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.
In celebration of International Translation Day today, I’ve decided to make my E-book “Tales of the Disturbed”, a set of dark, introspective short stories by Toyoshima Yoshio (豊島 与志雄）free for the next day (meaning roughly for the next 24 hours). You can find the book here on Amazon. The book’s release article is here. Update:… Read More »
Yoshinobu Morikawa was a Japanese poet who lived from 1918 to 1942 and left behind various poems, some with dark or mysterious themes. He was said to be influenced by famous poet T. S. Eliot, author of The Wasteland. This post contains my full English translation of Morikawa’s poem “The Hollow City” (虚しい街), first published… Read More »