After doing translations of Japanese fiction for over two years now, I’ve gradually moved from the stage of just putting translations on my blog informally to releasing them in E-book form on Amazon. My first two books were translations of a classic SF Japanese author (Juza Unno), and while that was a great experience, for… Read More »
When learning a foreign language you sometimes come across words that, while mostly translatable on a case-by-case basis, are hard to translate literally to your native language (English in my case) such that all its nuances are carried over. If you can understand the ins and outs of these words you can even make them… Read More »
Sometimes in languages there are grammatical rules which are tricky or obscure such that even native speakers have difficulty with them. One example in English could be comma usage (although depending on who you ask, there is some subjectivity involved there). In this article, I’d like to go over an aspect of Japanese grammar that… Read More »
I’m always on the lookout for great Japanese works of fiction that I can translate in order for English-speakers to appreciate them as much as I did. The other day I came across one such work, the SF novella “Two of Six: A Captain’s Dilemma” (original title “6分の2”）by Tomohito Moriyama (森山智仁). I was fortunate enough… Read More »
For those wanting to get their feet wet in translation, public domain works (those who copyright has expired) are great since they are not only legally, freely available, but translations of them can (potentially) be published without having to get permission from the work’s original author. For those translating from Japanese, Aozora Bunko (青空文庫) is… Read More »
Whether you are translating between languages, or simply trying to understand a foreign language, looking up the meanings of words is a common activity you can end up doing tens, if not hundreds of times a day. Learning to improve your word research process will not only help save time but can also lead to… Read More »
When learning a foreign language, we learn the meanings of words along with grammar rules for how to put them together. However, as most languages have evolved over hundreds of years in a haphazard way, there are many exceptions that also need to be learned. In this post I’d like to talk about a few… Read More »
Yoko Ogawa (小川洋子) is an award-winning Japanese author who has written over 30 works, with at least eight of them translated into English so far. She is perhaps most known for her novel “The Housekeeper and the Professor” (博士の愛した数式) which was also made into a movie. I read Ogawa’s book “Little Bird” (ことり) last year… Read More »
I recently received an email from a member of LingoDeer, maker of a free mobile language learning app, asking me to try their app and maybe write a review. So I thought I would try it out and write a review with my unbiased feedback about the app. (I’m using an iPhone 6 in case it… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over a few different ways to express the concept of “more” in Japanese, essentially when something is going to be a greater degree or amount than it was previously. Keep in mind that in English sometimes the concept of “more” is implied (even though the word itself isn’t… Read More »