Category Archives: translation

Translation challenges: the tradeoffs of title translation with “Godzilla”

When translating some form of media from it’s original language into another language, the translation of the title is extremely important – nearly as important as choosing the title for the original work. A good title manages to capture one’s interest to learn more about the work in question, or at least stands out enough so… Read More »

Japanese to English translation: “Candy Candy Final Story” – Chapter 1, Part 1

I had previously written a review of the Japanese novel  “Candy Candy Final Story” (キャンディ・キャンディ Final Story) written by Nagita Keiko, and later posted a translation I did of the prologue. Generally, when I do translations of small fragments of novels, I don’t intend to follow up with translations of any future chapters. However, in this case… Read More »

Working as a freelance Japanese->English translator at Gengo: 3 months

One of the main ways I decided to challenge myself in 2016 is by becoming a freelance Japanese to English translator at Gengo, the web-based translator agency. I’ve written a few articles already about the process to become a translator at Gengo as well as my thoughts being a translator after one month, and since I recently reached the 3… Read More »

A discussion on problems students face with the common Japanese verbs もらう、くれる, and あげる (translated from a textbook)

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 »

Unofficial translation of the prologue of Jun Ikeido’s “Downtown Rocket” (Japanese -> English)

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 »

Japanese Movie Review: “Eternal First Love”

“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 »

Thoughts on working part time for a month as a Japanese to English translator at Gengo.com

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 »

Unofficial English translation of the first few pages of Hibana (火花) by Naoki Matayoshi (又吉 直樹)

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 »

Researching terms during translation

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 »