Finding Xanadu: Inside a JRPG classic translation 15 years in the making

This is a very common sentiment among laymen talking about translation, but it demonstrates a very fundamental misunderstanding of what language is and what translation achieves. Oftentimes there is no way to 1-to-1 translate a language as if you're translating between Python and Ruby; more often, translating a sentence to two different languages (like Japanese and English) is more akin to translating between Python and C. There are too many ways to get the point across and there is almost never an obvious direction to translate "directly". For example, when one uses a quirky phrase in English (say, "it's raining cats and dogs") there are two main ways to translate that to any other language (1) you'll use a similar phrase in the target language that conveys the meaning (which almost certainly won't involve "cats" and "dogs" but may involve other objects even potentially pop culture references), or (2) you'll just write that "it's raining a lot". From a laymen point of view (2) seems more appropriate because the translator doesn't have to "invent" something that doesn't exist in the original text and make an artistic choice, but systematic application of this makes the translated text very dry and unidiomatic in the language. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, when the original author wrote "it's raining cats and dogs" in English as opposed to "it's raining a lot" they meant to signal semantic information that'd be lost if we removed the phrase altogether. This could be emphasis, casual-speak, signaling damage caused by rain etc... So, often you need to support the target text with quirky phrases that are in use in the target language.

I know nothing about this Xanadu translation or video game translations in general. But the sentiment expressed is very naive. Translation is an art form in an of itself, and oftentimes good translation has to diverge from the original text quite a bit to be a good translation, especially if the two languages are very different languages.

But which thing? Language transmits information, intent, tone, sound and many other layers. Usually, there is no way to transport all of it to the target language, and the translator must choose what to sacrifice.

Japanese prose doesn't intend to be boring, and its target audience isn't bored by it. If you translate it in a way that sounds boring to an English audience, you aren't maintaining the intent of the author.

The famous example is Tina from FF6, a name exotic and exciting for a Japanese audience, but commonplace and boring for Westerners. Keeping such a word means missing its point.