Category Archives: translation

Sorry, but (Japanese) translation A.I. is still asleep

Recently someone told me of an article in the New York Times titled “The Great A.I. Awakening”, which talks about how Google Translate has switched over to using an A.I. based system, and the supposed improvements. The beginning of the article talks about Japanese to English translation, and includes several English translations of a passage… Read More »

Japanese web novel translation: “Japan: A New Age” by Tasogarenin (黄昏人) [Chapter 4: Development Begins]

This is the 4th chapter of a Japanese Science Fiction web novel I am translating about a genius boy who develops amazing technology that changes Japan’s society drastically, eventually resulting in the colonization of outer space. You can find the original text for this chapter here. You can see the table of contents for the translated chapters here which includes a… Read More »

Dr. “Birigirl” Tsubota’s personality test

The film “Flying Colors” (ビリギャル), released last year (2015), is about a girl who originally has no friends and horrible grades, but works hard and drastically improves her grades. The film is based on a true story, which is captured in the novel “学年ビリのギャルが1年で偏差値を40上げて慶應大学に現役合格した話” (rough translation: “The story of a last-place girl who raises her grades by… Read More »

Japanese web novel translation: “Japan: A New Age” by Tasogarenin (黄昏人) [Chapter 3: Government Negotiations]

This is the 3rd chapter of a Japanese Science Fiction web novel I am translating about a genius boy who develops amazing technology that changes Japan’s society drastically, eventually resulting in the colonization of outer space. You can find the original text for this chapter here. You can see the table of contents for the translated chapters here which includes a… Read More »

Japanese phrase “mou hitotsu” (もうひとつ)and a brief Murakami translation

Recently I was reading an interesting blog which contains reviews of Japanese books (in English), and I came across an article about the Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) book “After Dark”. While I am not going to go into that book in detail in this post, in the the article I found there was a short passage… Read More »

Japanese web novel translation: “Japan: A New Age” by Tasogarenin (黄昏人) [Chapter 2: Startup]

This is the second chapter of a Japanese Science Fiction web novel I have started translating about a genius boy who develops amazing technology that changes Japan’s society drastically, eventually resulting in the colonization of outer space. You can see the table of contents for this here which includes other chapters. You can find the original text… Read More »

Japanese online novel translation: “Japan: A New Age” by Tasogarenin (黄昏人) [Chapter 1]

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 »

Japanese literature translation: 風の又三郎 (Matasaburo of the Wind) by 宮沢賢治 (Kenji Miyazawa) [part 1/6]

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 »

The Art of Translation: My process for translating from Japanese to English

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 »