I’m posting this on the 4th of December, 2024, which marks the 10th anniversary of my translation blog! Or, more specifically, it marks the date I published my first translation publicly – the first part of Shinra-Bansho’s Doppel.
Before anything else, I want to say thank you to everyone – whether you’ve made a request, left a comment, just stopped by to read a translation, or provided support in any way. It’s what’s made this all worthwhile and continues to energise me to keep learning. Here’s to another 10 years!
I wanted to use the rest of this post to write a bit more about the blog, including some key milestones. I’ve also opened up comments in case you have any reflections on the last 10 years!
A brief history
Music and translation have always been pretty closely linked for me. My first Touhou arrangement (updated version) came about after some spontaneous improv against a backing track of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 back in 2011. I revisited the idea in 2012, which led me down a rabbit hole that’s resulted in 18 Touhou arrangement albums and 4 Len’en arrangement albums. From the bottom of my heart, I thank the artists who’ve provided amazing album illustrations over the years: Bear (ネコリナ), Kia, Klaineka, Mentha Nolana and Naoi Ikumo.
I started translating lyrics for my own enjoyment as far back as 2012 (which is also the year I started studying music at uni). Like a lot of people from that era, the thing that really got me into it was my love of Touhou and Touhou arrangements. I didn’t finish a lot of these early translations because I still wasn’t very good, but it lit a fire in me to get better and keep up my studies.
A few things happened at the end of 2014 that kicked me into gear and finally caused me to post translations to my blog:
- I decided to go for the JLPTN1 for the first time (knowing I was likely to fail), and wanted another way to improve my language skills.
- I was really into Shinra-Bansho’s Doppel, and I wanted to know what the story was about (sort of a case of ‘if I don’t translate this, who will?’).
- I was at the precipice of finishing my undergrad degree and moving on to a Master degree in International Relations.
I need to give a particular shout-out to Kafka-Fuura, too – seeing them translating and maintaining such a high standard is one of the key factors that drove me to start up my own blog.
I posted my first translation on the 4th of December 2014 and pretty soon after that I started taking requests – I published my first requested translation, Shinra-Bansho’s 無境界仮説の切符 || A Ticket to the No-Boundary Proposal (I’m starting to see a pattern here…) on the 7th of January 2015.
I regret not saving more achive material from when I set up my blog, but the Wayback Machine has a copy from 26 July 2015:
If you compare it to now, it hasn’t changed that much, has it? I did make a conscious choice to stop using public domain art, but I suppose the site looks a little lonelier without a header.
Milestones
When I think about milestones, there are a few things that come to mind.
The one that sticks out the most is, of course, when I finally passed JLPTN1. It took me a few attempts, including one incredibly demoralising attempt where I failed by 1 mark (99/180), but I finally passed in July 2021.
In 2017, I helped Japanese electronica band macaroom translate a documentary on their album cage out into English – watch the video on YouTube! I’m a big fan of their music so it was such a great feeling to get involved.
In 2018, I contributed to RedForest’s English version of TUMENECO’s 星を廻せ月より速く (a great song, and translating with a focus on how it’s sung offered a unique challenge).
In 2020, I ticked off something close to my heart and entered the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize – they do a different language every year, and I’d been waiting for a long time for Japanese to show up. I didn’t win but I felt so proud to enter.
There are a couple of other interesting milestones in there too, like when Tiny Little Adiantum went viral in 2019 and drew swarms of people here to read my translation of the song.
What’s next?
What’s coming next? I’ve achieved so many of the goals I set for myself, I’m honestly not sure. I’d like to stick to my current process of irregularly opening up requests though, just so I can keep up my language skills.
On the music side of things, I’m hoping to try my hand at some Vocaloid music. Now I actually have a proper computer, all the things that were holding me back are gone so there’s really no excuse for me not to do it. So stay tuned!
I feel pretty happy with where I left my Touhou arrangement album series, but if the mood strikes me I might also release some more albums there. I feel the same about Len’en.
I’ve also rediscovered the ‘blog’ tab of my website so who knows, maybe I’ll do some longer form writing too.
Statistics
What does 10 years look like in stat form? It’s something like this:
- Over 1,100,000 views
- Over 650,000 visitors
- 2,094 posts including
- 2,028 tagged as ‘translations’
- Over 1,800 requests
- 18 Touhou arrangement albums
- 4 Len’en arrangement albums
WordPress gave me some cool insights too, so I figured I’d share them as well!
And, for something I’m sure a few people must have been curious about – which translations have been viewed the most? I was able to pull together a top 20 list of most popular pages (which includes the admin ones too).
The gap between Tiny Little Adiantum and Hysteric Night Girl is not close (that song went seriously viral back in 2019), but only a few hundred views separates Hysteric Night Girl and How to Eat Life.
Thanks again for sticking with me for the first 10 years of my blog!
Releska 
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