An Introduction to Translating Anime, Manga, and Games

Speaker: Mr Jake Jung (Freelance anime & manga translator)

Abstract

In this talk, Jake will give a brief overview of the Japanese-to-English translation landscape and marketplace as well as share his experience working as a freelance translator. He will explain what he sees as being common to all media translation and then go on to detail the challenges that are unique to the distinct fields of anime/video, manga, and video games. He will also provide some practical tips for improving as a media translator and share some of the things he wished he had known earlier in his career. Finally, he will go over some real-world examples of tricky lines that feature things like puns and gendered first-person pronouns.

Note: No Japanese language ability is necessary, as literal translations will be provided before the lines are reworked into natural English.

Biography

Jake Jung is a freelance Japanese-to-English translator specializing in anime, manga, and video games. Jake has translated anime such as Made in Abyss and Flying Witch for Sentai Filmworks, done additional translation on Weathering With You for GKIDS, and adapted the Made in Abyss manga for Seven Seas. He also has extensive experience translating video games. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 2008, majoring in Japanese studies as well as philosophy. He has been a full-time translator since 2010 and has focused on media translations specifically since 2013. He was born and raised in Michigan, USA and, as of 2020, resides in Kagawa, Japan.

Registration

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Contact email: km78@soas.ac.uk