I've been doing (very) amateur visual novel translation as part of my Japanese practice routine for 2 years now, and I've always found the incongruities between English and Japanese such as the ones described in the article fascinating. I definitely related to the struggle to maintain the nuance presented in the Japanese. Since I never translated with the intent of publishing my work, though, I've never considered how an actual translator would have to make certain choices based on the demographic they were aiming for.
When it comes to comedy, I've had immense struggles dealing with any kanji-related puns. I'm not even sure how I'd reasonably approach it. Should I take a similar approach to how Hirano handled 'juku' and add in an explanation? Or maybe I should try to make my own pun, or just omit the joke.
The creativity required for translation makes it very interesting to me. I love the way even the most seemingly insignificant sentences can (and often should) be analyzed with such depth when considering how to translate them. Overall, I think I lie on the side of preferring more liberal translations, at least compared to some of the visual novel readers I see online, and I have a strong appreciation for the ingenuity needed to create them.
Elliot
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