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Japanese to English: A Guide to the Tomioka Silk Mill General field: Marketing Detailed field: Tourism & Travel
Source text - Japanese 富岡製糸場は群馬県富岡市にある絹産業の施設で、明治日本の近代化遺産として2014年6月にユネスコの世界文化遺産に登録されました。明治政府は「富国強兵」「殖産興業」をスローガンに日本の近代化を進めていく中で、1872年にフランスの技術を導入して日本初の官営製糸工場を創業しました。
Translation - English Tomioka Silk Mill is located in the city of Tokioma, Gunma prefecture. As a relic of the push for modernisation in the Meiji era, in June 2014 it was designated by UNESCO as a world heritage site. The Meiji government was known for its use of slogans such as “a wealthy country and a strong army” and made a virtue of the idea of “promotion of industry.” Founded in 1872 using French technology, the Tomioka Silk Mill was the first nationalised spinning mill in Japan.
The grounds are vast, encompassing two red-brick cocoon storehouses as well as the wooden reeling factory, the female factory worker’s quarters, and various other buildings which remain from its heyday. The building nearest the entrance is now a museum where you can watch a performance of silk being spun from cocoons. Inside the reeling factory the machines are still lined up and they make for quite an impressive sight. A tour is available, where over the course of an hour a volunteer guide will lead you through the factory, explaining the history of the factory simply but thoroughly. You’ll learn all about the background of the silk mill and Meiji Japan.
The red-brick western-style buildings unique to Meiji era architecture were designed by a French architect. The two-story wooden structures managed to remain untouched by the ravages of World War II. The mill remains a perfect remnant of the Meiji atmosphere thanks to the meticulous care it received in spite of being closed down. Tomioka Silk Mill has been designated as an important site of Japanese cultural heritage, a world heritage site, a site of historical importance to Japan, and it is a national treasure.
Japanese to English: Introduction to a Book of Photos of Kyushuu General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Photography/Imaging (& Graphic Arts)
Source text - Japanese 早朝4時30分に喜界島の湾港に到着、約3日間の喜界島滞在の中で2日目までは全くと言っていいほどシャッターが押せなくて焦りだけが募っていった。レンタルサイクルでママチャリを借り、島一周32キロの道のりをあても無く彷徨ったが、只々時間だけが過ぎていき気付けば日が沈む頃なっていた。仕方なく宿に帰ろうとした際、ふと畑仕事をしていた一人のおじぃが気になったので声を掛けてみた。おじぃは今晩の夕食の枝豆を収穫していた。少しだがお手伝いをしながら色々話を聞いた。80歳のおじぃは終戦を迎えたのが小学4年生の時だそうだ。その後1年ぐらいは食糧難になり当時はソテツの実を食べ、ひもじい思いをされていたとの事、中学時には禄に学校にも行かず毎日のように馬と共に畑仕事をし、極め付けに生まれてこの方喜界島から出た事が無いという言葉に自分の耳を疑ったが農業一筋65年の手が全てを物語っていて只々カッコ良かった。おじぃの一言一言が胸にささり、今まで自分が考えている事全てちっぽけでバカバカしく思えた。
Translation - English At 4.30 in the morning we arrived at Kikajima harbor, and I spent three days there. For the first two you might as well say I did nothing. I wasn’t even able to click the shutter once. All I did was just let myself get more impatient. I rented a bicycle, and I roamed the 32km track around the island with no real aim in mind, just passing the time. Before I knew it, the sun was setting, and I had no choice but to set out for my lodgings. But once I did, I noticed an elderly man working in a field. Something about him made me strike up a conversation with him, and it turned out he was harvesting soybeans for dinner. I only did a little, but I lent him a hand while I listened to him speak. He was eighty years old, and he had been in fourth grade at elementary school when the war ended. For about a year after that, obtaining food was so difficult that he ate palm nuts, and he told me of how desperate things were for him. He had no income, and didn’t go to middle school, spending every day working in the fields with the horses. I couldn’t believe my ears when he told me he had never in his entire life left Kikajima, but watching his hands, and seeing the story they told of sixty-five years spent devoted to farming, I just couldn’t help but admire him. Every word he said embedded itself in my heart, and everything I had thought up until that moment felt so ridiculous and insignificant.
