I’m happy to be able to announce my next book, “Downfall and Other Stories”. This contains English translations of a few pieces of fiction from Hayashi Fumiko (林芙美子), an important Japanese author from the early 20th century. They range from a lighthearted comedy to a poignant post-war tale.
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 »
Science Fiction lovers have a lot to enjoy in Japanese literature, with great authors like Sakyo Komatsu, Taiyo Fujii, Project Itoh, and Kobo Abe. But if you go back a few decades the number of Japanese SF authors quickly diminishes to a handful of people. One of the earliest prominent figures of SF in Japan… Read More »
The more I study Japanese the more I am attracted by Japan’s literature that boasts a certain mystique hard to find in western fiction. In addition to the many differences between the English and Japanese languages themselves, Japan has a culture that goes back several thousands of years, giving an extra depth to its literary… Read More »
One of the most exciting moments of a book project is when it is released to the public, which is why I am happy to announce the release of a new book today.
Sometimes when working with Japanese documents you may need to remove furigana (sometimes called ‘ruby’) from a block of text. For example, you may be taking furigana-marked source text from Aozora Bunko, but don’t want to include the furigana in some other media. I had this exact problem when working on an E-book of translated… Read More »
I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the great things about running this blog is the many interesting people I come across. In some cases, I may only exchange a few words in a post comment, but in others I may go on to have extended email conversations, or even work on a project together.… Read More »
Thirteen factors I use when selecting fiction for translation projects.
Recently I announced the release of my latest ebook, “Tales of the Disturbed”, a collection of short stories I have translated from the classic Japanese author Yoshio Toyoshima (豊島与志雄). As part of the editing process I was reading parts of the stories out loud, and after doing this for a while I realized that it… Read More »
I recently announced my latest ebook “Tales of the Disturbed”, and in this article I’d like to talk a little more about the process involved in producing the book. To be honest, I don’t remember where I first discovered the author Yoshio Toyoshima (豊島与志雄, Japanese wikipedia page). I do know that it took a few… Read More »