I consume quite a bit of anime and manga (just look at the communities I moderate), and I see a number of regular complaints about translation in that space. I personally think most of them are overblown and that translators are doing their best. Translation is far from a science and almost every sentence/paragraph has judgement calls that need to be made by the translator. What some people find annoying about a translation might make the work more approachable to somebody else.
One thing that does bother me for Japanese is the exclusion of honorifics. Most subtitles these days include them, which is a definite improvement over official subs of the past. In subtitle form, honorifics are usually the only indication that a speaker is using something like formal language (keigo) unless you have some knowledge of the spoken language.
As a bit of an aside, if you are interested in professional translation and some of the challenges they face (especially with MTL on the horizon), then Anime Herald did an interview with several of them. Check it out!
So, about honorifics: Whether they’ll actually correspond to keigo is a hit and miss depending on the actual relationship between the characters. This happens for a few reasons, but the most important one is that in Japanese using an honorific other than san or sama (or not using one at all) is a declaration of either a large difference in status, a close relationship or shonen protagonist syndrome. It’s more complicated in real life, but this is how it usually goes in anime. So anyway, one common example is that highschooler characters will usually address each other with san even though they never use keigo.
I consume quite a bit of anime and manga (just look at the communities I moderate), and I see a number of regular complaints about translation in that space. I personally think most of them are overblown and that translators are doing their best. Translation is far from a science and almost every sentence/paragraph has judgement calls that need to be made by the translator. What some people find annoying about a translation might make the work more approachable to somebody else.
One thing that does bother me for Japanese is the exclusion of honorifics. Most subtitles these days include them, which is a definite improvement over official subs of the past. In subtitle form, honorifics are usually the only indication that a speaker is using something like formal language (keigo) unless you have some knowledge of the spoken language.
As a bit of an aside, if you are interested in professional translation and some of the challenges they face (especially with MTL on the horizon), then Anime Herald did an interview with several of them. Check it out!
So, about honorifics: Whether they’ll actually correspond to keigo is a hit and miss depending on the actual relationship between the characters. This happens for a few reasons, but the most important one is that in Japanese using an honorific other than san or sama (or not using one at all) is a declaration of either a large difference in status, a close relationship or shonen protagonist syndrome. It’s more complicated in real life, but this is how it usually goes in anime. So anyway, one common example is that highschooler characters will usually address each other with san even though they never use keigo.