In every place, there is a history so deep and so rich that you couldn’t ever say everything about it, and then there is the present. I want to be more in touch with Kagoshima, and get a little bit closer to the “present” of this place. I hope by making a record with these eyes of mine that I’m able to do that. My meeting with that man eased some of the tension in my shoulders, and the uncertainty, the haziness, in my heart was wiped away.
Japanese to English: From "The Man Of The Manga" for the Yomiuri Shinbun General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Journalism
Source text - Japanese 「マンガの神様」と呼ばれた手塚治虫が亡くなってから今年で２５年。全国各地で企画展やイベントが開かれ、都内でも年末にかけて舞台などが予定されている。戦後、兵庫県宝塚市から東京に移り住み、数々の名作を残した手塚。没後四半世紀を経て、今なお手塚作品に魅せられる人は多い。
ＪＲ高田馬場駅（新宿区）では山手線が発車する際、「鉄腕アトム」のメロディーが鳴り響く。駅を出ると、高架下には手塚作品の登場人物が並ぶ縦２・７メートル、横１６メートルの巨大壁画が現れ、駅前商店街の街灯にはおなじみのキャラクターを描いたプレートがあふれる。
どれも駅前商店街の呼びかけで、アトム誕生年（２００３年）の前後に設けられた。高田馬場西商店街振興組合の飯田幹夫（７３）は「壁画はこれまでに一度も傷つけられたことがない。手塚先生の威光はたいしたもんだ」と笑う。
Translation - English This year marks the 25-year anniversary of the death of so-called "God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka. Events and exhibitions are being held nationwide, with stage performances scheduled in the metropolitan area for the end-of-year season. After the war, Tezuka moved from Takarazuka in Hyogo Prefecture to Tokyo, and there he left behind numerous masterpieces. A quarter of a century on from his death, large numbers of people are still being enchanted by his works.
When Yamanote Line trains at the JR Takadanobaba (Shinjuku Ward) station depart, the theme from "Astro Boy" reverberates throughout the area. Leaving the station, characters from Tezuka's works can be seen on the structures overhead as part of a gigantic 2.7x16 meter mural, and streetlights in the shopping street in front of the station are covered in plates depicting Tezuka's familiar characters.
All these installations, created before and after Astro Boy's birth year (2003), are a result of urging from the store owners in front of the station. Mikio Iida, of the Takadanobaba Stores Promotion Union laughs, "In all this time nobody's made a mark on that mural even once. Tezuka's got some kind of authority all right."
Japanese to English: Interview with Morii Yoshiyuki for the Rock Star Hotel General field: Marketing Detailed field: Advertising / Public Relations
Translation - English At those times, what were your criteria when choosing a hotel?
Um, we stayed at everything from cheap hotels to luxury hotels, so there wasn’t any real way of judging. But overseas there are a lot of different options for hotels, so it was fun just choosing. For work, I stay in hotels around 120 days of the year, you know? In Tokyo, there’s no choice with hotels. At “One night 8000 yen”, for a hotel that might be on the cheap side, but you can get a pretty okay T-shirt, you can go and eat some pretty okay food. That’s like, you have all this choice, but when you get into the hotel you’ve got no choices at all. Paying money when you don’t have any choice, there’s this loneliness about that. That seems obvious, but what’s not obvious about it, that’s our aim here. A hotel where we can have (the guests) pay their money after being properly convinced, where we can give them a sense of satisfaction. Because Japan’s still got nothing but expressionless hotels. I want to offer choices.
Japanese to English: From an article on tablets for Business Mobile General field: Tech/Engineering Detailed field: Journalism
Source text - Japanese タブレット市場は、成熟期に向かっていると見られ、ハイエンド製品の販売数量の伸びは鈍化し、低価格のローエンド製品にトレンドは移行しています。 そのような中、登場したXperia Z2 Tabletは、フラッグシップを導入することでしっかりとブランド力を作りつつ、商品領域を広げていくという、ソニーの意気込みを感じさせる製品です。
Translation - English As the tablet market seems to be reaching maturity, slowdown of high-end item sales show that the trend is migrating to low-end low cost products. In this atmosphere the debuting Xperia Z2, while keeping a firm grip on creation of a strong brand, is a product that inspires a sense of Sony’s desire to widen their market share.
