Who I am

I'm Gaurav, a professional translator specializing in Japanese to English localization. Having 3+ years of experience working with big projects, I can bring reliability, quality and consistency to any project of your dreams. Initially a webdeveloper by trade, I got interested in this field after I saw the value I could bring to it, being an individual who respects the original work and intentions of the author, hoping to translate them without forgetting the reason why. To me, the most important thing when doing any job is speed and customer satisfaction. If the customer is not happy with the product, I do not feel happy delivering it. Everything must pass my own quality standards before it does yours. Yet, at the same time, I also make it a point to set my own deadlines if the customer will not. Time is money, and I am not keen on wasting yours. Priding myself on my "can do" attitude, I will make sure that a project succeeds on time and within budget, no matter how many caffeine filled all nighters I have to pull to do so. In my free time, I immerse myself in Japanese content to learn even more about the language I ply my trade using.

Past Experiences

Due to the nature of freelance work, I have dabbled in a bit of everything, including web development and content writing. I have made several websites, worked on several game translation projects, one of which was a herculean 250000 lines of dialogue, and have done some content writing on the side as well. Rest assured, I always hold myself to the same standards, so you can be sure you're getting a good value for anything and everything.

Translation Process

Translation and localization is a difficult job, and I like to keep a particular mindset while doing it. In many cases, the literal translation and the ideal translation are not the same things. I make sure to take extra care in such instances. As an example:

「きみと同じ方言で会話できるようになりたいな」
「嬉しいこと言うやん？　基本は『もうかりまっか』『ぼちぼちでんな』やで」

Translated,

"I wanna chat with you in your own dialect someday."
"Well ain'tcha a swell guy? Ya can start off with「Business goin' good?」「Well, it's goin'.」"

The above lines mention a common phrase in the speaker's dialect. Translated literally, we would get "Are you making money?" - "Here and there". However, in the region it's from, this is akin to a person asking "How are you" - "Fine". Just leaving it as a literal translation would not only leave us with a poor result, but would also simply be lacking flavour. So in this instance, I had to reword it in such a way to preserve the original meaning, while also keeping the cultural context alive.

Another one would be:

「おっとぉ、自分にだけ、エエ恰好させへんで～。ウチも好かれるよう、適当にがんばらんとあかんね」
「う、うん、適当に……ね」
「うんうん、頑張り過ぎは身体に毒やしな～……」

Translated,

"Woah~, I'm not gonna let ya have all the limelight, mister~. I'mma have to try a bit too, to have ya love me, don't I?"
"Y-Yeah, a bit... huh?"
"Yepyep, overworkin' kills, ya know~..."

These lines say nothing special. The original dialogue, if translated literally, would be more akin to "working too hard is poison for the body", yet not only does that not flow well, it loses all of the flavour in the text. As such, I also took a more indirect approach with this one. If you wish to hear about more of these, I could talk your ear off all day, so feel free to...

Contact Me

I'm an easy man to get a hold of. Reach me by E-mail, by Telegram, by Twitter, or even Discord. I provide free quotes for any project, no matter how big or small. I look forward to hearing from you!