current projects

this is where i will keep a (probably not at all) up-to-date list of the projects i’m working on, with links to the finished translations, where appropriate.

Prince of the Sun, Princess of the Moon by Ryo Mizuno

A Lodoss gaiden/prequel, starring the royal family of the kingdom of Skard, part of the Moss alliance, or rather, specifically not part of the Moss alliance, despite being located in the Moss region. This is the royal family that, between the three of them, manages to piss off a princess, summon a demon, and doom the rest of Lodoss to the fate we all know and love. (^_^) (note, Seven Seas has started releasing the lodoss novels, if they get as far as the prequels, i’ll be taking this down. go read their translation, it’s great!)

translation: 100% COMPLETE!
transcription: 100% COMPLETE! click the title!

Mysterious Password 1098 (working title) by Yumiko Shirogane

A young girl trying to log on to her MMORPG in the middle of a lightning storm accidentally logs on to an online store for demons and monsters instead. Without meaning to, she buys herself a real life familiar and ends up with a green man on her doorstep and a saucy mountain cat talking back to her stuffy babysitter.

translation: 100% COMPLETE!
transcription: 6% (T_T)

The Black Knight by Ryo Mizuno

*squeeeeeee* this is the novel that started it all, at least for me. A Lodoss gaiden (side story) about the one and only Lord Ashram! Fifteen years after i first picked up the book that convinced me to learn Japanese, we shall all soon know the tragic past and even less pleasant future of this dark anti-hero, and his beloved dark elf Pirotess. This story is told in five chapters, detailing Ashram’s first meeting with Beld, his first meeting with Pirotess, and other joys, as well as the story of Ashram’s attempts to lead the people of Marmo to a new land where they can prosper and be happy. Yeah, good luck with that. (^_^) (note, Seven Seas has started releasing the lodoss novels, if they get as far as Ashram’s side story, i won’t be putting this up. go read their translation, it’s great!)

translation: oh my god done! WHAAAA!
transcription: 0%

Reverse Applique Bag

My sister found this image on Pintrest somewhere, and asked me to translate it, so I thought I would put it up for everyone to enjoy.

translation: 100% COMPLETE!
transcription: not needed, see image via link above.

Lodoss RPG Companion

A manual for the table-top (or, as Group SNE calls it, table-talk) RPG invented by Mizuno-sensei and his fellow Lodoss crew. It features lengthly articles on the mythology and history of Lodoss Island, instructions for creating and using your characters, and even a few scenarios to play through with friends. My brother has vowed that he and I will be playing through one of these as soon as I am finished with this book. We’ll see about that. (^_^)’

translation: done! done-y pants! oh yes. (^_^)
trasnscription: not yet begun.

It happened at the table (vol 1)

aka Table dekigoto. it’s a collection of short stories comissioned by a restaurant consortium and produced as part of a marketing ploy to… i don’t exactly know. convince people to go out to eat more often by telling them fictionalized accounts of nice/sweet/sappy/funny things that happened at restaurants? at any rate, the writing’s not terrible, and the stories are kind of cute, so i thought it’d give it a shot. i did write the publisher to see if they’d give me permission to enter my translation of one of the stories in a translation contest, or who even had the rights to the thing, but they never got back to me, so…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

translation: 100%
transcription: 100%

adult science magazine vol 28

no, this is not some science-of-sex serial (although i’m not above reading/translating that, too) it turns out to be a magazine that releases themed maker kits every couple of months. their site is otonanokagaku.net, although of course it’s all in japanese, but you can still see all the cool stuff they put out. my sister bought me the wa-tokei kit, which is a traditional japanese clock. it comes w/ a whole, full-sized magazine, with articles about the history of clock-making in japan, interviews with master clock-makers, etc. it is very cool, and i’ve been working on it in between projects, and eventually i will finish it. when i do, i’ll put it up here, complete with illustrations and instructions, for those of you interested in buying and making one yourselves.

