­­­­    Happy New Year, everyone! I’m always bad at writing this kind of stuff, but I felt like I should probably say something. In less than 2 months (Feb 19th), the one year anniversary marking the day I opened this translation site will arrive. The thought that nearly a year has passed already since then is crazy, and a lot of things have changed since I first opened this place. I see myself transcribing songs by ear with precise accuracy, and often reading booklet sheets without the need to use any dictionaries. That used to be just a fantasy. I used to be happy getting just a handful of visitors, and now I find myself getting more in a single day than I did in an entire week back then. Without you all, this would never have happened.

­­­    At the risk of sounding like a huge turbonerd, I have to say that this hobby has really improved my life. Before this, my life had taken a big turn for the worse. With being separated from all my dear friends who I believe I’ll never be able to replace, having all chances at a relationship with a nice girl stolen by uncontrollable circumstances, and nearly completely giving up on my Japanese study, as well as with other things happening, it wasn’t looking good. Slowly, I started getting deeper and deeper into Touhou music, and became fascinated with the lyrics (thanks to a certain pre-existing translator). As the story goes, I once found a song with no English lyrics to be found anywhere, couldn’t handle not knowing them, and decided to make my own subbed video, like the cool people do. Over the months, I slowly began making more and more, until one day I decided to make this wordpress, and I felt like I had gained a new purpose in life, a reason to keep pushing through the tedium of the real world.

­    That’s enough about me though, I want to thank you all more than anything.
To thank Alice, Ammy, The Hakurou Tengu, Nitori, 0P2C, Parasite, Primity, and a few others, for trusting my works and making all those subbed videos.
To thank all the people that comment on my site, for showing your appreciation, pointing out mistakes, wishing me happy holidays, helping me find lyrics, and giving requests, even if I don’t always respond back.
To thank all my Twitter followers, who I still have no idea as to why they even do follow me in the first place.
Of course, to thank all you others who silently read my works as well.
And lastly, to thank Kafka, without whom I would have never gotten started with all this or came so far as I am now.
I know thanks isn’t much, so just remember that with every post I make, I have you all in my heart.

­    Now, a New Year is about to begin, a new game is about to start. Insert Coin(s) to continue and may the cycle repeat another round. Another year of translations, another year of music events, another year of work to make our dreams come true. Happy New Years, and may it be one to remember.

spctrm makes some of my favourite instrumental tracks, check out his circle, “fromadistance,” if you’re interested.

Ah, it’s been a long time since I wrote one of these. Let’s see, to sum up what I want to say here: I’m taking a small break until I get more time. I’ve been pretty busy with university and all lately, though I’ve been doing my best to keep the site updated (mainly by weekend translation marathons). The thing is, I bought a set of light novels last month or so and I haven’t been making progress in them at all, so I’m going to have to cut translations out of my schedule so I can get through these. I hate to do this, especially with how stagnated the Touhou music translation scene seems to be, but here’s the deal: I won’t be long. I’m aiming to finish at least 1 volume before Christmas, and right after that, I’ll be back here. As well, even if I don’t reach my goal, I’ll still come back. You see, chemistry class is my top time consumer, but I’m not planning on continuing on with it after this semester, and I’ve estimated I’ll be taking 4.5hours out of my class schedule per week, along with saving countless hours from doing homework. Chemistry homework consistently takes entire nights to finish, so things will be much more free for me once I get this all thrown out the window. Getting a bit ahead of myself here, but next year I have no plans of taking English ever again as well, which should save me even more time by not being required to read stories. So in short, I’ll be focusing on more important priorities for a while until I become gradually less busy.

In other news, we’ve recently passed the 200th song translation on this site, hooray! To be honest, I used to be a pretty bad translator back when I first started out. God knows how many mistakes I’ve made. Going back, I corrected a lot of them, but man, there were some pretty dumb ones, and I’ve probably missed over a couple. That’s not to say I’m some sort of expert now though, I’ve still got long ways to go, but I’ve definitely been seeing myself improve a lot over the months of working on all these songs. This is one of the main reasons I want to prioritize reading books for a while though: They give a sort of experience that song translating can’t give, so I see it as a sort of investment to build my song translation skill in the long term. They also immensely build up your vocabulary, which is always helpful. Right now, I’m at about an estimated 4000 words that I can read off-hand without a dictionary, so I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m anywhere near fluent, but I’m making progress. Oh yeah, I’ve also been thinking about making a short page on tips and tricks for song translating lately. I would still hardly call myself a good enough translator to write it up yet though, but in the future that’ll probably be a thing, if anyone actually cares about that sort of thing. Also, I should give a special shout out to all you youtubers out there making videos with my translations, thanks for all the support!

That about covers all I’ve got to say here, I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Thanks for keeping with me! Until next time.

 

 

One of my all time favourite tracks ^

 

Whew, what a month it’s been. Things have really been growing around here lately! I’m really surprised at how many visits and views I’ve gotten this month. Of course, I have to thank those who have requested songs too! When I started this place, I decided I’d try my best to post a translation a day, and you’ve all helped a lot! I started translating lyrics with the goal to help people, and it looks like this goal is starting to really reach its potential. 12 requests this month, what a number! I’m really behind on adding entries to the touhou wiki though, and I need to catch up on adding romaji to older lyrics too. On top of that, I’ve been putting some work into an “About Learning Japanese” page, which will cover a lot of resources I’ve used in learning. I hope people will find it helpful!

Let’s see, what else did I have to say? Well, it feels like with each song I translate, I get a little better. Finding better ways to put things to English, getting more and more used to the ways songs are worded, learning new vocabulary and kanji, etc. In the beginning, it used to be pretty tough figuring out stuff sometimes, but I’m getting used to it now.

That being said, I’m really anticipating Reitaisai 11. If Alstroemeria Records comes out with another album with a brand new set of tracks, then will come the test I’ve been waiting for. During last Comiket, I had tried my hand at Maniacal Degree from Decade of Expose, and while I did somewhat well, I did make some.. dumb mistakes and bad wording choices, as well as overlooked the context a little, but now, this time, I’m ready!  The popularity of Alstroemeria gives me a lot of potential to bring along new folks to the site, so I’m going to have to do my best and get to them before anyone else!

 

Thanks for keeping with me! Until next time.