Monthly Archives: December 2016

Japanese book translation excerpt: “Turn your kids into billionaires by teaching them to code” by Kohji Matsubayashi

So far, the translations that I have posted on this blog have mostly focused on portions of books, short stories, or online novels. But when I came across the book “Turn your kids into billionaires by teaching them to code” (子供を億万長者にしたければ、プログラミングの基礎を教えなさい) by Kohji Matsubayashi(松林弘治), I decided I wanted to translate at least a small portion of this… Read More »

Japanese historical short story review: 野望の狭間 (Opposing Ambitions) by 天野純稀 (Sumiki Amano)

Recently at a Kinonuniya bookstore I picked up the 2nd edition (2号)of the book 小説幻冬 (Shousetsu Gentou) which is a compendium of Japanese short stories. I chose this because I was looking for something to read on a holiday trip, and didn’t want to get involved a long story, so though short stories would be perfect. When I… Read More »

Mobile app review: “Kitty Collector” (neko atsume / ねこあつめ)

Setting your computer, smartphone, and tablet to Japanese is a great way to expand your vocabulary in a natural way, using words in context instead of a dry vocabulary list. This means both the OS itself, as well as the applications or games you are using (sometimes the setting of these things is linked, sometimes… Read More »

Interview with pro literature translator Tyran Grillo (Japanese to English)

Recently when I was browsing through articles on WordPress.com with the keyword “Japan”, I came upon a post by Tyran Grillo about the book “Mr. Turtle”, an award-winning science fiction novel by Yusaku Kitano which Tyran himself translated from Japanese to English. Having been interested in translation personally for some time now, especially that of… Read More »

Japanese web novel translation: “Japan: A New Age” by Tasogarenin (黄昏人) [Chapter 5: Junpei Transfers]

This is the 5th chapter of a Japanese Science Fiction web novel about a genius boy who helps develop amazing technologies that change Japan’s society drastically, eventually resulting in the colonization of outer space. You can find the original text for this chapter here. You can see the table of contents for the translated chapters here which includes a… Read More »

Sorry, but (Japanese) translation A.I. is still asleep

Recently someone told me of an article in the New York Times titled “The Great A.I. Awakening”, which talks about how Google Translate has switched over to using an A.I. based system, and the supposed improvements. The beginning of the article talks about Japanese to English translation, and includes several English translations of a passage… Read More »

Japanese web novel translation: “Japan: A New Age” by Tasogarenin (黄昏人) [Chapter 4: Development Begins]

This is the 4th chapter of a Japanese Science Fiction web novel I am translating about a genius boy who develops amazing technology that changes Japan’s society drastically, eventually resulting in the colonization of outer space. You can find the original text for this chapter here. You can see the table of contents for the translated chapters here which includes a… Read More »

Dr. “Birigirl” Tsubota’s personality test

The film “Flying Colors” (ビリギャル), released last year (2015), is about a girl who originally has no friends and horrible grades, but works hard and drastically improves her grades. The film is based on a true story, which is captured in the novel “学年ビリのギャルが1年で偏差値を40上げて慶應大学に現役合格した話” (rough translation: “The story of a last-place girl who raises her grades by… Read More »

Japanese Magazine Review: Lighthouse Seattle & Portland

Several months ago in a post I talked about how one of the main reasons I moved to Oregon was because of the prominent Japanese culture and people there (at least more so than South Florida). It’s been about half a year and I’m planning on writing on article about Portland and Japanese culture again to… Read More »