In this post I take a look at what STJ has achieved as a blog in 2020, and what I have achieved as a publisher (including some statistics on both). I also talk about some plans and aspirations for 2021.
I’m very happy to announce the 4th installment of “Classic Japanese Fairy Tales”, my translations of Mimei Ogawa’s works that are listed in both English and parallel Japanese/English formats. This volume also contains an essay by Mimei where he talks about what children’s stories mean to him.
Juza Unno (海野十三), born Sano Shouichi (佐野 昌一), is a Japanese author from the early 20th century who used his real-world technical knowledge and experience to write a great number of science fiction works, including novels and short stories. This author holds a special place for me because not only were my first and last E-books… Read More »
In this post I go deep into the phrase “僕に言われても” and try to figure out why “に” is used, which seems to be contradictory with typical usages of it.
When practicing my fiction writing skills some years ago, I learned the technique of reading what you write out loud in order to catch mistakes that would otherwise be missed. In recent years I’ve discovered this also helps improve the naturalness of my translations, and I try to read aloud at least portions of my… Read More »
I’ve translated and published the full text of the classic Japanese fairy tale “The Soul Lives On” (たましいは生きている) by Mimei Ogawa (小川未明), a poignant tale about the strength of a brotherly bond, even after death.
In this post I’ve translated Hayashi Fumiko’s classic fairy tale “The Crane’s Flute” (鶴の笛) in full, a simple story that touches upon important topics.
Languages have different vocabulary and grammar for different areas (or “domains” as I call them), for example newspapers, popular novels, and Internet forums. This can be frustrating because being knowledgable in one domain doesn’t mean you’ll have an easy time in another. But the plus side is that once you learn some common phrases and… Read More »
One of my translations of a classic Japanese fairy tale is now available for free on Kanshudo, a full-featured site for learning Japanese.
I compared the English translation abilities of 5 different machine translation services (including those of Google and Microsoft) using a short excerpt of classic Japanese literature from Akutagawa Ryunosuke.