What do you look for in a Translation Project?

[Mr Poltroon]

I apologize for the less than in depth questions above, but there's a limit to the questions I can make, so further questions will be answered with proper replies.

 

A Translation Team has various parts. It's a team because of it.

Translator - Translates the Japanese into English. That's all they need to do, but they can do more, depending on how fluent they are.

Translation Checker - Checks to see if the translation the translator made is accurate. Another way is for there to be two translators who compare notes, and see where different interpretations and fluency takes them.

Editor - Picks up the translation and makes it fluent in English, makes it consistent with the rest of the visual novel and makes it fit the context.  

Quality Checker/Proofreader - Among other things, their main function is checking whether the translation has a good level of English, whether it makes sense, and to find and remove typos.

 

Together, these heroes translate Visual Novels. For free. Yet, people still complain about translations. Here are some of the main points.

 

Faithfulness

A translation stops being a translation if it doesn't translate anything and just makes things up. But is that so bad?

No 2 languages are the same (wait no, you know what I meant).

I've tried translating to my native language, and it's not easy. Whether be it words you can find a synonym for, or expressions to which there are no equivalents, this tends to mean you cannot translate things easily. To add insult to injury, Japanese is a language with a completely different structure to English, so even translating literally will always get you ungrammatical or nonsensical sentences.

To maintain faithfulness, the main involved parties are the Translators and the Editors.

Translators can decide to just alter the meaning of a certain sentence, these are some possible reasons:

• They cannot translate it fluently (implies being fluent at English, doesn't affect literal translators who leave everything to the editors);
• Lack of Japanese knowledge;
• Lack of existing translation;
• Cultural differences;
• Humor and references.

I'll address some of these.

Cultural differences - This is up for much debate. Some people assume that since they are reading a VN, they must obviously already know all about Japanese culture.

Translator notes are one way too side-step these, but use them too often and people will start complaining too...

Otherwise, you can choose to keep purely Japanese things Japanese, or to change them slightly to a Western correspondent.

Humor - Some jokes, be them references or puns, are lost in translation. There is no readily available solution to this problem. You'll need to adapt these jokes to a western audience or keep the original and plague it with translation notes. Neither of these is very effective. 

Lack of existing translation - Because some things just don't exist on a western world. These are either kept with translation notes (yet again) or... removed? Ignored? Not many alternatives here.

 

Editors can decide to just alter a certain sentence, for similar reasons:

• Cultural differences;
• Doesn't make sense;
• Consistency with rest of translation;
• Humor and references.

Consistency - This is one of the least important issues, me thinks. Because you can't really notice it unless it's bad. Fixing this does not affect a translation negatively, except if a character's tone is altered because the translator failed to convey it properly.

 

TL;DR; This only affects people who know Japanese. I could tell you a certain sentence said "I think bananas are pornographic" when it actually said "Puppies are cute".

You wouldn't know. The only thing you can base yourself on is what other people say, and that's hardly trustworthy, is it?

Don't make a fuss about faithfulness, if you care about the original work so much, learn Japanese. Translations cannot faithfully adapt all things, know this as a rule of thumb.

 

Proofreading

It's actually really simple. Either it's well proof read, or it isn't. 

Proofreaders take care of the typos, grammar mistakes, and nonsensical lines which slip through. That is all, they don't ruin translations, and they don't make them any worse, although it gives off a feeling of unprofessionalism and lack of care. 

And it's all the fault of a sloppy proofreader, degrading a TL's rep.

 

Readability

This means, "can I read and understand the story like this?" 

If you do, then the translation did its most elementary job. You now know the story. 

Unfortunately, this isn't all a translation has to do to be "good". Being readable doesn't mean it's as emotional, funny or witty as the original. 

Striving to keep these factors is the editors' job. Just because it makes sense, it doesn't mean it's good. 

The flavour, the wittiness, the tone, the consistency. These all matter for a good translation. 

A good editor is required for these. "Being a native" doesn't make a good editor.

I'm a native in my language, but that doesn't mean I can edit books. I don't know enough vocabulary, or I can't make the connection between such vocabulary and another sentence. The fact that you understand complicated books, expressions and words doesn't mean you can write or make them yourself.

----

But that's what I think. What do you think?

 

 

Here are what I consider to be the four layers of a translation, each of with a TL can be scored against. Generally speaking, if a TL doesn't solidly fufill a layer, all the successive layers are pretty much meaningless.

