Hello and welcome to Lauren Loves Language, a blog by me - Lauren!
I'm a 22 year old girl living in the UK who last year graduated from university with a 2:1 degree in Japanese. I spent my 3rd year studying abroad at ICU in Tokyo, Mitaka, where I made a lot of friends from all over the globe who I currently miss terribly.
For a while now I've wanted to set up my own blog to practice my Japanese - English translation skills, as it's something I'd like to do in the future. I already enjoy Japanese culture so I figured why not set up a blog to talk about it!
Question and Answer session
What makes you think you can come in here and translate Japanese?
I recently graduated with a 2:1 degree in Japanese. I'm thinking of going back some day eventually to undertake a postgrad in translation, but for now I just wanted to practice my translation skills for fun and decided setting up a blog would be a fun way to go about it.
So how accurate are your translations?
I can't promise my translation skills are absolutely perfect as, like I said, this blog is mainly for practice and for fun. Even though I have a degree in Japanese I'm bound to make lots of mistakes like anybody else. If anyone spots any mistakes in my translations, go ahead and comment/tell me about them, because I'd love to learn where I went wrong and it's the only way I can improve! I promise I won't bite, I'm nice.
What sort of things will you translate?
Mainly (and by this I mean I don't really have any other plans to translate anything else at the moment) Japanese music as that is my one true love. Artists I like include Ayumi Hamasaki, SMAP, NEWS, Akina Nakamori, KinKi Kids, Morning Musume, Perfume, and many more.
Do you take requests?
At the moment I'm not planning on taking requests because 1) I only just set up this blog and I'm not sure anyone is actually reading this and 2) As previously said I'm really just doing this for fun and I'd hate to mess up someone's favourite song with a translation that might not be as good as someone else's!
Is this just a translation blog? Will you post about other things?
I'm hoping that I'll post both (humorous) reviews as well as translations. This means reviews of music and my other great love, Japanese drama.
Are you being paid for this?
No, but please pay me. Please.
I've been watching a lot of Gossip Girl recently and so was highly tempted to end this blog post with "you know you love me xoxo gossip girl" but felt that would be inappropriate and out of place. Thanks for reading!
