We’re often racing against pirates, so translators are expected to work at breakneck speed. It’s really easy to focus in on your source language, especially if you’re not a native speaker of it, but you need to be able to write as well as translate.
TORADORA LIGHT NOVEL TRANSLATION HOW TO
What’s been the biggest challenge establishing yourself as a translator?Īfter figuring out how to connect with people in the industry I think it’s important to keep in mind that you need a solid grasp of your target language. I think my biggest breakthrough with that was going to conventions to meet people since I’m pretty shy over email. Then another year to get the courage to reach out to them! It took me about a year to figure out how to find the right publishers. After I worked on two literary novels with them, I was at a bit of a loss on where to go from there since I wanted to work on manga, but didn’t know the English publishers. The editor there was kind enough to let me do a test translation for a book. I was very lucky in college and had established a connection with Vertical while I was working on a paper to complete my translation certificate. I wish I had have known more about how to apply to translation jobs. What did you wish you knew before becoming an established translator? But I ended up falling in love with literary translation while taking a translators’ creative writing class.Īfter that, I spent most of my senior year at college translating things for myself and taking advantage of having a structured environment where I could get regular feedback from professors. After that, I started taking translation classes with my roommates so I could work on technical documents.
I didn’t revisit localization until a while later when I was in college and started volunteering for a translation group that worked with non-profits.
I wasn’t planning on becoming a translator per se back then, but I was impressed by how the translators had handled the scene when I got to see the English version. My interest in localization started when I was six. When I watched an episode of Pokemon in Japanese (“A Chansey Operation”) that had a multi-line pun with visual cues. I’ve translated a total of 23 volumes of published and soon-to-be published work in the last three and a half years.
TORADORA LIGHT NOVEL TRANSLATION SERIES
I also translate the Chi’s Sweet Adventures, Happy Sugar Life, and Last Round Arthurs series alone. I co-translate the Toradora! light novel series with my husband. Right now I’m working as a technical writer and translating on the side. I didn’t do a lot of localization work while there, but I had the opportunity to edit a few educational manga and acquire some Japanese-language books. I used to also work as an editor for a small publisher that focused on tech and computer programming (as all San Francisco companies now seem to do). But I also spent summers in Okinawa where my mom’s side of the family is from and I’ve lived in Kyoto, Tokyo on the US’s east coast and in the midwest. I grew up in California and live in San Francisco right now. I translate light novels, literary fiction, and manga from Japanese to English. – Discussions with people in the Japanese media localization industry – Jan Mitsuko Cash
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