My last translation project involved a classic story which was several decades old, but this time I decided to try and tackle something a little more modern from one of my favorite genres. It’s a science fiction novel I found published on the site syosetu.com. I haven’t read the entire thing yet, but from what I’ve seen it’s much more… Read More »
It is the first day of elementary school after summer break, and the children are surprised to find a strange redheaded boy has joined their class. Soon after, some of the children begin to suspect there is something special about the newcomer. Could he be the legendary “Matasaburo of the wind”, or just another boy? Recently… Read More »
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 »
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 »
(Update: Reajer has shut down so I have removed the links in this article, but will leave the article for historical purposes for the time being.) Recently I found about the site Reajer.com, which at first seems strangely named, but makes more sense when you see it is a combination of the words “Reader” and… Read More »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
“One life, one book” If you’re read my recently-completed English translation of Yuki Fujimura’s short novel ”Sluggish Symbol, Inane Illusion”, then the above line may bring back good memories of certain key points of the story. (If you haven’t read it yet, you can see the entire table of contents of translated chapters here) When I first contacted Yuki Fujimura… Read More »