I was happy the other day to find No Longer Human on my Kindle Unlimited - it was on my list to read this year. Got halfway through, enjoying the story itself a lot, but finding the translation almost unreadable at times. Scrolled to the end, found a generic translator profile for 'Clayton Maris'
Did some Googling, the only results are an Amazon list showing that Clayton has translated and published a very impressive 101(!) books from Japanese in the past few months. Passing off machine translation as the work of a made-up person (IF that's the case) is a new level of ick.
Yeah I actually went yesterday evening and bought a copy of Juliet Winters Carpenter’s translation after a recommendation from @alisonfincher.bsky.social ☺️
A Discord I’m in spent, like, an hour on this Sunday night. 😅
We couldn’t find anything on Maris, any link to his claimed alma mater, etc. Nothing to confirm he’s a person and nothing to confirm he’s a person with translator creds.
Also, he appears to translate (or not) Chinese, too?
I knew my Nancy-Drew-senses weren't tingling for no reason! But this does give me a very nice excuse to do a little central London bookshop pilgrimage this afternoon to find a copy of Carpenter's translation.
It could be a real person despite the odd name, many cases in Japan of writers & artists using Western nom de-plumes, as there are so many people with the same or similar names. A foreign-sounding stage name stands out from the crowd, but it's unusual for a translator!
Like I’ve said elsewhere, I’m really hesitant to label someone fake. But…
It’s not the name, which isn’t that weird. It’s the implausibly prolific output and the complete absence of other information online that’s making us skeptical.
The legit indie translators I know of are traceable.
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We couldn’t find anything on Maris, any link to his claimed alma mater, etc. Nothing to confirm he’s a person and nothing to confirm he’s a person with translator creds.
Also, he appears to translate (or not) Chinese, too?
It’s not the name, which isn’t that weird. It’s the implausibly prolific output and the complete absence of other information online that’s making us skeptical.
The legit indie translators I know of are traceable.