Cathy Hirano is an award-winning translator of Japanese fiction for young people.

 

Born and raised in Canada, she moved to Kyoto, Japan in 1978 as an English teacher and graduated from the International Christian University of Cultural Anthropology in 1983. Ms. Hirano became a freelance translator in 1987.

 

Ms. Hirano’s translation of Kazumi Yumoto’s NATSU NO NIWA (THE FRIENDS, 1997) won both the 1997 Batchelder Award for literature in translation and the Boston Globe-Horn Book award for fiction. She discusses the art of Japanese-to-English translation in “Eight Ways to Say You.” Cathy Hirano has also translated the first two volumes of Nahoko Uehashi’s beloved Moribito series for Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine; the first volume, MORIBITO: Guardian of the Spirit (Seirei no Moribito) was awarded the 2009 Batchelder Award. Hirano has a son and daughter who are her inspiration. She lives on the island of Shikoku in Japan.

Cathy Hirano