Like manga, I hate it when they, for example, transliterate さん as -san, when there is an “equivalent” word for it, like Mr. but would it carry the same connotation as the source material? I cringe when I buy translated versions of Japanese literature due to this (which is why I stick to the source material), it just… does not sit well, I mean instead of writing -sensei, -senpai, or -sama there are “equivalents” in English for those but the catch is that would it work well upon translation?
It feels cringe because you’re not used to the cultural context. This kind of honorifics are everywhere in Japanese society. I think that if the intended audience is familiar to those quirks it’s better to keep it literal. And if not, the localization should mostly ignore the honorifics because they’re often impossible to translate them in an acceptable way.
There’s an interesting example. There’s a novel from one of the best Japanese writers (Natsume Soseki) called Wagahai wa neko de aru, which is normally translated as “I am a cat”.
The thing is that the protagonist cat refers to himself all the time as “Wahagai”, which is a very archaic and pompous way to refer to oneself. Maybe the closest thing here would be the majestic plural, the speech where a king speaks as “We/Us” rather than “I/me”.
It’s a difficult thing to convey because in the original the damn cat speaks about itself as if he were a noble or something, to a comedic effect. And in the translations I read this is lost.