honestly i feel kind of sorry for anyone who has to take on these projects and then get your work nitpicked over this one little aspect
Anyway, the people who aren't psychos have my sympathies. This has been a bizarre time on the translation front. Which is unfortunately a perfect illustration of why I always advocated for working from just the Japanese texts where this subject is concerned back when people who hated doing so insisted that official English translations were all that mattered or that Square would make sure anything significant to Aerith-Cloud-Tifa and romance was translated to English and that it was done right (we can readily see how that turned out).
in some cases, i think fans over-analyse some of this stuff. i don't think source books or compendiums like ultimanias that are meant as supplementary texts to the main work (often just recapping what happens or adding some additional explanation) require deep readings to get to the bottom to and it gets silly to pour over individual lines to work out just what it's
really meant to be saying. putting aside the issues with translating from one language to another, i think most of these books are relatively straight-forward and don't require the reader to piece stuff together to understand.
but with the main works themselves, the games or novels or what have you, i think there's space to interpret things in multiple ways and that's compounded by it having to be translated. maybe in the process of moving from one language to another you lose elements for one possible interpretation but another arises. how to you look at interpretations not based on the original source? is it still valid if you can't back it up the same way with the original text? is it wrong if a translation used one possible interpretation over another?
it comes across as elitist to say that you can't really understand something if you don't know the original's language, but also yeah. it's kinda true. translating will probably always mean something getting lost along the way, whether linguistically or culturally. it's not going to be the exact same experience, even if you can make it close or use equivalent replacements. i am of the opinion that in terms of interpretations, the original text is on top and derivatives are second best. and that sort of sucks, i can't make my definitive hot takes on films in korean or italian books because i have to go through another language to understand and maybe someone who knows korean/italian can pick holes in them. learning korean/italian/anything is a big investment of time and effort that not everyone can or wants to undertake. but that's the same as any speciality.
i thought i had a point going in, but as i wrote i lost track of it. i guess to try and salvage it, there's the technical critique of translation, and the interpretation of a piece of art and they can both be at play. i just find the apparent stance that there's one interpretation of a text, just one right answer (barring clear mistakes such as the original ffvii's 'illusory crimes against sephiroth'), boring and limiting.
also i remember what was said about koi bito you think i'd just forget i swear to god don't test me