Monthly Archives: October 2016

Japanese literature review: Kenji Miyazawa’s “Matasaburo of the Wind”

I’ll have to just come out and admit it: of all of the books I have read there is a small group I never made it to the end of, including both Japanese and English works. One of these is Kenji Miyazawa’s (宮沢賢治) “Night on the Galactic Railroad” (銀河鉄道の夜) which was a deeply moving story when… Read More »

”Sluggish Symbol, Inane Illusion” (緩慢な表象と虚ろな幻想): PDF of full novel

Recently, one of my readers (swhp), offered to make a PDF file of a Japanese novel I had translated in full: ”Sluggish Symbol, Inane Illusion” You can download the PDF at the below link. sluggish-symbol-inane-illusion In case I plan to come back and edit anything, please just link to this page instead of linking the PDF directly or… Read More »

Japanese drama review: Mr. Nietzsche in the Convenience Store (ニーチェ先生~コンビニに)

Having become a member of the streaming service Crunchyroll a few months ago, I’ve sampled a few anime series, but for over half of them I ended up bored and never made it to the end. One exception was “Time of Eve” which I reviewed the other day. Besides anime, Crunchyroll also has a few live-action… Read More »

Japanese novel short excerpt translation: “Passaggio” (パッサジオ) by Hitonari Tsuji (辻仁成)

I recently reviewed Hitonari Tsuji’s Passaggio, and in this post I will be translating a small portion of it. I usually like to translate the first chapter (or at least the first few pages) of novels that I enjoy, but in this case I found a certain passage that was written so beautifully I decided to… Read More »

Japanese novel review: “Passaggio” (パッサジオ) by Hitonari Tsuji (辻仁成)

Of the last five books I’ve read, two were in English and three in Japanese. The English ones were both pretty good (one biography, one fantasy), but since they had little to do with Japanese I haven’t posted reviews for them here. The first two Japanese books were pretty mediocre, so I decided against writing reviews of them as well.… Read More »

The Art of Translation: My process for translating from Japanese to English

Starting late last year, I’ve translated as a paid side job at Gengo for a few months, as well as translated parts of fictional stories as a hobby, roughly 25-30 chapters worth. By no means would I call myself a “professional” translator, but I feel I have had enough experience to improve my translation skills significantly. For several weeks now, I’ve… Read More »