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Jocelyne Allen

@brainvsbook.bsky.social
2.5K followers 582 following 5.3K posts

アレン・ジョセリン I write. I ramble. I translate. And interpret. 筆者/翻訳・通訳家/取り留めの無い人 (she/they) brainvsbook.com kaikatsu.ca

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 11h
I answered ten emails today, including five in Japanese I very much did not want to deal with bc of fussy money details (hence requiring extensive/delicate deployment of careful いただく and くださる), so I will henceforth be collapsing to my fainting couch, not to be disturbed for the rest of the week-end.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
海女, 海士, and 海人 are all read あま and mean female diver, male diver, and any old gender diver respectively. Sometimes I think Japanese is trolling me.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 12h
Exactly!! Months of delicious limited edition drink led me to believe there would always be delicious limited edition drink. And then! Hopes painfully dashed!!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 15h
They kept having the Dakara on the shelf, so I got complacent and stopped buying four bottles at a time. And then when I went to get some today, there was none... Limited edition products breaking my heart on this side of the ocean now, too.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 21h
The Chic Squad is here to snazz up your style for the weekend.
Two manga panels. The first is a sports-type car zooming up a street with buildings and fancy street lanterns, and a couple ladies on the sidewalk. The second is a group of five women dressed very stylishly in sixties/seventies fashion, standing in front of the car, posing like the moment in a heist movie when the heisters arrive on the scene, right before they get to heisting.
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The Other Other Mike Myers @battlehork.bsky.social · 22h
English has keigo but it consists primarily of "I hope this email finds you well" and "Please advise"
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 23h
Brain vs Question!
brainvsbook.wordpress.com
Kimi no Quiz: Noda Ayako (Story: Ogawa Satoshi)
One of my favourite things is when artists really lean into drawing the weird thing that they are obsessed with. You can always tell when a manga is inspired by the author’s personal fixations beca…
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Oh yeah, that translation is straight from the pages of the dictionary.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Context is always king!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Thanks for having me or I'm heeeeere or something would at least be more human sounding.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
And general awkwardness! Very few situations are going to warrant an "intrusion".
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Saw お邪魔しま〜す spoken by a close friend of the protagonist translated as "Excuse my intrusion" and oof, no. That is some alien pretending to be human type of dialogue.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Catch up with my sweetest of translation babies!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Ugh. I rolled my eyes so hard, I think I sprained something.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Hey, newbie J-E translators! Do you want to enter a contest and win fame and fortune (a prize and the respect of your new peers)?? Now you can!
jat.org
Twenty-third Annual JAT Contest for New and Aspiring Japanese<>English Translators (Oct.1-Nov.7) Source Text and Guidelines | Japan Association of Translators
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 21/02/2024
Don't mind me. I'm just over here injecting my woke politics into your pure and entirely unpolitical manga. Stealthily, one word at a time. "Nonbinary"? Yeah, I did that. "Trans"? Oh, you bet I mentioned the existence of the transes. What are you going to do, stop reading?? I'd like to see you try.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
She is a legend to me at least! Her work is incredible and has inspired me to think about my own translation practice in new ways. I learn so much from reading her translations.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
To end International Translation Day on a translating note, here is an old, but excellent essay by the legend Cathy Hirano on the difficulties of translation in general and J-E translation in specific.
hbook.com
Eight Ways to Say You: The Challenges of Translation
Last year I had the honor of attending the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards ceremony in Massachusetts, not as an award recipient but as an accompanist — as the translator for Kazumi Yumoto’s The Friends,...
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A guy named Dave called me from the audio repair shop about my busted CD player and he sounded exactly like you would imagine a guy named Dave working at an audio repair shop. My CD player is in good hands.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
One of my favourite books about translation is This Little Art by Kate Briggs. I always recommend this to my translation students, not for technique, but for ways to think about translation as an art and not simply a word-in word-out mechanical activity.
brainvsbook.wordpress.com
This Little Art: Kate Briggs
I have been getting meta with my thoughts on translation lately, not just because of my work on Junji Ito’s latest, No Longer Human, but that’s certainly a contributing factor. Our thoughts on tran…
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Or you could read some other books in/about translation. I have written about some over the years.
brainvsbook.wordpress.com
Translation – Brain Vs. Book
Posts about Translation written by brain
