Category Archives: translation

Promising Translators 2018 (Japanese Translation Contest): only one week left!

A few weeks ago I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest, a Japanese to English fiction translation contest targeting amateur translators. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a reminder for those who are interested since there is only… Read More »

Promising Translators 2018 (Japanese Translation Contest): only two weeks left

Two weeks ago I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest which is a JP-EN fiction contest targeting amateur translators. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a quick reminder for those who are interested since there are two weeks… Read More »

Promising Translators 2018 (Japanese Translation Contest): three weeks left

Last week I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest, which involves translating a few pages of Japanese fiction into English. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a quick reminder for those who are interested that there are three… Read More »

Japanese Translation Contest Announced: Promising Translators 2018

Update: the contest has been closed to submissions and the winners have been announced. I will likely have another similar contest, so please check back later. If you are interested in future contests, please like or comment this post, or send an email to “selftaughtjapanese.contests [at] gmail.com” about what type of contest you’d like to see.  I’m… Read More »

The making of the English translation of “Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath”

(Update: I have since republished “Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” in a larger compilation that you can find here.) Recently I published my second eBook (Volume 2 of the “Science: Hopes & Fears” series) which contains my translation of the classic dystopian tale “Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” (original title: 「十八時の音楽浴」)by Juza Unno (海野十三), who is acknowledged as… Read More »

Japanse novel translation excerpt: “Little Bird”(ことり) by Yoko Ogawa (小川洋子)

Last year I reviewed Yoko Ogawa’s wonderful novel “Little Bird” and at the time I was even considering translating a small portion of the book for translation practice, and to give English-speaking readers a taste for the style of the book. But I got busy with other articles and translation projects, and never got around… Read More »

Book Release: Japanese Dystopian Fiction (“Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” by Juza Unno)

(Update: I have since republished these stories in a larger compilation that you can find here, which is available in both paper and ebook format. I have changed the links in the article below to the original short e-book to point to this newer book.) (Quick link to the book on Amazon) Early this year, I published… Read More »

Novel review: “Invitation to a Beheading” by Vladimir Nabokov

The novel Lolita, written in 1955 by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, is a classic piece of literature that I think many people are at least vaguely familiar with (heck, even Sting has apparently read it back in the 80s). While I admit I haven’t read it, recently at the library I stumbled upon another… Read More »

More thoughts about the story “Five Minutes Won’t Cut It” by Kisaragi Shinichi

In a previous blog post I talked about the story “Five Minutes Won’t Cut It” written by Kisaragi Shin’ichi (如月新一), which is being translated by Yeti of Shousetsu Ninja, a blog where he reviews Japanese novels and sometimes does translations of excerpts. He recently posted the last chapter (Ch 6), and you can find all the… Read More »