Alexander O. Smith, a Dartmouth '95 and a professional English-Japanese translator and author, came up all the way from Kamakura and met the Dartmouth LSA+ students at KUIS on 08/22 (Wednesday). He also has a Wikipedia page here: Alex's Wikipedia page.) Dorsey-sensei and Alex came to the classroom a little after everyone finished taking the writing portion of their final test.
We all gathered and talked for about an hour. Alex outlined his experience taking Japanese at Dartmouth, and how he continued studying Japanese literature at Harvard before working at Square Enix. He also told us about how he was working with Moon Studios now (they made Ori and the Blind Forest - a game I love!) and is helping out with the story of Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Before we left for shabushabu, he also spoke to the difficulties of translating. Alex emphasized the importance of getting the same meaning and experience across when translating - meaning changing t He also mentioned how difficult it was to dub Japanese games in English, as they could not reanimate the mouths or cut scenes, so getting the same meaning and feeling across was a challenge at times.
Around 12:45pm, we headed off to a nearby shabushabu restaurant called Dontei to eat. It was all you can eat and Dartmouthの奢り, so we all ate a lot. Most of us had two ricebowls and lots of meat! While eating, we continued talking to Alex about games and such, and even followed each other Instagram. Both the conversation and the food was hot/passionate and good.
After eating, Alex handed out his business card, which was beautifully designed on some great paper. Then, we headed off our separate ways, with some Dartmouth students returning back to their homestays and some going to Tokyo for shopping and such. We were very lucky to have met and talked to Alex Smith and appreciate him making the trip from Kamakura to meet us! He shared some great insights about translating and the gaming industry.
(I also found out he did fencing back at Dartmouth!)