The Japanese version of Joel on Software (the book) is out! I want to thank Yasushi Aoki who translated it and Ohmsha, the publisher.

So far, the book is available in English, Italian, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. I’m certain the Japanese translation will be excellent because Yasushi-san worked closely with me on many small points of translation and worked very hard to correctly translate all those weird cultural references and inside jokes I always put in my articles. The quality of the physical book is much nicer than the English original (why do they have such nice paper in Japan?)

One of my dad’s books on educational linguistics was translated to Japanese when I was a kid. I got a primer on Japanese and deciphered the cover, and was thrilled that our name in Japanese is usually pronounced sa-po-ra-sa-ki, which sounds like a cross between an alcoholic drink and a rad motorcycle.

UPDATE Paul Jensen emails: “As a student of linguistics and Japanese, I feel I should point out that your last name in Japanese is actually su-po-ru-su-ki. In Japanese, /u/ is generally silent following /s/, so your name would come out as [sporuski], which is pretty close to how it’s pronounced in English.”