While learning Japanese has many perks, being able to read various works of literature is one of the top ones for me. Japanese is a language rich with words, expressions, and concepts that oftentimes don’t have direct parallels to English, and this makes being able to comprehend Japanese that much more interesting and rewarding. In… Read More »
In this episode I refine my translation of an excerpt of the famous story 檸檬 (“Lemon”) from 梶井基次郎 (Motojiro Kajii).
In this post I emphasize the importance of a good understanding of Japanese, and give a few examples where the change of a particle makes a big difference.
In this episode I refine my translation of an excerpt of the famous story 檸檬 (“Lemon”) from 梶井基次郎 (Motojiro Kajii).
In this episode I refine my translation of an excerpt of the famous story 檸檬 (“Lemon”) from 梶井基次郎 (Motojiro Kajii).
When speaking with native speakers there is never a shortage of unfamiliar words that come up. The other day I heard the word 良かれ (yokare) in daily conversation, and while I was able to guess the basic gist of what it meant, I wanted to dedicate an article to this interesting word. First of all,… Read More »
I’m running a YouTube series called “TransLiterary Lab” (文学翻訳ラボ) where I do analysis and translation of short excerpts of Japanese literature. You can see more information about this series in this post. In this seventh episode I analyze and translate a small portion of 檸檬 (“Lemon”) from 梶井基次郎 (Motojiro Kajii), for which you can the… Read More »
Unlike the “-s” suffix in English, Japanese doesn’t have an all-purpose way to make words plural. But that doesn’t mean there are no plural words in Japanese; in fact, there are quite a few, and a few patterns that are helpful to learn. In this post I want to talk about expressing plurality in Japanese… Read More »
I’m running a YouTube series called “TransLiterary Lab” (文学翻訳ラボ) where I do analysis and translation of short excerpts of Japanese literature. You can see more information about this series in this post. In this sixth episode I will continue from the previous episode and do a little more analysis and translation of 木精 (kodama) by… Read More »
The interaction between languages over time can be interesting to follow. Words get imported from one language into another, and meaning often changes, from subtle to drastic ways. New words can even be formed using a composite of words from two languages. For various historical reasons, in the last few decades the Japanese language has… Read More »