Background:
Yasuko was born and raised in Japan. She is a professional Japanese/English interpreter/translator and business communications specialist. Yasuko holds a degree in English Literature and a Teaching Diploma in English from Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. She studied English at the University of Pennsylvania, and participated in a Danish language program at University of Copenhagen as a scholarship recipient. Additionally, she studied at the University College London, concentrating in International Relations. She also took courses in government, politics, and history at Oxford University.
Yasuko received intensive training in simultaneous interpretation in Kyoto. In 1970, she formed her own language service company in Kobe, Japan. Yasuko’s services through this company also included worldwide business communication consultation that has taken her from Kobe to Yorkshire, England, from Baltimore to Paris, from Dusseldorf to East Africa, and from Fiji to Toronto. She was manufacturer’s representative for products as diversified as women’s apparel, copper tubes, auto parts, pet supplies, golf courses, resort hotels, chemicals, rubber products, and cigarettes. Yasuko relocated her operations to Hawaii in 1976 when she signed the manufacturer’s representative contract with the Japan Tobacco and Salt Monopoly Public Corporation.
Yasuko has concentrated and specialized in the litigation-related translation for the last 32 years and has developed and mastered the art of neutral and accurate verbatim translation, earning the reputation of being very knowledgeable, competent and reliable among judges, prosecutors, counsel, and all those present in the courtroom. Yasuko has served all the courts in Hawaii, and has been tasked by the Hawaii Supreme Court to sit on its Committee on Certification of Court Interpreters. Yasuko was honored with the 2001 Hawaii Joint Police Association’s Certificate of Distinguished Service for Court
Interpreters, and was the chief interpreter for the US Navy Court of Inquiry at Pearl Harbor deriving from the Ehime Maru/USS Greenville incident. Yasuko has orally translated many depositions, trials, conferences, press interviews, television documentaries, business meetings, medical seminars, police investigations, and governmental protocol. Her written translation areas of expertise include scientific articles, technical reports, industrial operating manuals, patent documents, and legal documents of all kinds.
In 2006, Yasuko re-opened her Japan office in Kobe at the request of her clients and is serving clients in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Hawaii, and the mainland USA.
