About Me
I'm Anna Sasaki, Ph.D., a university instructor in Tokyo, translator, and children's book author. My work sits at the intersection of language, culture, and storytelling — particularly how children's literature travels across linguistic and cultural borders.
I speak English, Russian, and Japanese (JLPT Level 1), and have spent over a decade helping ideas cross those boundaries as both an interpreter and translator.
My academic research focuses on Children's Literature Translation Studies, with a secondary interest in interpretation. I'm especially drawn to the ways that sound, humour, and magical worlds are rendered in translation — and what gets inevitably lost or transformed along the way.
In 2024, I published my debut picture book and won a picture book writing contest in Japan.
Experience
| Year | Role |
|---|---|
| 2010 – present | Interpreter (English ↔ Russian ↔ Japanese) |
| 2015 – present | Translator |
| Current | University instructor in Tokyo (Translation) |
| Current | Part-time translator & children's book author |
Education
Ph.D. — International Culture and Communication Studies & Comparative Linguistics (Translation Studies)
Publications
Book Translation
- Introduction to Cybersecurity Management by Keisuke Kamata — English translation
Picture Books
- くつ下をクロゼットの下にいれないでね (2024)
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- iTranslate or iWrite? A case study of H. Yoneyama's picture book self-translation — Humour in Self-Translation, John Benjamins
- Identifying the language skill of consecutive interpreters — International Journal of Language, Translation and Intercultural Communication, Vol. 7, pp. 33–44
- Translating Sounds: A Study into the Russian-Language Translations of Onomatopoeic Proper Names — Negotiating Translation and Transcreation of Children's Literature, Springer
- Reconsidering the contents of interpreters' notes — Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1–25
Conference Presentations
- "Language as a mediator: A study into the decoding and encoding in consecutive interpretation" — 6th Young Linguists' Meeting in Poznań (YLMP 2018), Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland, Nov 2018
- "The means of translation of onomatopoeia proper names" — From Morals to the Macabre in Translation for Children, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland, Apr 2018
- "'Where is the Real World?' English Translations of Magical Food in Miyuki Miyabe's Brave Story" — NEMLA 2022, Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, Mar 2022