My reason for using the Creative Commons license was purely “philosophical”. I’ve really benefited over the last few years from various books and software — especially software — released under open source licenses, so I wanted to support that sort of work. I’m hardly expect anyone will read my translations, let alone use them, so the license isn’t really about protection.

On another note, I spend most of my time editing and writing technical papers, so I think my translations might be a bit stiff. If you use them and rewrite them at all, I’d love to see your text. Hopefully I can learn something.

i’m curious about the creative commons license you have… it would be great to be able to ‘add’ audio to them… if i can find someone to record for me, that is. heh.

does your license mean i could not distribute the resulting audio copyright-free?

Here’s one “author” page from that site. If you look at the list of works near the bottom of the page, you find a few tales. Aozora also have Urashima Taro and two different versions of Momotaro. If you live in Japan, there are (or at least used to be) small books of mukashi banashi in hiragana in the 100 yen shops.

(I also recently started posting my own translations of Japanese folk stories at http://japanesefolktales.blogspot.com/ I intend to post as many stories as I can find and have time to translate.)

funny, i had come across those just the other day on kenkyuukai:

http://www.kenkyuukai.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=101&forum=1

there, he points out that some of the later ones have audio with them. just to push it further, i wish it would highlight the words when they are spoken. for example:

http://www.digital-lib.nttdocomo.co.jp/kikakuten/mukashi/mukashi7/monogusa.html
(note on page two the guy picking his nose while watching the lady to all the work. v funny)

http://www.digital-lib.nttdocomo.co.jp/nihonbunka/minwa/

There are a lot of stories, all written out, with glosses for the kanji. There are also helpful illustrations for most of the stories and regional groupings for where the tales come from. It’s neat.

In particular, Momo-Taro is here:
http://www.digital-lib.nttdocomo.co.jp/kikakuten/mukashi/mukashi1/momo.html

And Urashima is here:
http://www.digital-lib.nttdocomo.co.jp/kikakuten/mukashi/mukashi1/urashima.html

I’d love listen-to-able audio of these if you can get it.

Btw, おんがく is ‘music’ and やめる is stop, きく is listen. These are in the lower right corner of each book page.

つぎへ (lower left corner of each book page) mean “to the next” and it’s to turn the page.

Hope that this helps.

those steps are a little complex,but at least it’s a soluition. it’d be great if iTunes just let you drop files into the audio books section and it would automatically make the files bookmarkable.

you know, i got the iPod i have as a gift, so i don’t want to be ungrateful… but i’m not very impressed with it! i like alll the bells and whistles of my little iRiver with only 512MB.

thanks for the advice though!

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041114214939859&query=audiobook+ipod

The instructions are for Mac, but i’m sure a PC method is available

now i have the translation for “Momo-Taro” peachboy,
http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand-Gaien/7211/momo.html

and Urashima, romantic fisherman.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand-Gaien/7211/urashima.html

thanks very much.

though it’s not a word-for-word translation, at least now i have a clue what they are talking about.

I just found an interesting homepage you may like. (Did know this site already?) You’ll find over 100 Japanese stories there, though they are written in English.

http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand-Gaien/7211/

I’ll keep looking for japanese folk stories written in both Japanese and English and let you know if I find them.