1. Basic Correctness (does it mean the same thing?): no excuses here
2. Tone correctness (are the characters' intent depicted correctly? Are they angry/sarcastic/friendly/bored when they should? Is the tone correct?)
3. Naturalness (does it sound like natural English?): This is the primary job of the editor. The TL's job is to create a TL version that conveys the original content to the editor successfully fulfilling layers 1 and 2.

4. Prose and Flow (does the description/dialogue flow well line to line? Does it sound like it was written like it was meant to be in English?): Depends largely on the writing skill of the editor.

Besides these four layers, there are some "Side things" (imo not that important, if you mess them up it doesn't automatically bomb the translation):

• Annoying stuff (Adaptation of Jokes, Cultural Stuff): Do what ever the heck you want. People spend an inordinate amount of time debating this, which is quite fine, except in the case where the translation's correctness (layer 1 and 2) are in question, which is in the case of many VN projects, even official ones (  -_-).
• Choosing how to adapt language-related literary tricks: This falls into the "Flow" category, and, as such, is quite advanced. Like the other "annoying stuff", there often isn't an obvious solution. If you don't have all the previous layers of the translation solid, just find something workable and do that. Otherwise, anyone sharp enough to appreciate your adaptation of the literary device is going to cringe hard at your lack of correctness/tone/naturalness, defeating the purpose. Or just pick a different work, this stuff is really hard.
• Censoring: Nope, please don't.

[Darklord Rooke]

Aha, this is a very old and caustic debate XD.

 

It's especially heated in the Russian to English translation scene where Garnett, who is known for her speed but also her habit of whitewashing the original author’s style (so Tolstoy will sound the same as Dostoevsky,) offended some Russian expats and there have been some very amusing pissing matches going on. They say “you are not reading Tolstoy, you are reading Garnett!” In search of speed she would ignore style, and difficult sentences (she was known for cutting the odd line or two, not that you’d notice,) and is said to be the sole reason behind people believing all Russian authors sound the same. BUT she translated 60 odd tomes in her life, and is widely acclaimed for making Russian literature accessible to the english audience. 

 

On the other side of the coin you have people like Nabokov who believed fidelity to an author's style was the single most important thing to a translation – “And to the fidelity of transposal I have sacrificed everything: elegance, euphony, clarity, good taste, modern usage, and even grammar”. Umm... needless to say his translation of Oregin bombed and bombed hard. His reply to his critics was highly entertaining though:

 

“The mistakes and misstatements in [Wilson’s review] form an uninterrupted series so complete as to seem artistic in reverse, making one wonder if, perhaps, it had not been woven that way on purpose to be turned into something pertinent and coherent when reflected in a looking glass … A patient confidant of his long and hopeless infatuation with the Russian language and literature, I have invariably done my best to explain to him his monstrous mistakes of pronunciation, grammar, and interpretation … From our conversations and correspondence in former years I well know that, like Onegin, he is incapable of comprehending the mechanism of verse”

 

He then launched a second, revised edition which would be “even more gloriously and monstrously literal than the first”. I’m fairly certain it bombed harder.

 

Where do I sit? The older I get the pickier I get with my prose, so I’d rather a translation be stylish in English than literal in translation. That’s to do with me only knowing English, so that’s my preference. Other people will have other preferences just as valid but when I critique a VN’s writing I will do so with respect to how it sounds in English.

[Nerathim]

I don't really mind the faithfulness of a translation, if I can't experience the original works it won't disturbs me anyways. I like reading books and for instance, there is a controversial translator in my native language that worked on Dostoevsky's books, some people accuse him of being unfaithful, he recognizes it himself and he tries hard to provides a well written story in french, it respects the story while not being faithful to the original author's style (still, he takes inspiration in it), but nonetheless it's well written. When you look at translations that pretend to entirely respect the original works they're usually very bland.

That said I don't care myself about the prose at all. Especially in VNs, I'm not even fluent in english. If I try to write review about a VN of course I will need to talk about the writing style but after all it doesn't affects what I think of it after I finished it, I can read a great story with a poor translation or style, it will remains good. But if the story is a total trainwreck, even if it's a pure delight to read in literary terms, it will be very bad imo. A good writing style is a plus during the time you read it but except in rare circumstances I don't find to be memorable over the long term.
The only thing I want to be faithful are the character's personalities and I don't think it's really impossible to retranscribe.

