Tom Gally

Tom Gally was born in Pasadena, California, in 1957. After studying linguistics and mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago, in 1983 he moved to Japan, where he has lived ever since. He worked as a freelance translator, teacher, writer, and lexicographer until 2005, when he joined the faculty of the University of Tokyo. There he was involved with the development and management of several education programs, and he supervised research on language education and other subjects. He retired from his full-time post in 2023 and is now emeritus professor.

His books include Start Speaking Japanese Today, Read Japanese with a Smile, and Eigo no Aporia (“The Problems of English,” in Japanese), and he was the general editor of Kenkyusha’s Guide to Quantitative Expressions in English. His dictionary work has included Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary (5th edition) as well as several other Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionaries. Translated works include Japanese Verbs at a Glance, Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia, and two collections of essays by the physicist Torahiko Terada. He also compiled Japan As They Saw It, an online anthology of travel writings by American and British visitors in the 19th and early 20th centuries.