The GITS Blog

My name is Ryan Ginstrom. I'm an American, currently living in semi-rural Okinawa, Japan. I've been living here since 2002, and in Japan since 1999. So far, the biggest event this year has been the opening of a Starbucks in my village.

I'm a technical Japanese-to-English translator by trade, and write a bit of software on the side (including some free applications for translators, and one commercial program, Felix the CAT tool). My programming languages of choice are Python and C++.

I started this blog because after living for many years in Japan, I felt like my English writing skills were getting rusty. Most of the English I wrote was for translations, and I didn't want to get to the point where "translationese" started to sound normal.

Contact information

You can view my translator profile here. I recently decided to get really trendy and created a LinkedIn page.

Mini FAQ

Q: What's with the name GITS? Don't you know what "gits" means?
A: Yes, I know what "gits" means, but I appreciate your concern.

Q: What programming languages could you use to program your way out of a wet paper bag?
A: It depends on how wet the bag is. C++, Python, C, PHP, and VB (not .NET) for sure. Given an extremely wet bag, maybe add Perl, C#, Boo. A bit of Lisp, Prolog, and Java might still be rattling around in the old cranium, or maybe that sound is just a few loose screws. I'm happy to report that the Fortran and Pascal are but fading memories.

Q: What human languages do you translate?
A: I translate Japanese and Spanish into English, but not so much Spanish these days (nearly all my Spanish to English translation is for Japanese clients who incidentally need some Spanish stuff translated).