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I'm preparing a sales presentation; it contains some company data and I want
to indicate that the entire presentation is confidential. In English, this
would likely be accomplished by stamping the corner with "confidential".

What's the best word to use in Japanese for a similar meaning? I've seen this
somewhere in my old company, but I forgot... here are the candidates I know
of, but the one I think I've seen before isn't there, I'm having trouble
finding something where I say "aha that's it".

  * 内緒 (ないしょ) -- more used as in "private", like a small secret between a few people
  * 秘密 (ひみつ -- "secret", but not sure if this is the appropriate word
  * 機密 (きみつ）-- don't understand how this is different than 秘密
  * 親展 (しんてん) -- you see this on envelopes of letters, but that's about it
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-10-21T02:26:01.160
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2011-10-24T03:47:09.807
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question
word-choice business-japanese
What's the word to use for "confidential", as in a company report?
Generally in Japanese you write 「XXX取扱」to indicate you request special or
sensitive handling of the materials in question.

There are some variations you could use. Here are a couple I know / looked up
with approximate English equivalents.

  1. 秘密情報取扱 (ひみつじょうほうとりあつかい) - [Handle as] secret or private information
  2. 機密情報取扱 (きみつじょうほうとりあつかい) - [Handle as] confidential information
  3. 厳密情報取扱 (げんみつじょうほうとりあつかい) - [Handle as] **strictly** confidential information

Avoid these ones though, unless you're in the military or government:

  1. 最高秘密情報 (さいこうひみつじょうほう) - top secret information
  2. 極秘情報 (ごくひじょうほう) - classified information

There are many others that would be more appropriate to use in an email, a
letter or a report such as:

  1. 内申 (ないしん) - confidential (internal/unofficial) report
  2. 秘録 (ひろく) - confidential record
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-10-21T02:43:51.963
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2011-10-21T02:43:51.963
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answer
There is a special symbol printed/stamped on secret documents, which is in red
color with the character `秘` circled. They look like
[this](http://www.google.co.jp/search?&q=%E3%83%9E%E3%83%AB%E7%A7%98&oe=utf-8&hl=ja&tbm=isch).
Because of this symbol, secrets are usually abbreviated as `マル秘{ひ}`. Some
Japanese font encodings even have this as one of their characters.

For corporate documents, I think the most orthodox word is `社{しゃ}外{がい}秘{ひ}`
'to be kept secret from company outsiders', for which
[stamps](http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=%E7%A4%BE%E5%A4%96%E7%A7%98&hl=ja&tbm=isch)
also exist.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-10-21T03:08:43.267
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2011-10-24T03:47:09.807
2011-10-24T03:47:09.807
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answer