Recently I got a hold of the original Digital Devil Story trilogy by Nishitani Aya. It's a horror-scifi book written in the 1980s that has a cult following, and spawned one of the largest Japanese RPG series around, Megami Tensei. (Which is also the title of the first book) I've always liked that series and was glad to get a chance to read where the whole thing spawned from.
However, I noticed there's not a lot of information about the original book in English; almost all the information is on the series of video games. It's not surprising that the book never made it over here as it's a niche title even in Japan, and -- it needs to be said -- somewhat trashy fiction.
So, I've decided to start translating the book. I've translated lots of stuff before, but never a novel, so I thought I'd just try my hand at it; also this will hopefully be good practice for the Kentei exam I'm planning on taking in December. I'm not the world's most fantastic translator, so if you have the original and have any suggestions for improvement, let me know. My ultimate goal is to translate all three of the Digital Devil Story novels: Reincarnation of the Goddess, Warrior of the Demon City, and Demise of the Reincarnation. Realistically it'll be a miracle if I even get through the first book without losing interest, but you never know.
So, for those that are interested, this blog is a place to put my translations. Hopefully doing so doesn't violate any copyrights. (If you can demonstrate otherwise, let me know and I'll take the translations down...maybe replace them with plot summaries or something) And of course, in the (very unlikely) event that an official translation comes out, this entire blog will be pulled immediately. My translations are going to come out slowly, whenever I have free time, so don't get too pissed if you want the next chapter immediately--though you can feel free to nag. :)
Note that this is not stellar fiction. It's very beer-and-pretzels horror, and there is some awkward writing in some parts, though it gets better the further you progress. This is not terribly surprising though, as apparently this novel started as a random story posted on a BBS. However just because the writing is not great doesn't mean it's not entertaining. :)
This translation is from the Favorite Edition, which was re-released in the past few years. If you're interested you can buy it here at Amazon Japan. It's all in Japanese, of course, but if you enjoy this translation please consider buying it to show your support to the publisher. I've never seen the original edition, but from the first sentence of the book I can tell that it's been updated somewhat. Plus, it's got pictures. :)
Enjoy!