It’s not enough to just follow word-for-word when translating characters’ lines, she said. Translators must come up with the right expressions in English that can match each speaker’s personality.

Of course! That's true of any translation.

But it's very rarely applied in Japan, if at all, especially in anime!

When i worked in the translation racket, my Japanese overseers used to tell me the same thing. Quite often they and their Japanese clients would recast my clear and well-crafted sentences into ones that resembled the nihongo originals: long, complex and barely comprehensible, with the main point at the end, rather than at the beginning, of a passage.

One client filed a "claim" against me, saying I didn't understand the Japanese mentality. The company made pipe fittings. They objected to how I rendered their original long rambling sentences into clear short ones for an instructional video.

The SVO structure and short sentences tend to rub the Japanese the wrong way. At the end of the day, they will go for what works for them - not what works for the end client.

Jefflee classic insight into the challenges of trying to make something difficult , cryptic , awkward and complex into something simple, accessible and understandable. Building a bridge between these two linguistic traditions is perilous at the best of times. When you think you’ve cracked it, they tell you otherwise, and back in the maze you go! Mizukashiine!

Which is precisely why translation software will never work, short of genuine AI. Sorry, but translation will Always be a valuable skill.

Ideally comics would be translated by people with native-level English and a very strong interest in that particular genre of comics. This strikes me as a very specialized but not always commercially appreciated skill set.

With anime, I wouldn't be surprised if ones that have been fan-subbed have been better translated than some of the official ones.