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 »
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 »
“Eternal First Love” is Japanese romance film from 2010 starring Saki Aibu and Takashi Tsukamoto. We originally decided to try watching it since it was free on Amazon prime. Interestingly, the original title is “恋するナポリタン 世界で一番おいしい愛され方” which is a pretty long, awkward title, and I actually like the English title much better, which is very rare.… Read More »
Lately I’ve been writing a few articles about my experiences working as a freelance translator for Gengo.com (here, here, and here). As it has been about a month now since I have started doing translations there, I thought I would write some more about what I’ve learned so far. Keep in mind I’m doing this… Read More »
In addition to getting my feet wet with freelance translation via Gengo, I am also considering entering one or more translation contests in order to help gain experience, and (if things go well) win a prize or two. I expected a quick google search to yield a bunch of contests, but I found that many of… Read More »
Update: Several years later, the English translation for Spark has finally been released. I was not involved in the official translation but you can find it here. Because of this I have a removed the majority of my unofficial translation, and kept only the first paragraph. In December of last year I had published a… Read More »
As I gradually hone my translation skills through Gengo.com, I’m learning not just new words in Japanese, but more effective ways of researching word meanings and their proper translations in English. When translating in an environment where conveying the meaning of the original text accurately is critical, there are often cases where only one word or phrase would… Read More »
In early December last year, I wrote a blog entry which contained my personal, unofficial translation of Candy Candy: Final Story‘s prologue that I had worked on in my spare time. Recently, someone nicknamed Beautiful Illusion had discovered my post and written a blog entry discussing it, especially how it has the potential to be an “unbiased translation”.… Read More »
Doing translations between Japanese and English is always an educational endeavor, teaching me so much about Japanese and language in general. One thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is how one can be reasonably skilled in two languages, and yet translating simple phrases can be so challenging. I’ve seen this happen even when I… Read More »
In previous articles here and here, I wrote about the testing process required to become a “Standard” level translator working at the online translation site Gengo.com. Fortunately, I was able to pass the translation test I discussed in the second article, and shortly after I started taking on my own translation jobs during my end-year vacation… Read More »