Self-taught Japanese…conversation?
Musings and hints on the difficulties of learning conversation in a foreign language, inspired by a twitter post of someone who was struggling to learn conversation in Japanese without a teacher.
Japanese classic literature book release: “Kaimu: A Collection of Disturbing Dreams” by Kyusaku Yumeno.
I’m pleased to announce the release of a book of short stories by classic author Kyusaku Yumeno, with stories listed in both English-only and Japanese/English parallel formats. Over 60 translation notes are included to give a deeper understanding of the original text.
Japanese literature translation: 風の又三郎 (Matasaburo of the Wind) by 宮沢賢治 (Kenji Miyazawa) [Part 3]
I translated the second part of Kenji Miyazawa’s famous story “Matasaburo of the Wind”, which happens to be the same story referred to in the song “Matasaburo” by the rock band Yorushika.
Tackling Translation Troubles (Vol. 1): dealing with adjectival clauses
This is the first post of a new series about dealing with common problems experienced in Japanese to English translation. This time I go over some approaches to translating adjectival clauses, which can be tricky due to differences between the grammar in these two languages.
The magic of iteration: fractals, writing, and translation
In this post I talk about the concept of iteration, and how it relates to fractals, the act of writing creative works, and the process of translation.
Japanese comedy highlight: Sandwich Man (a comedy duo)
Understanding jokes and other forms of comedy in a foreign language can be a difficult undertaking for language learners. To begin with, comedic wordplay based on homonyms (two words with the same sound but different meaning) is often used and may involve subtle aspects of pronunciation (intonation, etc.) Pop culture references are also abundant, including… Read More »
Juza Unno book released in Spanish (classic Japanese SF)
I’ve translated over ten stories by Juza Unno (海野十三), an important figure in Japanese science fiction (which you can find in both E-book and paper book form here), probably more stories than I’ve translated by any other author. One of my goals in publishing these stories was to allow English speakers around the world to… Read More »
“Mai”: a Japanese word with a variety of meanings (マイ、まい、舞、毎、枚)
As I confirmed myself a few years ago, Japanese has a large number of homonyms––words that have the same sound but different meanings. Personally I’m divided on the efficacy of teaching the various meanings of a single word together, since it can confuse language learners, but sometimes it can be good to know all the… Read More »
Japanese SF book release: “Three Special Girls” by Ikujiro Ran
I’m proud to announce my latest book release, a trio of SF fiction stories by Japanese classic author Ikujiro Ran.
Vocabulary list: Classical Japanese kanji
In this post I give a list of words which contain kanji not commonly used in modern Japanese anymore, as a way to help those wanting to get into reading classical literature that is 50+ years old.