[Fiddle]

The Oxford comma.

[Satsuki]

As long as it's readable and no typo (well, a little bit is fine), then I'm good with it. 

Faithfulness? Being a translator myself, I alter the sentence all the time due to unable to find the exact same sentence in my language so I don't care.

[Chronopolis]

Prioritize getting across the same tone of the novel and impressions/intent of characters. Also, get the translation "right". This necessarily demands knowing both the source and target language well. A native-japanese speaker with OK english is going to need a lot of support and direct consultation with the editor for the lines to turn out well. A japanese learner english native better know enough Japanese and have the decency to recognize and lookup expressions/grammar that they don't know.

 

For most VN's it shouldn't matter, but with those with a particular writing style, if possible explain that style (short sentences, "punchy" narrative, flowy text, or grandiose description), and more importantly, any impression it should give, to the editor. Honestly this is beyond me and only people who have experience and nailed down the above items should even try this.

[sirjabberwock]

I had to vote "none of the above" for the first question because of the fact that I've only read G-Senjou out of those you listed. Its English was good from what I remember, but it didn't strike me as anything superb.

[Decay]

There are also some really great translations that are at least on par with Grisaia but the games themselves aren't popular here so no one mentions them. Like Hanachirasu. Its translator, Makoto, is extremely skilled and Hanachirasu had a great translation. 

 

I think one of the things a lot of people mistake about translation is that conveying the original author's intent does not always mean providing a literal translation. I see the philosophy a lot where translators will just translate the words and then try to make them fit into a mostly proper english sentence. These usually read awkwardly and comes across as stiff. When this happens, the personalities of the characters don't come across as well, the humor isn't as funny, the emotional beats aren't as strong. Basically, there's no heart in it when it's translated that way. I think trying to understand and convey what the author was trying to say is almost more important than simply telling us what the words mean. This is where translations like Grisaia shine, because Koestl seemed to understand the work very well and was able to express that in English brilliantly. 

[kratoscar2008]

After Hatsukoi, Canvas 2 and To Heart 2 translations i have seen that when the ability of naming the MC is present they dont bother to make the system work (ie you name the character and the name appears in the dialogue) and instead they resort to just add the default name in the translation wich to me denotes lack of respect for the source material and being lazy.

 

It can be done because Clannad, Kanon, Touhou Kenshirokus, Imouto Paradise, True Love and others(?) retain it just fine. 

 

Basically what in look into such translations (And what i spect from the Fureraba and LovelyxCation translations) is for the team to not be lazy and tackle the problem if that feature results being problematic.

[Pabloc]

I don't think I should be writing anything in this topic, because I don't like translations in general. Even their inherent, unavoidable flaws bother me to some extent (untranslatable details, jokes, cultural differences, all that stuff). It's not limited to VNs, I always prefer the original work, as long as can read it of course. Well, that's why I learned Japanese to begin with.

But well, I prefer the translations to be as faithful as possible. Note that "faithful" does not mean "literal". Often quite the contrary - overly literal translation can actually twist the original meaning - ENG and JP differ a lot after all. As long as the translation conveys the same information and emotions, it can use completely different words and expressions if necessary. Well, basically what Decay said.

That aside, this thread seems like a good place to talk about the usage of honorifics, brought up by OriginalRen in MoeNovel topic (https://forums.fuwanovel.net/index.php?/topic/7346-moenovel-announcing-something-monday-1711/?p=191342), so I'll continue the discussion here.

Including honorifics in the TL can seem like an "otaku translator/editor mindset", but it's not that simple. Sometimes they can be omitted or replaced easily, without affecting anything too much. However, that isn't always the case. Using KonoSora as an example, there are quite a few occasions where honorifics are vital for characters' interactions and jokes. Omitting them would require writing multiple conversations from scratch (what MoeNovel did, which resulted in killed jokes and/or nonsensical dialogue most of the time). When it comes to Kotori alone, there are 2 or 3 conversations centered on Aoi triying to convince her to start addressing him without the "-kun" honorific and there were a few dialogues where Aoi complains about it, Kotori drops it accidentally (and Aoi comments on that), etc.. Good luck with rewriting all that into English without destroying jokes and characters' interactions.

Is it doable? Probably. But it would require a more liberal translation - and doing that right requires quite a lot of skill and extra work. Is it worth the effort? In my opinion - no. Not in this case anyway.

