Japanese to English Translators--Some Updates on my Heroes

Through my project Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction, which just made its first donation to Hope for Tomorrow (see my post Giving Through Tomo), I had the chance to edit stories translated from Japanese into English. It was a wonderful opportunity and challenge, and I hope I'll have the chance to tackle such an editing role again down the road.

I closely follow the writing and translation work of the many Tomo contributors, and today I enjoyed a coffee/hot chocolate with Alexander O. Smith, who is now also based in Kamakura (and featured in an article in the current issue of Kamakura Shunju ).
It was great to get caught up on his projects, including the Math Girls books published by his new venture Bento Books and his translation work with Kajiya Productions, and to talk books, translation, writing and editing.

Recently another Tomo translator Avery Fischer Udagawa made a Skype visit to Yokohama International School to talk about translation--see this blog post about Avery's visit (by Tomo contributor Trevor Kew). I'm so pleased to see translators doing school visits!

Many of the Tomo translators are members of the SCBWI Tokyo Translation Group and you can check out their posts on the Translation Group Blog--the most recent is about J-Lit, the Japan Literature Publishing Project.

Literature in translation is so important, and I'm hopeful that we'll begin to see more and more Japanese literature appearing in English. I'm planning to read a number of novels in translation in the coming year. Feel free to make recommendations!