British translator Ginny Tapley Takemori has become a recognizable name in translated fiction in recent years. Her work on Sayaka Murata’s “Convenience Store Woman” (2018) and “Earthlings” (2020), as well as Kyoko Nakajima’s “The Little House” (2019), garnered praise, but in an alternate universe she could still be translating works from Spanish or Catalan in sunny Barcelona.
After graduating high school in the 1980s, Takemori took a gap year (that extended into several), enjoying her work in London’s music scene. An eye-opening vacation to Spain, however, convinced Takemori to take a leap and move from her base in England.
“I simply fell in love with Barcelona,” Takemori says to The Japan Times. “I never felt that way about a place before, but I knew I just wanted to be there. Luckily I had some Spanish from school, and I found an intensive course in Catalan, taught in Spanish, so I really learned both languages simultaneously.”