Any longtime Wanikani users using Wanikani to keep fresh while working as a translator? Okay. Well who here is hoping to translate novels, manga, or even video games as a career after completing Wanikani and JLPT N1? I listened to the Tofugu Podcast where Kristen & Michael spoke to a video game translator. https://pandora.app.link/Klr5aXRozab
It made me realize that I am not crazy when I tell people I am looking for a writer first, a translator second in order to write the Japanese equivalent of my most important work, So Blu.
For a long time I searched high and low on Language Exchange apps for someone with basic conversational English (its a Young Adult novel after all) who can translate French, Russian or Japanese.
The argument I often received was⊠âWell if your book fairs well in the U.S. market, surely it will go on to be translated into other languages to break foreign markets as well.â I am fully aware that a successfully received novel is readily translated internationally, but my knowledge of the publishing industry as well as my knowledge of language translation tells me that leaving the fate of humanity in the hands of a few opinionated American bibliophiles with a force-fed addiction to YA Fantasy, not Science, is beyond illogical.
My novel So Blu, poses real solutions for overpopulation, climate change, and the fast food industry in a Young Adult Science Fiction narrative. It creates a potential utopia with a suspected dystopicunderground to the likes of Soylent Green or Clockwork Orange. I do not wish to simply translate. I wish to rewrite a Japanese narrative encompassing all the breath, depth, and beauty of the Japanese culture I hold so dear. It would be a grave disrespect to their gifts to humanity to have it any other way.
Could my novel be a manga? Yes. Would I be launching the âEnglish versionâ at the same time? Absolutely. This cannot work without an infusion into the collective consciousness of many very different people.
I stare up at the stars and I remember the Russians were the first to space. We sore losers simply thought we could move the finish line. I will not let that fact be taken away from them.
When I pull a radish from the earth, I remember how the French were the first to develop a more compounded version of gardening, utilizing raised beds in ways no one had ever thought of before. And the French Revolution, the spirit of Revolution for the social welfare of others is still a cornerstone of their humanity.)
I thought we were out of time.
But now we must try to push that line between Life and Death, from a Green New World and our Earthâs 6th Extinction just a little furtherâŠhold on just a little longerâŠmaybe just maybe we arenât done yet.