Ikeda Lily Chenran
Translator (Chinese/Japanese)

An Okinawa-born Aizu native, Ikeda spent her childhood in Taipei and has studied abroad in Sydney. She graduated from Osaka University School of Foreign Studies where she majored in Chinese. As the Japan representative, she won second place at the Chinese Bridge Speech Contest for College Students and received the Best Knowledge Award, Minister of Foreign Affairs Award, and the Best Student Project Award in Culture and the Arts. During college, she was a regular student in the interpreter training course at the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Osaka, and worked as the interpreter for the China national futsal team.
Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, Ikeda fell into a condition similar to aphasia. Disoriented in the search for appropriate translation, she began to consider “accurate understanding of true intention,” and the idea of “voice at a loss for words.” She left the translation industry to seek new possibilities as a weaver of words in the field of arts and culture. Major projects include the Fukushima Honyaku Keikaku, Spotlight Taiwan Project T5, and the Asian Theater Directors’ Festival.