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Happy International Translation Day! Please read the books of this particular translator and keep me gainfully employed!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Ha ha! Perfect!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Okay, this is legit amazing and the one time where the "you can speak Japanese?!" reaction is actually great. What a great time for everyone!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The corporate grind is the best teacher.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is definitely what I should start doing.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It's like the people who see me reading a Japanese book in public and interrupt me with "You can read Japanese?!" Do you think I am staring at incomprehensible glyphs just to mess with random strangers?!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Extremely funny that the reaction of so many people to hearing that I’m a Japanese interpreter is “You can speak Japanese?!” As it turns out, yes. Yes, I can. You might even say it's literally my job.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Oh yeah, this one frequently trips me up. Also double c one s double l occasionally. The number of times I've tried to write occassionally...
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The list keeps growing: solider, prok, pubishment, entires, commerical, stell, particules, throny, survery Translation truly is learning (about how many words I can't actually type/spell correctly).
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Jenn Odd @jentranslations.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Game devs, this is why it's important to give your translation teams references and allow for time in the schedule for questions from the translators. Help localization help you! igda.org/news-archive...
igda.org
High Quality Localization? Help Loc Help You! – IGDA
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Now I have to watch Simple Men again.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The number of times I have shouted to my empty apartment "I can't stand the quiet!" and then proceeded to pretend I am Elina Löwensohn
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Once again, the sky shouts trans pride!
Sunset over the Toronto skyline. The sky is a perfect blue, with streaks of clouds that are pink and whiter in some places, so that the whole thing looks like a trans flag.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
In an entirely unsurprising turn of events, I had some things to say about translation!
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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 26/09/2026
#worldkidlitmonth Talking about Colorful—an interview with translator Jocelyne Allen (@brainvsbook.bsky.social) + Holly Thompson “Colorful is funny and hopeful in a way that doesn’t deny or reject the idea that life can be and often is really hard. But it reassures readers that they’re not alone.“
glli-us.org
#WorldKidLit Month Focus on Japan: Talking about “Colorful: A Novel”
Today’s post comes to you from Holly Thompson: Not long ago, I was pleased to be in conversation with translator Jocelyne Allen about her translation of the bestselling novel Colorful by Eto Mori. …
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
🫡
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
You really do!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Brain vs DRAMA!
brainvsbook.wordpress.com
Kiri no Naka no Shojo: Hanamura Eiko
What a month, friends! What a year! I am stunned to realize it is the end of September, and the end of the year is coming up very quickly behind it. They just turned the heat on in my Toronto apart…
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Peow2 NYCC C20 @peow.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Go get Hibari kun from The Beguiling if you live in Canada OK!!!!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Today years old when I realized that the sofabed we had in the basement when I was a kid was not a Hydabed, like some fancy brand name, but merely a hide-a-bed, as in a bed that is hidden.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ugh. Glad TikTok never managed to get its claws into me.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Who can say! There is a lot to ponder in this brief text.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Happy to do my part for the Satanic Elite pushing people to Depraved Lifestyles by translating those Japanese manga and novels into English. Teamwork makes the dream work!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Had to check the hellsite for work research. Looks like people are being Entirely Normal over there as usual.
Twitter screenshot:
Satanic Elite uses Japan's Film, Manga, and Novel industries to drive people toward increasingly Sinful and Depraved Lifestyles.
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Much more fun than buying online, that’s for sure!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Good luck in your life can be the bless your heart of Japan!
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It feels like a disturbingly subtle threat, like the cut glass guy is going to come to my house and cut *me* if I don't buy some of his work on "Amazon" or "ebay". (And don't get me started on those quotation marks.)
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I've never seen a more ominous deployment of "good luck". Good luck in your life, buddy (which will be short just fyi)!
A picture of some cut-glass drinking glasses. The text below says:
For English
Our Japanese traditional cut glass can be purchased on "Amazon" or "ebay".
Good luck in your life. 
Thank you. :)
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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Extremely relatable.
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