Furigana (振り仮名): A guide to reading hints in Japanese.
While perhaps many of you already know the basics of “furigana”––Japanese reading hints––in this post I’ll go into some finer details about this important topic.
TransLiterary Lab (#9): live analysis / translation of Japanese literature (“Akita Kaidou” by Kenji Miyazawa)
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).
A brief introduction to Noh theater, one of the oldest forms of theater
Noh, written using the character 能 (meaning “ability”), is a style of classical Japanese theater that combines elements of drama, dance, and music. What is considered Noh theater today was established around 600 years ago in the 14th century, although some of its fundamental elements are over 1000 years old.
TransLiterary Lab (#8): live analysis / translation of Japanese literature (“Lemon” by Motojiro Kaiji)
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).
Japanese word highlight: 良かれ (yokare)
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 »
Audio narration released for classic SF short story
Late last year my translation of classic Japanese SF author Unno Juza’s story “Mysterious Spacial Rift” (不思議なる空間断層) was made into an audio narration and broadcasted periodically on History Radio, an online radio station (details). I’ve decided to release this narration to the public via Youtube. It is part of a channel titled “Asian literature in… Read More »
TransLiterary Lab (#7): live analysis and translation of Japanese literary excerpts
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 »
Expressing plurality in Japanese: the full story
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 »
TransLiterary Lab (#6): live analysis and translation of Japanese literary excerpts
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 »
Why is grass (草) used in Japanese to mean something is funny?
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 »