And that was the main reason why I decided to keep honorifics in KonoSora. It's just easier to do it that way. The majority of potential readers know them anyway, so it's not a huge issue. My preference to stay faithful to the original text comes after those.

EDIT: by the way, I forgot to mention that MoeNovel's "TL" also uses some honorifics (there's An-chan, Ma-bou doesn't sound very English either), so I only make it consistent.

I also try to keep references to Japanese pop culture, but again, keeping it understandable for the reader is the priority. One Piece is popular, so there's no harm in leaving a reference to a character from this franchise. 2chan slang however, isn't known at all, so it can't be included. Fortunately, it's possible to convert it into fitting internet slang equivalents to keep the references understandable, but still reasonably faithful. And a minor reference to a running gag from Ikkyu-san can be skipped without affecting anything at all (this anime was apparently very popular in Asia, but on the West? Did anyone hear about it?).

The story is set in Japan and it's a translation, not a localization. Characters will be eating Japanese food, watching Japanese TV shows etc.. There's no need to change everything, just the important and/or the most confusing stuff.

[zoom909]

Reading in Japanese is like getting your pizza from a New York pizzeria.

Reading a translation by a qualified individual is like getting it from Domino's.

Reading a translation from your typical Translation Team is like getting a Red Baron frozen pizza.

Reading a translation with Atlas/VNR is like digging up a disc-shaped clod of dirt and eating that.

[Clephas]

While I marked faithfulness as an important aspect, the reality is that faithfulness is more of an ideal than a possibility in a lot of cases.  Unique cultural concepts don't always translate (unless you are willing to have words running outside of the text box), translators don't always have the capability to understand those concepts (ie: what Shinto is focused on, the nature of Japanese Buddhist influences, cultural obsessions that actually have words that mean them), and sometimes people just feel the need to give up and paste a random interpretation decided by a roll of the dice in place of the original concept.

 

For that matter, grammatical differences mean that a straight-meaning translation is a pain in the ass with compound and complex sentences.  What happens when someone uses an old pronoun that means 'respectable individual who is higher than me in social rank' and the only thing someone can do is put down 'you'? 

 

That said, when the VA is saying 'good morning' in polite form and the text says 'Whassup dude!' I want to scream (actual example from jrpg localization).

 

Edit:  Incidentally, some of the best localizations I've ever read/played were done by Working Designs, a company infamous for altering scripts radically for lulz all over the place and Sekien no Inganock is much better in its English version than it is in the Japanese one, so while faithfulness is a preference of mine, I can ignore it when the actual job of localization is a work of art in and of itself.

 

Edit2:  That said, given a choice I'll take accuracy over artistry any day when it comes to a fantranslation.  Chuuni, hard sci-fi, and hard fantasy are easily ruined by attempts to blur the lines between a translation and a localization, for instance.  The reason?  The plot stops making sense, for one thing, lol  You'd be surprised how much effort is put into the minutiae of language in those games/VNs...

[interested translator]

Readability and (close to) error-free prose are things I take as a given. Neglecting to proofread your translation before final release is inexcusable. There will always be something that slips by, but you need to make an effort.

 

I definitely err towards faithfulness rather than localization. While I occasionally use English idioms, I try to retain the original or something similar as often as possible. Translation notes come in handy for cultural references.

 

Keeping the length and flow of the English text similar to the Japanese, especially during voiced dialogue, is also important to me. You don't want to have three lines of text when a character only says a few words. That really bugged me about Grisaia's translation.

 

In short, I'm kind of a picky person.

[Chronopolis]

Here are what I consider to be the four layers of a translation, each of with a TL can be scored against. Generally speaking, if a TL doesn't solidly fufill a layer, all the successive layers are pretty much meaningless.

1. Basic Correctness (does it mean the same thing?): no excuses here
2. Tone correctness (are the characters' intent depicted correctly? Are they angry/sarcastic/friendly/bored when they should? Is the tone correct?)
3. Naturalness (does it sound like natural English?): This is the primary job of the editor. The TL's job is to create a TL version that conveys the original content to the editor successfully fulfilling layers 1 and 2.

4. Prose and Flow (does the description/dialogue flow well line to line? Does it sound like it was written like it was meant to be in English?): Depends largely on the writing skill of the editor.

