or Ms Tanaka in the sales department. 株式会社山田 御中 田中様 is wrong, and it is a mistake that appears constantly in translated correspondence because English has no equivalent distinction.

Two further traps. 各位 (kakui) addresses a group and already contains the honorific, so 各位様 is redundant. And when a person’s title appears, the title itself is honorific — 田中部長 is correct, 田中部長様 is over-egged.

Why does word order matter in the self-introduction?

Because Japanese introduces from the largest unit to the smallest, and English does the reverse.

The English convention is “I’m Sarah Chen, Business Development Manager at Acme Corporation” — person, role, company. The Japanese convention is company, then department, then name: 株式会社アクメの営業開発部の陳と申します.

Translation preserves the order of the source. The output is grammatical and immediately marks the sender as writing from an English template. This one is easy to fix and almost never gets fixed, because nothing about the translated sentence looks wrong.

いつもお世話になっております — when is it wrong?

On a first contact. It means, roughly, “thank you for your continued support” and presumes an existing relationship.

It is the standard opening between parties who already deal with each other, and it is used so automatically that translation tools reach for it as the default Japanese business greeting. Sent to a company that has never heard of you, it reads as either careless or as a deliberate attempt to imply a relationship that does not exist.

The correct opening for a genuine first approach is an acknowledgement that you are contacting them unsolicited — 突然のご連絡失礼いたします, or 初めてご連絡させていただきます. That framing is expected, and its absence is conspicuous.

了解しました or 承知しました — how do you say “understood”?

承知しました (shōchi shimashita) upward and outward. 了解しました (ryōkai shimashita) is casual and reads as inappropriate to a customer or a senior.

Both translate to “understood” or “got it”. 了解 is fine between colleagues of similar standing and common in messaging apps. Directed at a client, it lands as breezy. かしこまりました is more formal still and is standard in service contexts.

This one matters in ongoing correspondence rather than first contact, which is where a lot of foreign companies relax and start using whatever the translator produces.

Is more honorific language always safer?

No, and this is where over-correction does its own damage.

Japanese honorific language has three systems — respectful, humble and polite — and stacking them produces 二重敬語, doubled honorifics, which is a recognised error rather than extra courtesy. させていただきます is the classic case: it is a humble form meaning roughly “I will take the liberty of”, and it is genuinely correct in some contexts. Applied to every verb in an email, it becomes a parody.

Translation output sometimes overshoots this way, apparently on the assumption that Japanese is formal so more formality is safer. The effect on a native reader is not “very polite”. It is closer to reading something written by someone consulting a phrasebook — technically deferential, subtly wrong throughout, and awkward to answer.

The target register is ordinary competent business Japanese: correct forms, standard phrases, no flourishes. That is unremarkable to write for a native speaker and very difficult to reach by translation.

What about the recipient’s name?

Get the characters right, and do not guess the reading.

Japanese surnames written the same way can have several readings, and a name written in the wrong characters is a real discourtesy — closer to misspelling someone’s name on a contract than to a typo in an email. If you have their business card or email signature, copy the characters exactly, including any traditional forms such as 髙 or 﨑.

If you only have a romanised name and need to write to them in Japanese, that is a case for asking rather than reconstructing. Guessing produces a name that is visibly not theirs.

Does any of this actually change outcomes?

Individually, no. Collectively, yes — because they all point the same way.

No Japanese recipient discards an email because 御社 appeared instead of 貴社. What happens is cumulative: the wrong register marker, the missing opening formula, the reversed introduction, the thin signature. Each is small. Together they establish that nobody who writes Japanese business correspondence was involved in producing this message.

From there the reader draws a reasonable inference — that dealing with this company would mean working across a language gap with no bridge on the other side. That inference, not any individual error, is what costs you the reply.

What should you do about it?

Draft in English, then have a native speaker rewrite rather than check.

The word matters: rewrite, not proofread. A proofreader corrects the translation you produced, and the structural problems — the order of the introduction, the missing opening, the shape of the request — survive proofreading because they are not errors in any sentence. A native writer given your English and told what you want to achieve produces something different and better.

That is not an expensive service. It is a few minutes of a Japanese speaker’s time per message, and it is the difference between correspondence that gets read and correspondence that gets filed.

Our Japan Desk assistant writes outward-facing Japanese for clients by the month, and everything that goes out is written by a native speaker rather than translated. If the volume is a one-off campaign rather than ongoing correspondence, distributor discovery includes the writing as part of the outreach.