Japanese car listing translator: paste the Japanese, get the listing terms in English

Paste the Japanese from a Carsensor or Goo-net listing into the box below. The tool picks out the words it knows, the standard listing terms and Japanese era dates, and puts the English next to each one, with what that line leaves out.

It isn't a general translator, and it doesn't use AI. It only knows the 142 entries in the table on this page. Most come from Carsensor's and Goo-net's own definitions, the industry's fair trade code or the Japanese government. The rest are plain words, such as yes, no and the sign for ten thousand, and three buttons from a Goo-net listing we read. Anything else you paste is left as it is and counted as "not in our table". That's deliberate: on a listing, a word that's been guessed at is worse than one that's been left alone.

What you paste stays in your browser. It isn't sent to us or saved.

The table below is everything the tool knows. If the box above doesn't appear, use the table directly: the filter finds a word as you type it.

A listing tells you what the dealer chose to write. If the words check out and you'd like the car itself seen, send us the listing.

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Our own car, run through it

We don't have a listing for our own car, a Toyota Prius α, because it isn't for sale. So we wrote its details from its own papers the way a Japanese listing lays them out, and ran that line through the tool:

Japanese	What the tool gives	Where the value comes from
平成24年8月	August 2012	First registration, from its shaken certificate
15.5万km	155,000 km	The last odometer reading on its inspection record sheet, 155,100 km
車検	shaken (roadworthiness test), with Carsensor's note that this item gives the expiry date
令和8年8月23日	23 August 2026	Shaken expiry, from its inspection record sheet
自家用	private use	The private or commercial box on its shaken certificate
定期点検記録簿	service record book	It has one. Our page on the Japanese service record book shows three of its entries
ハイブリッド	Not in our table, so left untranslated

Two things show up. We wrote the odometer reading rounded, as 15.5 ten-thousands of km, and the tool gives back 155,000 km; the record sheet says 155,100 km, so check a rounded figure against the papers. And "hybrid" isn't in our table, so the tool doesn't touch it, even though it's an easy word. The rule is the same for every word: if it isn't in the table, we don't translate it.

Words a general translator gets wrong

Some listing words have a narrower meaning on the listing site than in a dictionary. From Carsensor's own help pages, read on 4 October 2026:

• MT on its own means a 4-speed or 3-speed manual. 5MT and 6MT are separate items.
• Dealer car is used for imported cars that came in through the official importer. It's about how a car came into Japan, not about where it was serviced.
• Sunroof includes canvas tops and glass roofs that don't open.
• Sat nav and alloy wheels don't say whether they're the maker's or aftermarket.
• One owner means one previous owner, but the name on the registration may still have changed several times through sales between dealers.

And from Goo-net's own list of terms:

• A flooded car (kansui-sha) isn't counted as repair history, so "repair history: none" doesn't rule it out.
• Hail damage that has been repaired is shown as repair history.
• Mileage comes in four kinds: actual, meter replaced, unknown and tampered. Only the first is a reading Goo-net treats as the car's real distance.
• Sunroof means a glass roof section that opens. Carsensor uses the same word more widely, so the two sites don't mean quite the same thing by it.

What the required lines on a listing mean, and which ones a dealer has to show, is set out on Japanese used car listing terms.

What isn't in the table, and why

• Model names, grades and option codes. These change from car to car. The maker's own pages are the place for them; for chassis and model codes, see Japanese chassis numbers.
• Free text from the dealer. Sentences about the car's condition or history are the dealer's own words. We'd rather you asked about them than read a guess.
• Dates written with a letter, such as H24. The tool only converts dates written with the era's name in Japanese.
• Older equipment items on Carsensor's list, such as cassette and MD decks. We've kept the ones a buyer abroad is likely to ask about.
• The papers. The shaken certificate and export certificate have their own boxes; those are on the Japanese papers, box by box.

How to use it

1. Copy the Japanese from the listing, a few lines at a time if it's long, and paste it into the box.
2. Read the found words first. Each has a link to our longer page where there is one.
3. Look at the highlighted text to see what wasn't found. Those are the parts to ask the dealer about, in writing.
4. Convert any date the tool flags as impossible by hand from the original. A flagged date usually means a typing or copying error.
5. Check the car's age with the papers, not the listing. The year on a listing is usually the year of first registration, not the build date (Japanese car build dates).

Written by Yoshiaki Sagara, a paintless dent repair and detailing technician in Japan. He looks at cars for overseas buyers through Ninja Desk Japan. About us

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