As I've been paying the bills as a translator lately, I've been seeing a whole bunch more stuff and reading a bunch more lately. Most of the time I'm working with technical stuff like manuals and work specificiations and such, but I also get some general translation coming through which can be fun.
For example, the other day I was asked to translate one line for a manga called 蔵人(kuroudo) ... here's a review from Amazon:
舞台は島根県。
そこにある日本酒を作っている蔵に外国人が訪れます。
彼の祖母は、外国に渡った日本人で、昔、日本で日本酒を造っていた父親の蔵を想いながら孫である彼に伝えます。
近年、日本酒離れが多い日本で、外国人が日本酒の作りに参加するという観点は
「夏子の酒」を書いた原作者ならではの作品だと思います。
無くなってしまった、自分の蔵を巡る修行の日々。日本語もわからない異文化の中
どうやって酒作りにクロードが携わっていくのか楽しみな一巻です。
The stage is Shimane-ken.
A foreigner visits a sake brewery. His grandmother was a Japanese who left for abroad and told her grandson how her father used to make sake while reminiscing about his brewery.
In a modern Japan which has largely broken away from sake, making a manga about foreigners taking part in sake brewing is something that could only be done by the author of "Natsuko's Sake".
The days of training through making the rounds of his own brewery that is no more... this book tells the interesting tale that our hero Claude has taken on, to learn how to make sake in a different culture without understanding Japanese.
While I argue with the premise that he's the first to come up with the idea of a foreigner brewing sake, it does sound somewhat interesting if the author does it right.
Anyway, so I found out the other day that the book that I translated the line for got published, woo! You can see my work in the June 5th edition of Big Comic Original published by Shogakukan. If you're in Japan then check it out next time you're in a conbini or something.
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