Besides these four layers, there are some "Side things" (imo not that important, if you mess them up it doesn't automatically bomb the translation):

• Annoying stuff (Adaptation of Jokes, Cultural Stuff): Do what ever the heck you want. People spend an inordinate amount of time debating this, which is quite fine, except in the case where the translation's correctness (layer 1 and 2) are in question, which is in the case of many VN projects, even official ones ( -_-).
• Choosing how to adapt language-related literary tricks: This falls into the "Flow" category, and, as such, is quite advanced. Like the other "annoying stuff", there often isn't an obvious solution. If you don't have all the previous layers of the translation solid, just find something workable and do that. Otherwise, anyone sharp enough to appreciate your adaptation of the literary device is going to cringe hard at your lack of correctness/tone/naturalness, defeating the purpose. Or just pick a different work, this stuff is really hard.
• Censoring: Nope, please don't.

[OriginalRen]

It's funny how people debate this subject, yet when it comes down to it, people read translations because they cannot read Japanese; if you can read Japanese, why would you bother reading a translation in the 1st place? That makes any of this discussion absolutely moot because if you can't understand Japanese, how are you able to even compare a translated work to the original? How are you able to say it "doesn't flow" or "isn't close to the original" if you have no idea what the words originally said?

 

People just join the hype train and think they are entitled to bash translations and other people's work (including anime subtitles/dubs) because they are either learning Japanese or know a little bit of it. Once you get past the moment where you think you are able to correct every little mistake because you know "some" Japanese, you'll feel much better. Just saying.

 

Mephisto linked a tweet once that explains this quite well. If someone has that tweet, please link it. And as Tiagofvarela said, don't make a fuss about faithfulness. If you care about the original work so much, learn Japanese. Appreciate what is given to you, otherwise do it your damn self. That being said however, that doesn't mean a translation is inferior to the original work either, which is another thing that annoys me about discussions in visual novels. Still, that's another topic for another time.

[Down]

if you can read Japanese, why would you bother reading a translation in the 1st place?

[Darklord Rooke]

if you can't understand Japanese, how are you able to even compare a translated work to the original? 

[babiker]

I have a very high standard for prose that I apply equally to books, games, and VNs. For example I recently stopped reading Ben Aaronvitch’s books because most of the prose contains similar length sentences which results in a droning, sameish narrative. I don’t feel the need to try and correct stuff I don’t agree with, I MIGHT try and deconstruct what I find is wrong with the prose not because it makes me feel superior, but that’s what you need to do as a writer to grow. If you’re not thinking about what does and doesn't work while you’re reading you are liable to make the same mistakes in your writing.

[Down]

Hm, out of the VNs I've read so far, the translations that stood out as of good/really good quality were Grisaia, G-senjou, Narcissu (Haeleth's british english version ofc), Dra+Koi, Saya no Uta, Cartagra and Kara no Shoujo. That's only my ESL opinion though.

 

I've also come across several plain/dull ones, but overall the only ones that really came to bother me were Clannad and HoshiMemo, I think

[Mr. Meogii]

Faithfulness and commitment~

[Pabloc]

It's funny how people debate this subject, yet when it comes down to it, people read translations because they cannot read Japanese; if you can read Japanese, why would you bother reading a translation in the 1st place?

 

It's exactly as you said - people who care about writing, do learn Japanese. But, usually it isn't a decision you make as soon as you discover VNs. It's safe to assume the vast majority of Western readers start with translated stuff. And as you pick up some basics and vocab, you will start noticing that what voiced characters say sometimes doesn't match the text. Not to even mention VNs that are translated so poorly they barely make sense (like Divi-Dead in my case - I didn't know much Japanese back when I have read it, but it was painfully obvious translators were just making up random stuff). Then you get more and more annoyed by TL quality, and you finally end up learning Japanese (or you do that because you run out of interesting stuff to read).

 

I have finished over 100 titles in English before I even started learning Japanese (and another 30 or so before I knew it well enough to read comfortably). And even now, my reading pace in English is still faster than in Japanese, so I will pick translated titles occasionally to save time (when it's something I don't have high expectations for, like Killer Queen, or something I don't read exactly for the story, like SonoHana).

Of course, I can only speak for myself, but I'm willing to bet many people who know Japanese had similar experiences.

 

So yeah, even if somebody knows Japanese, that doesn't automatically mean he/she has zero experience with translated titles and can't provide any constructive criticism.

