Company History

Kazuhiro Aida and Kazutoshi Sasanami teamed up to found Brainwoods in 2000 to provide corporate clients with translation services with the assistance of a group of people well-versed in foreign languages. Aida, prior to assuming the presidency of Brainwoods, had worked for a consumer electronics company in various roles including overseas sales manager and executive assistant. Sasanami, before taking the position of managing director at Brainwoods, had worked for a photo news agency as an account manager and then on his own as a freelance translator. Brainwoods, which had started as a translation service provider, became a comprehensive provider of multilingual services when we added to our business portfolio interpretation services in 2002 and video localization services in 2004. In addition, we have also started offering business English courses, temporary and full-time staffing services for corporate clients looking for bilingual specialists and multilingual design services. The company has since been committed to assisting Japanese companies in diverse sectors in expanding their international businesses, and to helping foreign-based companies launch and conduct businesses in Japan.

September 2000	Brainwoods established to provide translation services between English and Japanese
2000	Expands translation services to include French, German, Italian, and Spanish
2001	Starts voice transcription services and translation services for academic theses Expands translation services to include Chinese, Korean, and Russian
2002	Starts interpretation services between Japanese and Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Korean, and Spanish
2003	Starts video localization services between English and Japanese
2004	Expands video localization services to include Korean and Swedish
2005	Expands video localization services to include Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish Adds more office space
2006	Reorganizes itself from a limited-liability company to a joint-stock corporation by increasing capital through shareholder allotment
2007	Starts dubbing services for videos Starts offering a training course to beginning interpreters
2008	Adds more office space Launches a website dedicated to video localization services
2009	Starts temporary staffing services for clients looking for interpreters Begins English teaching services offering
2010	Starts temporary staffing services for clients looking for bilingual specialists
2012	Relocates head office
2013	Expands corporate English training services Starts temporary staffing services for clients looking for video translators Starts localization services for medical videos
2014	Relocates the Video Localization Department to an annex office
2015	Company-wide ERP (enterprise resource planning) system becomes operational for sales management
2016	Opens Kyoto branch office Establishes HR Services department Acquires ISO17100 accreditation (international standard for translation services)
2017	Relocates and expands annex office (relocates Translation and Video Localization departments)
2018	Relocates the Kyoto Office Establishes Communication Design department Establishes Global Talent Development department
2019	Releases Web short celebrating coming 20 years in business
2020	Starts remote (online) interpretation service Begins offering online lessons using Zoom for corporate English training services Introduces telecommuting policies
2021	Acquires Privacy Mark Opens temporary staffing and career-change support site JobAdventure Advances migration of production processes to the Cloud
2022	Implements Coffee Time communication between telecommuting & office employees Introduces Webinar Subtitle Translation & Production Video Localization service Moves into new, larger office space