I'm fine with either option 1 or 3, though I ended up voting for 1. I'm generally an advocate for preserving the native feel of the story, anyway. And this doesn't apply only to Eastern fiction, but to Western as well. Like if I were reading a translation of something that was originally in French, I'd want to know the names of their dishes in French.

Of course, there's one caveat: I wouldn't want the translators to keep the native names of dishes that are eaten throughout the world; like, say, if they call 'pizza' something else in the original, it should still be translated to 'pizza.'

For me, the best choice is a note on the side saying, "This is roughly what it means." Not everyone wants to know it, not all of the food name have good translations, but I still want to know roughly what the food is about. If you have no idea what Takoyaki is, but you see a TL note saying, "Octopus balls," you'll have an idea about what it is and what it could taste like. Though this "best choice" just makes more work for the translation groups.

I’d love for all original Japanese terms, it makes it seem like your actually reading a manga and really adds a depth to the story settings. Sure I don’t mind if they add the literal translation in the margins as notes but to actually have the literal item in question in the text makes soooo much for it.

But not only foods but items, sound effects and peoples titles/suffixes get translated away from the stories and I’m constantly like “srsly wtf?” such as;

Kotatsu = heated table? No duh I think we’ve read enough to know what that is by now.
Nya = meow ? Cats don’t say “Meow” in Japan!
Doki = heart thump? Another thing that’s pretty common but at least keep the SFX original, I don’t mind the “heart races” in the main text.
Sensei = teacher? I can’t tell you the # of times where I get ticked off when a character says “hey teach”.
Onee/Onii-chan/san/sama/etc. = Sister/Brother? This is my biggest pet peeve when the characters just say “Sis” or “Bro” as I have to try and imagine what exactly character actually said and hopefully the translator also didn’t just shorten it to “bro/sis” every time so I can try and figure out exactly what their siblings call each other, properly.

Now not as common but would love to see some start using Oka/Oto-san(etc.) for mom and dad, titles such as Inchou/Buchou/Oya-san/Oyaku-san/Ojou-chan(sama/etc.), coming and going Ittekimasu/Tadaima, other animal sounds such as Kero and Usa/Pyon, and of course foods Nabe/onigiri/katsudon/Mikan. Literally I’d love to see most things as original as possible because that’s what their actually saying in their original language and by translating away from that totally ruins a story for me. So yeah... I totally hope we can get some changes for the better.

Thanks for your time =P

Last edited by silenteye at 7:56 pm, Feb 1 2018

Why not just read the raws, then?

Probably because you'd have to invest about 2000 hours of your life to be able to do that.

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Sure, but they said they want to see most things in the original language. If that's what they want it's a worthwhile investment.