 

That aside, Interested Translator mentioned one more thing that can be a hassle while translating VNs - voices. Length of unvoiced lines sometimes is an issue too - the text must fit into the textbox after all - but generally you have a much bigger margin there. When the line is voiced though, it shouldn't be much shorter/longer than the spoken dialogue. And that can be quite a pain.

Another issue are cases when characters refer to somebody using a typically Japanese expression, like "senpai" for example. In proper translation, those obviously shouldn't be left as is. But on the West, addressing an older student as "senior" would be quite unnatural. We just use names here. But that in turn, is inconsistent with the voiced line - we hear "senpai" but the text shows character's name instead (and you don't need to know Japanese to catch that). Maybe it's just me, but I find that quite annoying. That's one more reason why I prefer when honorifics and some Japanese expressions are left intact.

[Wahfuu]

It's funny how people debate this subject, yet when it comes down to it, people read translations because they cannot read Japanese; if you can read Japanese, why would you bother reading a translation in the 1st place? That makes any of this discussion absolutely moot because if you can't understand Japanese, how are you able to even compare a translated work to the original? How are you able to say it "doesn't flow" or "isn't close to the original" if you have no idea what the words originally said?

 

People just join the hype train and think they are entitled to bash translations and other people's work (including anime subtitles/dubs) because they are either learning Japanese or know a little bit of it. Once you get past the moment where you think you are able to correct every little mistake because you know "some" Japanese, you'll feel much better. Just saying.

 

Mephisto linked a tweet once that explains this quite well. If someone has that tweet, please link it. And as Tiagofvarela said, don't make a fuss about faithfulness. If you care about the original work so much, learn Japanese. Appreciate what is given to you, otherwise do it your damn self. That being said however, that doesn't mean a translation is inferior to the original work either, which is another thing that annoys me about discussions in visual novels. Still, that's another topic for another time.

For one, people may not know Japanese, but they do know english, and most people who read regularly outside of VN's can easily see when something reads terribly and doesn't flow. If a piece of writing doesn't read well, then it's just as much a cause for a complaint as straight TL-errors, imo.

It's one of the things that bother me the most about this fanbase, they accept every single translation like it's the holy grail, even if the translator will outright say they don't know much japanese. They don't care about it's readability or it's accuracy, despite people claiming they do. They only care about its existence. Nobody is willing to call any translator out on their bullshit because they feel unqualified to criticize something because everyone else will ruthlessly defend it's simple existence over it's content.

People who don't learn Japanese shouldn't be scrutinized or looked down upon and be given garbage just because they don't learn Japanese and be told to 'deal with it.' That's absurd.

[babiker]

It's one of the things that bother me the most about this fanbase, they accept every single translation like it's the holy grail, even if the translator will outright say they don't know much japanese. They don't care about it's readability or it's accuracy, despite people claiming they do. They only care about its existence. Nobody is willing to call any translator out on their bullshit because they feel unqualified to criticize something because everyone else will ruthlessly defend it's simple existence over it's content.

 

Well that's the thing, they're translating for free. The people who translate Visual novels, especially the VNs in this site, are working out of love for the medium, with nothing in return. Now, you can't possibly go to one of them and start criticizing the way they do a job they do for love, that's equal to going up to someone who likes doing a hobby, like painting for example, yet he isn't a pro at it, and criticizing the hell out of him for his not-so-great work. This isn't a company making quality work, this is a group of fans who just want more people to enjoy what they enjoy. If you don't like the way they do it, then I suggest you either learn how to translate it better, or hire a localization/translation team to do the job. 

 

 

People who don't learn Japanese shouldn't be scrutinized or looked down upon and be given garbage just because they don't learn Japanese and be told to 'deal with it.' That's absurd.

Uhhmmmm... I think you took what Ren said a tad too seriously. I don't think he's scrutinizing anyone, I think he's just saying people should think twice before talking about stuff they themselves aren't sure of.

[Cyrillej1]

People who don't learn Japanese shouldn't be scrutinized or looked down upon and be given garbage just because they don't learn Japanese and be told to 'deal with it.' That's absurd.

[Mr Poltroon]

The story is set in Japan and it's a translation, not a localization. Characters will be eating Japanese food, watching Japanese TV shows etc.. There's no need to change everything, just the important and/or the most confusing stuff.