tsubasa no kaeru tokoro – the home of the wings

my NaNoWriMo 2016 project! this long (long) tale is about the sickly (and magically endowed) Yaeto, imperial historian, who really just wants to retire to the back country and live in a wigwam a la George Washington, but instead he gets shipped north to the mountains, where it is chilly even in the summer, and deadly cold in the winter. the imperial princess shows up not too long thereafter, and what scant chance poor Yaeto has left of living the quiet life vanishes like one of his visions as he gets embroiled in imperial politics in the present, and the lives of angry ghosts from the past. as a matter of fact, this is the first in a now 10 (?) novel series. i don’t know if i’ll be doing the whole thing (at my current rate, that would be about two and a half years worth of wall-to-wall translating… (good god)) but this first novel, at least, will be done this November. (^_^)

translation: 100%! NaNoWriMo was a ravishing success, my first pass clocked in at just over 85,000 words. I am now officially deceased.
transcription: ugh, give me a minute, didn’t you hear, I’m dead.

+++ there were some translations of the ebi japan reader here, but they were all for editions of the app long past. i took them down, so as not to confuse people +++

projects on hold:

To Paradise by Mika Harima

In a world where it hasn’t stopped snowing in more than a decade, the people are looking for someone to blame. The Church has marked the so-called Odd Eyes, that is, people with eyes of two different colors and, occassionally, super powers, as the cause of the calamity, and has urged their elimination from the earth. Two teenaged Odd Eyes, twin brother and sister, flee their village, and strike out on their own. — This is another book I got out of my local library before I could stop myself. It has some beautiful artwork, and is apparently written by a lady who won a publishing contest. I’ve been going on and off with it. I feel like I shouldn’t be keeping a book out of the library for 6 months at a time, so I just pick it back up for a month or two every time I see it on the shelf again.

translation: 20% (on temporary hiatus)
transcription: not yet begun.
on hold because? i think we can admit this hiatus is more than just “temporary” by now. i am planning on getting back to this, but i’m Distracted at the moment…

Feast of the Painted Demons – Preperations for the Feast (working title) by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

a collection of “short” detective/ghost stories (kyogoku-sama is notorious for books with an afterlife as bricks; this one has 616 double-columned pages). each one is named after a mythical Japanese demon, and the characters are somewhat interrelated, or at least that’s the impression i’m getting. i’m on page 23 (of 110) of story 1 (of 6), so who knows what it’ll actually turn out to be. on the other hand, a book that starts off with a fantasmal sequence in which a man looks at someone standing under a tree and wonders what he is starting at only to find he’s literally looking at himself, can’t be bad. (^_^)

translation: almost 4%. wow.
transcription: not yet started.
on hold because? too hard. (T_T) i’ll try again after i get my skills up…

Love & Ranking by Mitsuru Hanagata

a cute middle-grade book about a 6th grader who think she has people figured out, until she meets a cocky guy and a ditzy girl who seem to be the perfect couple – something she never predicted!

translation: not even calculated.
transcription: yeah, hardly.
on hold because? OMGs little girl, stop using so much slang! *is weak at casual speech* (X_X)

N/R no return by Makoto Kawashima

another book i got from my local library. about a (i think) teenage boy who loses both his parents and his memory in a car accident. told in a series of very short chapters (i think the longest one is something like 8 or 10 pages) from the amnesiac’s point of view, so it’s quite interesting seeing what he remembers and what he doesn’t and how/when/what he regains, but of course i don’t know what i was thinking checking it out from the library while i had kokui no kishi still on my plate. i’ll come back to this one.

translation: 10%
transcription: not.
on hold because? let’s try one project at a time, please? apparently, having half a dozen projects in various states of not-yet-done is my super power.

also, i’ve done a couple of BL novels, which are my chief interest at the moment. i certainly will continue w/ the mainstream things, too, but i know not all of you are into the homo (^_^), so i’m putting that up elsewhere on the intertubes. in case you’re curious, i’m planning on put up such gems as yoake ni wa yasashii kisu wo by nagira yuu (which is amazing, sugoi, yabai), koi shite, enjou by narimiya yuri (which is suuuper hot. and i’m pretty sure i /am/ niimori-san, but that’s another post altogether), and a short story i’m calling for the moment a night of dreams and telephones, which was in a ghost story BL anthology. it’s adorable, and contains The Cutest Kiss. only Dreams and Telephones is up right now, but i’ve made 2018 the Year of Typing Things Up, so hopefully we’ll see some actual movement here before too much longer… #good luck

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