This is the first chapter of the story “Memoirs of a Traveller” which I am translating from Japanese to English. As you might guess from the name, this is a fictional story about someone’s travels throughout various cities and places. You can see my review of this story here, and the translation of the prologue (which should… Read More »
Recently I reviewed the short story ”Sluggish Symbol, Inane Illusion” (緩慢な表象と虚ろな幻想) which I discovered on the site syosetsu.com (review). (Note, I had originally translated the title as “Unreliable Symbol, Hollow Illusion”, but changed it after further consideration) After reading through several stories on that site, this is one of the few that I really liked, and I felt it… Read More »
“Memoirs of a traveller” (ある旅人の手記) is another short story I recently found on the free novel and short story site 「小説家になろう」. It reasonably short, at around 8,000 characters, and is grouped in the “human drama” (ヒューマンドラマ) category. If you are like me, and haven’t heard of this word before, it basically means works that focus on… Read More »
Recently I saw a post on Japanese Language Stack Exchange about the 〜くある (~ku aru) form of adjectives (ex: 美しくある), and there was no good answer so I did some research. By the time I was ready to post, the question had been deleted, so will make a make a post here with my findings. To review, let’s… Read More »
Recently I posted a review of the book “Teaching methods based on student native language, English edition” by Kazuko Nakagawa, which provided some important insights on mistakes English-speakers typically make when learning Japanese. I wanted to translate at least a short portion of this book to give a feel what the content is like, and also… Read More »
Though I really enjoy studying Japanese, it’s that much better when I can combine Japanese with one of my other hobbies, like Legos or fiction novels. Another one of my hobbies is Chess, and lately I’ve been noticing a lack in my vocabulary when trying to express some of the basic chess concepts to my son,… Read More »
Lately I’ve been making it a point to translate a small portion of each Japanese novel I’ve finished reading, for the purpose of polishing my Japanese to English translation abilities. I’ve already had some success doing translation on the side using Gengo, but much of that work is more everyday/functionali stuff (business emails, etc.) as opposed… Read More »
On a recent trip to Portland, Oregon, we stopped by a Powell’s books to see what they had to offer. Besides having an amazing selection of many types of books, they actually had a section of Japanese books, most if not all which were used books. It was no Kinokuniya, but as you may know… Read More »
For some time now, I’ve been thinking of getting into Japanese to English translation more seriously. I’ve just finished the novel “Candy Candy Final Story” by Keiko Nagita, and when I discovered there was no official English translation (and no unofficial one I could find), I realized it was the perfect opportunity for me to… Read More »
“Candy Candy” is a Japanese historical Shoujo (girls) manga written by Keiko Nagita (名木田 恵子) which was originally published in the magazine “Nakayoshi” serially from 1975 to 1979. It was quite popular, and spawned an anime, theatrical show, and several novels. To give an idea of the popularity, around 12 million copies were printed in total for the… Read More »