Sarah Alys Lindholm **Update 7/5/2021: Unfortunately, the Sanseido web service has now been discontinued, leading to even more lost examples. Its service has thus been removed from the Kenkyusha Online Dictionary experience as well. For those continuing to look for a J-J (国語) dictionary, I now recommend the デジタル大辞泉 found here at goo辞書: https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/. Today I bring … Read more
Happy International Translation Day! Today is the feast of St. Jerome, patron saint of translators, and therefore the day we celebrate International Translation Day. When I visited Florence and Rome last year, the wonderful historian Ada Palmer struck up a game of “Spot the Saint” at each museum we went to and each important monument … Read more
When is a personal name more terrifying than a word? I’m sure most teachers taking attendance on the first day of school have stories about name-terror… and so do translators, sometimes. For a Japanese-English translator, the terror can go beyond a simple “How do I pronounce this?” to “How do I spell this in the … Read more
“Children always know when company is in the living room—they can hear their mother laughing at their father’s jokes.” —Source unknown1 One of the questions I get the most as a TV translator is, “Isn’t it hard to translate the jokes?” What they mean is, “Isn’t it hard to translate the jokes so that they’re … Read more
“Hey guys, does anybody know what doom sounds like?” On Friday I came across a perfect example of a classic translation challenge in Japanese fiction. It all started when an editor reviewing a TV episode showed me some onscreen Japanese text that said “gogogogo.” Now, anyone who spends time watching or reading Japanese media is … Read more
This is a repost of my essay “On Translation vs. Interpretation,” which first appeared on my site on 11/03/2006, and has been featured in a couple of other places since then. On Translation vs. Interpretation Many people don’t realize there’s a difference between “translation” and “interpretation.” Even people who work with translators all the … Read more