Originally posted by: leslina
Personally, I'm holding out for AonE to pick up this project *crosses fingers*. Until then, I'm dl IY4. It's the little things that matter most to me and they have the decency to leave it 'shinigami', 'gigai', etc. I also think, that Keep-ANBU's version was not up to standard, and they use the Viz manga tranlastion of shinigami, Soul Reaper, oh hell no.
I got a great tip for you - watch the raws! It's unimageinable, but they are completely left in japanese!
Oh, you don't understand japanese? But you do not want it translated either? Please, could you decide what you want. Thank you.

In bleach shinigami is not a name, but a profession. Therefor it gets translated. You don't object "gakusei" (or whatever they actually use in bleach) being replaced with "high shool student" and most likely you wouldn't mind other jobs being translated. But this one you do and that's very inconsequent.

Literal or direct translations from japanese into whatever_language seldom work. "God of death" doesn't work in christian western countries as we have no such thing. We have a monotheistic culture and our god is certainly not the "God of Death". "Death" itself doesn't work either, because there are many of them and our mythological/cultural background has "Death" as one entity. But we have expressions for Death's minions - the grim reapers. Whatever they are called in japanese, "grim reaper" (or soul reaper) is the best and single correct translation, because this is what they are in our language.

Leaving japanese and describing the meaning in an editors note is useful for expressions that can't be translated because they have no equivalent in the language translated into. The rest is appropiatly translated and that is consequent. Leaving rather random words like "grim reaper", "replacement body" or "soul cutter blade" untranslated is imho idiotic. What expression should be translated, which should be left untranslated? Who decides and why translate at all?

A good translation is a translation that translates as much as possible with the correct expressions so that the meaning is as preserved as possible and as understandable as possible. If the translator is even able to reflect the mood a japanese gets from the way it is said and its choice of words (like Naruto's cocky datte bayoo) that pushes him and his work from good to excellent.

This isn't specific to leslina, it's for all in this topic. Please understand this before you ever again mock about the job a translator did. Thanks for your time.