Japanese to English: From an article on the first overseas tour of the band "BABYMETAL" General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Journalism
Source text - Japanese ライブ当日、20時開演にも関わらず、正午過ぎには既に数百人の観客が会場に集まっていた。会場側が整理番号を配るというようなことはしておらず、そのため自分たちで並んでいる順に手に整理番号を書いてきちんと列を作っている姿は、ファン同士の国境を越えた熱い繋がりを物語っているワンシーンだった。観客については、日本から参加している熱狂的なファンも多くいる一方、わざわざこの日のために日本から輸入したオフィシャルTシャツを着たメタル好きや自作した衣装を身にまとう女性グループなど、日本のファンと変わらない「熱」を持った現地ファンが多く集結していた。さらに取材を続けていると、会場近くに住んでいる中年男性が話しかけてきて、「ここに40年住んでいるけど、こんな行列は初めてだ」と語ってくれた。
Translation - English On the day of the concert, in spite of the curtain rising at 8PM, from midday there were already hundreds of concert-goers gathering at the venue. The venue, for their part, had not prepared anything such as distribution of reference numbers, and so the fans themselves lined up and formed neat queues as they wrote numbers down. This was one scene that told a story of fierce bonds between fans of different countries that go beyond borders. Regarding the fans themselves, though there were die-hard Japanese fans, there were also metalheads wearing T-shirts they went to the lengths of importing all the way from Japan to wear on this day, or groups of girls clad in homemade costumes, and these assembled locals showed the same zeal for the band as their Japanese fans. As we continued our coverage, a middle-aged man who lives close to the venue had this to say: 'I've been living here for 40 years, and I've never seen a queue like that'.
Japanese to English: From a Tour Guide Agency's Pamphlet General field: Marketing Detailed field: Tourism & Travel
Source text - Japanese 網走・知床周辺の自然をご案内するガイド会社です。自然体験、アクティビティを主な事業とし、道東オホーツクの観光の拠点となるペンションも展開しています。網走といえば、多くの方が「監獄」をイメージし、自然の印象はあまりないと思います。でも実際は、オホーツク海と森や湖に囲まれた自然豊かでとても心地よい所です。こんないい所なのに、プロの自然ガイドがいない。「ここでパイオニアとして1から創り上げていきたい！」
という開拓魂、広告人魂（！？）のようなものに火が着き、2006年に清里町から網走に拠点を移しました。
Translation - English We offer activity-focused guided nature tours all through Abashiri and Shiretoko. We're also rolling out new chalet accomodation around our sightseeing headquarters in the Okhotsk and Doutou regions. When you say Abashiri, a lot of people are going to start thinking about the prison, and not about nature. But the truth is it's actually abundant in natural beauty, surrounded by lakes, forests and the Sea of Okhotsk. Even though it's such a great nature spot, there aren't any professional guides. But like a fiery messenger from another world (!?) our pioneering spirit roared out "I want to be a trailblazer! I want to build it all up from nothing!" So in 2006, we moved our headquarters from Kiyosato to Abashiri.
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Years of experience: 10. Registered at ProZ.com: May 2014.
I've been a freelance translator since finishing university, and have worked mostly in general fields as well as some advertising, marketing, journalistic, literary, and video-game related jobs.
In my spare time I appear on a podcast and write creatively, which I definitely feel helps my translation work. Likewise I love to translate creative work, and enjoy putting my own twist on a turn of phrase in an article, an interview, or a piece of prose. I've worked extensively translating dialogue for video games, which I particularly enjoyed doing. Capturing a character, particularly verbal tics and borderline-untranslatable idioms was a real challenge, and conversely when I pulled it off it was enormously satisfying.
In the last year I've done a lot of tourism related work, and I really enjoy this because I'm able to get to grips with just what makes a certain part of the world so worth visiting, and after the extensive research this often necessitates I feel almost as though I've been there myself.
However, this is by no means the only string to my bow: I also work at copywriting, and whenever I'm able to marry the two disciplines, which I've done translating marketing pitches for an array of things as disparate as achingly hip California clothes store chains to articles comparing tablets or offering photo printers. I have received particular praise for this kind of work, and I imagine this is because it allows me to let loose my creative side in a way other work might not.
Keywords: Japanese, Anime, Manga, Literature, Media, Video Games, Poetry
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