On Translating Tim Fischer’s Under the Blanket Sky (Kimi to Sora no Shita de)

I sometimes translate picture books, and about four months ago, a new one I worked on was published by Kagaku Dojin. It has a rather romantic title in Japanese—Kimi to Sora no Shita de (which means, Under the Sky with You). Yay!

The original English title is Under the Blanket Sky, the debut work of Tim Fischer, a U.S.-based author.

He really does look like such a genuinely kind man. He’s originally from Herkimer, New York, and this story was born from memories of the small town where he grew up.

The entire picture book is filled with a soft, gentle light.

I’ve been fortunate to translate many picture books over the years, but this author’s work—both his writing and his illustrations—shows a remarkable consistency of vision. Every line break feels deliberate; each sentence is shaped with rhythm and breath in mind.

Which is to say… this was quite a challenging book to translate!

This story begins like this:

In the morning of a summer day,
with a brush of wind
and flutter of sunlight,
a strange creature appeared beside me.

His feathers shivered like soft grass,
he smelled like the sky,
and though he did not say a word,
he smiled at me with his bright eyes.

It’s—how should I put it—an opening that’s lyrical, certainly, but it‘s more than that. His word choices vividly evoke the light, the scent, the textures of that moment: the flittering of light, the softness of feathers, the bright eyes. It feels as if you’re drawn into the story’s world without noticing.

And so there I was, thinking, Oh no…how do I even begin to translate this? This is his debut work, and I could feel just how much love the author has poured into this book. I couldn’t possibly ruin that with my translation.

The editor asked me to “retain the feeling of the original but also make it something that will resonate with Japanese readers”.

The truth is, I love the act of fiddling with words, of trying to capture nuance and breath and rhythm across languages. But I have a bad habit of forgetting there are actual readers on the other side of the page. So the editor was there to bring me back on track, offering a clear, grounded advice.

When I first dreamed of becoming a translator, I wasn’t thinking lofty thoughts about bridging Japan and the world—I simply loved playing with language (Now that it’s my work, I do think about those things!)

Anyway, after a lot of back-and-forth—many emails and quite a few Zoom meetings with the editor— here’s how the first page finally took shape in Japanese:

ある　なつの　あさ。

ちらちら　ゆれる　ひかりのなか、

そよかぜが　ふいて

ふしぎな　いきものが　あらわれた。

やわらかい　しばふみたいに　はねが　なびいて、

そらの　においがした。

そして　なにも　いわず、

きらきらした　目で　ぼくに　ほほえんだ。

My first draft leaned too heavily into poetic phrasing, especially around “with a brush of wind” and “flutter of sunlight,” and the editor aptly pointed that out. Those phrases are poetic and have a delicate rhythm in English, so I wanted to capture that feel in Japanese, but it just didn’t sit right. The final version became softer and more natural.

Another tricky issue was how much to use onomatopoeia or mimetic words. Japanese leans into them easily; English, on the other hand, often embeds those textures in the verbs themselves. I had to find a subtle balance—enough to reflect the original, but not so much that it overwhelmed the tone.

Translating between such distant languages, as many translators say, really comes down to how skillfully you can “get it wrong”—or rather, how artfully you can deviate while staying true to the essence.

But enough about translation. Let me tell you a bit about the story itself.

As you saw on the first page, one summer morning, a soft, fluffy bird suddenly appears beside the boy (by the way, the summary of the English edition explicitly calls it an “owl,” so yes, it’s an owl).

This is the beginning of you and me.

“Let’s be friends”, says the boy. And, reading that, I realized—I haven’t said those words in a very long time. As adults, we rarely do. We just somehow become friends, without noticing.

The boy and the owl spend the entire summer together, playing and sharing their days. The look in the owl’s eyes on that page—how gentle.

But summer can’t last forever. And eventually, the owl must go.

Did the boy know that they couldn’t stay together forever? I especially love what the boy says on this page:

“Maybe we can stay here together, always,” I said.
“We can have even more tomorrows just like today.”

There’s something so achingly innocent in those words—of not knowing that separation is coming—that it makes me want to cry.

When we’re little, we don’t really think about people separating. But life teaches us otherwise, we realize—oh, we can’t stay together forever.

Some people just accept it with a kind of lightness. Others, me included, struggle every time.

But now, as an adult, I know this too: even when someone is gone, even when I know I’ll never see them again, I’ve learned to accept it—and that, in time, I’ll be okay.

And maybe that’s what gives us the courage to meet new people and to say goodbye when the time comes.

Is there someone you wish you could see one more time?

In the quiet afternoon,

as the sunlight is blinking

through the trees,

we felt the warm air

and heard the summer bugs

buzzing in the grass.

I’d like to say—so I will—

that I love you,” he said.

“Me too,” I said.

Reading this book brings back memories of people you love. But it isn’t just sadness. It’s because of these warm memories that we can keep moving forward in life.

A friend of mine once told me: if you know goodbye is coming, then while you’re still together, fill the time with as many precious memories as you can.

Rather than getting caught up in words like “forever” or “never again,” maybe we can simply be present—in this moment, here and now.

It isn’t always easy. But looking someone in the eye and saying, “I love you”—right now, in this moment—is, I think, a kind of gentle courage.

It tells them they matter.

And it reminds you that you’ll be okay, even after they’re gone.