Tag Archives: translation

Japanese short novel translation “Memoirs of a Traveller” (ある旅人の手記): Ch.4 “Festival Girl”

This is the fourth chapter of the story “Memoirs of a Traveller” which I am translating from Japanese to English. As you might guess from the name, this is a fictional tale about someone’s travels throughout various places. You can see my review of this story here, and the translation of the prologue here, chapter 1 here, 2 here, and 3 here. I highly… Read More »

Japanese short novel translation “Memoirs of a Traveller” (ある旅人の手記): Ch.2 “Car Conversation”

This is the second chapter of the story “Memoirs of a Traveller” which I am translating from Japanese to English. As you might guess from the name, this is a fictional story about someone’s travels throughout various cities and places. You can see my review of this story here, and the translation of the prologue here and chapter 1 here. I… Read More »

Japanese short novel translation “Memoirs of a Traveller” (ある旅人の手記): Ch.1 “Coffee and Camera”

This is the first chapter of the story “Memoirs of a Traveller” which I am translating from Japanese to English. As you might guess from the name, this is a fictional story about someone’s travels throughout various cities and places. You can see my review of this story here, and the translation of the prologue (which should… Read More »

Japanese short story translation: ”Sluggish Symbol, Inane Illusion” (緩慢な表象と虚ろな幻想): Prologue

Recently I reviewed the short story ”Sluggish Symbol, Inane Illusion”  (緩慢な表象と虚ろな幻想) which I discovered on the site syosetsu.com (review). (Note, I had originally translated the title as “Unreliable Symbol, Hollow Illusion”, but changed it after further consideration) After reading through several stories on that site, this is one of the few that I really liked, and I felt it… Read More »

Japanese short story translation “Memoirs of a Traveller” (ある旅人の手記): Prologue

A little while ago I reviewed the short story “Memoirs of a Traveller” (ある旅人の手記) which I discovered on the site syosetsu.com (review). After reading through many stories on that site, this is one of the few that I really enjoyed, and also I felt it would be a good candidate for an English translation. I wrote… Read More »

Japanese to English translation: “Candy Candy Final Story” – Chapter 1, Part 2

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, and another of Chapter 1, Part 1. Generally, when I do translations of small fragments of novels, I don’t intend to follow up with translations of any future chapters. However,… Read More »

Unofficial translation: Japanese Novel “Witch of the Library” (図書館の魔女) [1st chapter]

Recently, I finished reading the first volume of “Witch of the Library” (図書館の魔女) by Daisuke Takada (高田大介) which I reviewed in detail here. Put simply, it is a pretty interesting hard fantasy (think Tolkien) book which requires a pretty high level of Japanese vocabulary and grammar to get through. Typically, I wait until I finish… Read More »

Japanese Novel Translation: 『そして、星の輝く夜がくる』(And thus, the starry night fell upon them) by 真山仁 (Mayama Jin) [First chapter]

Recently, I reviewed Jin Mayama’s book “そして、星の輝く夜がくる” which I thoroughly enjoyed and consider it one of the best Japanese novels I’ve read. As I’m always looking to improve my translation skills, especially for novels, I decided on translating just a few pages of it. In short, the novel is about a teacher who volunteers to help… Read More »

A response to a reader’s comment about Gengo, quality, and rates for translation

Recently I received a long, interesting comment from scalesoflibra, a reader and fellow blogger on one of my posts about the translation service Gengo. You can see that person’s full comment on the previous link, but I’ll give a brief summary of it here: Gengo charges around 5 cents for a standard level translation job, which means that… Read More »

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 »