I was asked to translate for the Japanese localization (translation, etc.) of persona/, a Google Chrome application by Barcelona-based company Layers.
It’s an application made to check your Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds with comfort and style. It’s free and it installs in a minute, so if I got your interest why not try it now? Feel free to use this link to install persona/ on Google Chrome. Beware that you won’t be able to install it on other browsers.
Note: They recently got a persona/ iPad app, which you can use in English.
During this year’s Barcelona Manga Fair, Planeta de Agostini launched its Spanish edition for Record of Lodoss Wars: La Bruja Gris, a manga adaptation for the pioneering Japanese heroic fantasy novel.
Translation was ordered to Daruma, and I was in charge of the first draft. I translated every balloon and onomatopoeia, and I think it’s thanks to Marc Bernabé’s revision and Daruma’s logistics that the result came out to be quite good.
English title: Record of Lodoss War: The Gray Witch
Story: Ryo Mizuno
Art: Yoshihiko Ochi
Format: 600 pages, 148×210 mm
ISBN: 978-84-684-7567-7
Price: 25 €
I think this fantasy manga can be enjoyed by anyone older than, say, 12 years old, as long as they have any interest for in the fantasy genre.
It was a very good experience, as I read a lot of manga but I had never had a chance to help with manga publishing. I’m very interested in deepening communication and understanding between Spain and Japan, and I think with this kind of work I’m getting nearer to this aim.
I’ve been in charge for an emergency messaging service for Chikuyo Gakuen, a private school in Fukuoka Prefecture. Everything is made so that it’s easy to subscribe and unsubscribe, and easy to use with Japanese mobile phones.
There were students from Chikuyo Gakuen learning English in New Zealand when the terrible earthquake took place, but they were all evacuated and sent back to Japan without any problem. Being my work for this school an emergency system, I feel most relieved when it’s not used. But I felt very happy when it was used to relieve parents the day of the earthquake.
Last Saturday I did my lecture at WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 and attended as many other lectures as I could. It’s thought that about 400 people came, and the organization did something that was new to me – there were many short lectures, so many that there were two at a time despite them being short. I think today’s ease of communication (even after the event ends) makes this way of scheduling events very effective, and we gained a lot of variety.
So here are my slides. I spoke about things one should think before starting a podcast, and I showed an easy way to podcast using WordPress and Feedburner.
This week I made public a new service I called Japoneschan. It lets you convert Spanish words into Japanese characters (keeping the Spanish pronunciation), get translations through the Google Translate API, and many other things. I made this service in order to connect the Japanese and Spanish languages in both directions. For more information on how to use it, please read the Japanese or Spanish help pages.
The design and mascot character for Japoneschan are the work of Koga Takahiro
For the service to be comfortable and fast to use I’m using AJAX, but when you access a URL where you get the conversion results from the beginning (as the ones shared on Twitter, etc.) I’m reducing the number of AJAX queries, caching on the server side, etc. Many things I had never had the chance to build from zero.
I had a blast developing Japoneschan. Have I managed to get you curious enough to look up the Japanese characters for your favorite Spanish phrase? I hope I did!
Next February 19th WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 will be held. It’s an event about blog software WordPress, but this year it will be more focused on content than on technology.
They called to speak about how to make a podcast, and how to distribute it without pain using WordPress.
Here’s a translation of an abstract to my lecture and my profile:
How to distribute a podcast with WordPress: the Escucha español way
You can distribute a podcast with WordPress using no plugins! It’s very easy thanks to WordPress and Feedburner, and I’ll teach you to do it. Once you know the way it’s your call to produce interesting content. From the idea to production and distribution, we’ll be covering the whole process.
Ale Cremades’s profile
I’m a Spaniard living in Fukuoka and spend my time making the podcast Escucha español, giving lectures about international understanding and culture, and developing web applications. I have been making websites for 15 years, and using WordPress for 5 years. I enjoy making heavy metal with Game Boy, and everything I do in life is about communication.
There will be many other interesting lectures, and if you’re interested in publishing content I think this will be an interesting event. I hope to meet many new people there!
It’s been a while since I last wrote about the international education classes I do at some schools (I wrote about it here and here). Today I’d like to share some experiences and pictures. But not many pictures, as Japan is very protective of their children’s privacy and likeness.
I have talked to elementary, junior high and high school students, and the image they have about Spain and how the world or the people are outside Japan is quite limited and stereotyped (as one could expect). Also with all due respect, most teachers don’t have deep international knowledge or much experience. But this is not a problem and it’s what the Kokusai Hiroba program I work with is all about and I’m very happy to help with this.
Tenpai Middle High School
I spend a fair share of my time with the kids trying to break their preconceptions, maybe attacking directly the most common ones or giving them uncommon information to increase their field of view. For instance I usually stress the alphabet not being a character code strictly associated to the English language, but being shared by a number of languages (English and Spanish among them). So the fact that a word is written in Latin characters doesn’t always mean it is an English word. This is obvious to most English or Spanish speakers, but note that most Latin characters a Japanese person sees in her life are English words and also they have a thing for mixing the character set and language concepts (Chinese heritage, I would guess).
I also like sharing some music and dancing or playing with them some game where they can move their bodies. I’m not that confident about traditional music, but my rendition of España cañí played with a Game Boy is usually well received. Students often research or think questions for me, too. Sometimes they even have presents!
The kids at Tenpai Junior High School gave me this Maneki Neko.
And at Onga High School I got to taste some varieties of jam made by the students, with fruits they made themselves. I love this job!
Last Saturday I joined an event called WordPress 3.0 Kaigi. I met a bunch of people (there were more than 60) and it was very interesting. About the end, I explained in Japanese how to distribute a podcast easily using WordPress and no plugins. Below is my presentation.
And this is a summary of my talk:
An RSS feed with links to media files is already a podcast.
You can upload your podcast from inside WordPress itself, through FTP or even using an external service such as blip.tv.
When linking different versions of your multimedia file you’ll want to put this attribute to the one you’d like to download automatically: rel=”enclosure”.
Now you have a good enough podcast, but iTunes will want more than that.
Using Google’s Feedburner service you can optimize your podcast so that you can have it show up at the iTunes Store.
Just configure the SmartCast option inside Optimize.
Now you’re ready to submit your podcast to the iTunes Store and wait for them to review it.
I’m looking forward to your comments and questions!
Spaniard freelance web consultant-developer who also provides formation and language services. In Japan since 2005, officially freelance since 2008.
For more information please check About Alecrem.
Spaniard freelance web consultant-developer who also provides formation and language services. In Japan since 2005, officially freelance since 2008.