1.
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superborb on Bluesky)
2.
Just finished Shion Miura's Run with the Wind (translated by Yui Kajira) and loved it. Although I barely remember anything from the anime, I adored it the first time I watched it and I now appreciate it as an adaptation. :') The big race (Hakone Ekiden) took almost half of the book and I'm amazed at how invested and emotional I was throughout it, even when I was just reading it! I did mostly have to skip Shindo and Haiji's legs because I was too anxious haha.
Also loved the bits where Musa was struggling with colloquial language (as a foreign student) and Shindo was always checking in on him. I actually don't remember Shindo at all in the anime, which makes me feel bad because he is such a GEM.
Some of the side characters (namely the rival athletes and Hana) were more obviously narrative devices than people and it took some time for me to get used to that, and I was very surprised to see the (one-sided) Kakeru/Hana developments.
Really enjoyed the English translation, the (consistent and intentional) choice to leave specific words untranslated and unitalicized, and the writing.
3.
llonkrebboj linked me to their translation of 人是_ by Zhou Shen, which naturally led me to falling in love with the song and being tempted to watch Wandering Earth 2.
In any case, translation toward English is not an act of benevolent charity — Penguin’s imprimatur did not rescue Truyện Kiều from obscurity. Nearly a hundred million people live in Việt Nam and several million Vietnamese people live abroad. Việt Nam is now more populous than the United Kingdom, Turkey, Australia, France, Germany, South Korea — and many, many other countries. A friend recently shared a reminder from her mother: Vietnamese doesn’t need you. We get so embroiled in our diasporic angst, writing heartfelt, tortured essays about not being able to impart cultural knowledge to any children we might have, but we’re lucky for what is not the case for everyone who has lost a language or had it taken from them. Vietnamese is not endangered, and its literature is not honored by translation toward English — it is English-using society that benefits from gaining access to literature produced in other languages. . .—Som-Mai Nguyen, "Blunt-force Ethnic Credibility" (h/t
superborb on Bluesky)2.
In that instant, Kiyose realized something. If happiness, or beauty, or goodness existed in this world, for him, they would take the form of this runner.
Just finished Shion Miura's Run with the Wind (translated by Yui Kajira) and loved it. Although I barely remember anything from the anime, I adored it the first time I watched it and I now appreciate it as an adaptation. :') The big race (Hakone Ekiden) took almost half of the book and I'm amazed at how invested and emotional I was throughout it, even when I was just reading it! I did mostly have to skip Shindo and Haiji's legs because I was too anxious haha.
Also loved the bits where Musa was struggling with colloquial language (as a foreign student) and Shindo was always checking in on him. I actually don't remember Shindo at all in the anime, which makes me feel bad because he is such a GEM.
Some of the side characters (namely the rival athletes and Hana) were more obviously narrative devices than people and it took some time for me to get used to that, and I was very surprised to see the (one-sided) Kakeru/Hana developments.
Really enjoyed the English translation, the (consistent and intentional) choice to leave specific words untranslated and unitalicized, and the writing.
Some excerpts from the translator's notes:
Miura's writing has a warmth and an openness, though it's hard to put a finger on what exactly gives it that feeling. Her all-embracing love for human beings and their everyday lives, in all their messy glory, seems to seep through her words and touch us, too. Her characters come alive on the page, each possessing their own past and future. As readers, we are pulled into that embrace, and, like the spectators of the Hakone Ekiden, we feel absorbed in the Chikusei-so team's endeavor as if we were running alongside them ourselves.
My general stance in translating this novel was to prioritize the momentum of the story, the feel of each character (and their relationships, with all the banter), and the authenticity of the language revolving around running. At the same time, I wanted to retain as many Japanese terms as possible, and in a way that allows curious readers to look things up. After all, it's perfectly natural to come across unfamiliar words or concepts while reading any book, no matter the language it was originally written in. Luckily, it's easier than ever to find out what an engawa or a kamaboko looks like, or what a higurashi sounds like. Of course, there are many English videos and articles about the real-life Hakone Ekiden as well, packed with as much human drama as the story of the Chikusei-so team.
3.
llonkrebboj linked me to their translation of 人是_ by Zhou Shen, which naturally led me to falling in love with the song and being tempted to watch Wandering Earth 2.
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