About Me/FAQ

In case you were curious who's the person behind all the translating here it is, an About Me page. A bit of self-ranting incoming, but I'm sure there are people out there will find this interesting or amusing. On second thoughts, this is going to be more of a FAQ style page.

• So who I am? 

I go by the handle-name Steel. If you ever followed anime blogs a few years ago, you might have stumbled across my passionately charged rantings and ravings. But chances are you haven't. For those of you who came here via that old blog of mine, well it's basically just a memento now. Feel free to read the readings of a much younger and more naive me. When I'm not translating I'm a bit of a gamer. I usually enjoy my 3DS, 100% Orange Juice and playing Japanese Mahjong.

• So why translating? 

That's a good question to be honest. It was one of those whims I had one day, I've been dying to read raws of games, stories etc. for ages. So much so it was one of the things that got me into learning Japanese. I'll admit it. Raws looked scary, all these words and grammar outside my experience, outside my knowledge. Where's that first step? One of the best things about learning a language is you can slowly see your skill improve. As I got better, I grew more confident and suddenly all that scary Japanese didn't seem so scary, it seemed intricate and I could see the meaning. Now I am not fluent in Japanese. I've only really been learning for three years. It was a quick ride those three years, I seemed to learn things almost as fast as I forgot them, but for the most part, things have stuck on well enough. You might be thinking, three years? Isn't that a bit too soon, are you good enough to translate? Well, the key to learning anything language related is exposure. What better way to expose myself to a language than to translate it and understand the meaning behind its construction in a variety of contexts? So I decided to jump into Light Novels and here I am now. That being said, please excuse any accuracy issues and mistranslations I may do. I do try my best and I would never deliberately mistranslate. If you're also a fellow learner of Japanese and want some tips or if you want to share some advice, feel free to do both.

• Why Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata? 

There was this brief period where I was very intrigued by certain writers. Perhaps the kicking point was watching Jinrui ha Suitaishimashita (Humanity has Declined) by Romeo Tanaka. It was one of the more unique shows in anime during its time and the themes in in got me investigating who created such a work. I found out that Romeo Tanaka was also working on Rewrite, a Visual Novel from the famous Key brand and from then on I made it a point to investigate the writers of shows I found good. Then came around White Album 2. Now I had watched White Album, which to be honest wasn't all that great as an anime. I heard that White Album 2 had almost nothing to do with the original show as a sequel though so I decided to check it out. I was quite surprised at what a gem I was missing out on and I quickly watched the rest of the series. I was impressed enough to investigate who the writer was and during the course of my investigation I also found out that White Album 2 was a very highly rated piece of work in Japan and by others who had read it. It turns out that this author was doing a Light Novel series. At this point I had no idea what this Light Novel was about, but I was curious enough to take a quick look at the raws. So now thanks to the name Maruto Fumiaki, I've decided to explore further why his works have been rated so highly. You might be asking, why not translate White Album 2 instead? While I find White Album 2 very compelling, there was something about Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata that draw me in instead. Perhaps you can simply put it down to the excellent illustrations by Kurehito Misaki.

Now for some more technical questions.

• Can I use your translations to translate into so and so language?

Yes, it's fine. All I ask is that you acknowledge the original translations.

• How often will releases come?

Once a month sounds like a good time frame. Real Life is a bit of a drag on things. Also the style of writing the author uses is a lot less cookie cutter than most Japanese making conveying simple sounding Japanese sentences into English difficult at times. If you ever translate, you'll know what I mean.

• What else do you plan on translating?

I don't think people will ask this, but given how slow and how busy I am with other Real Life things, SaeKano is probably all I'll translate for the time being. If I need a change of pace, I'll probably do song lyrics of doujin music or go into translating a Web Novel for a bit. But my overall focus is doing SaeKano.

Feel free to ask more questions in comments below.