[gerjomarty]

My opinion on this has changed over the years. I now tend to look at any translation which needs to include translation notes on-screen as having failed, usually because they explain something that isn't absolutely necessary to know, which isn't a good enough reason in my book to distract from the dialogue.

If you can't explain what you need to in the translation itself, just don't. Or include a TLNote.txt if you really must.

[polymatter]

what made you change your opinion? I love it when there are translation notes on screen. It feel inclusive to explain to me what's going on.

I can't speak Japanese, am not embedded within current popular Japanese culture and did not go to a Japanese high school and therefore there are references which I will not understand. These include jokes that rely on wordplay such as puns and malapropisms, and historical notes about Japanese history, geography and society which I am mostly ignorant of.

Without those translation notes, you exclude me from understanding anything but the surface of what's going on.

[gerjomarty]

Many fansubbers didn't know where to draw the line, or didn't have very good editors, so sometimes you got the situation where there were so many TL notes they were stacking on top of each other.

Others have noted the most egregious TL notes ("Keikaku means plan" and so on) but there are some other bad examples, including "This is a reference to..." (not even everyone in Japan is going to get references either) and even a few explaining what the English words they used meant.

There are many fewer these days, thankfully.

>jokes that rely on wordplay such as puns and malapropisms

While many disagree, I like translations that attempt to localise these. You can never get literal accuracy this way, but you can make a fun, entertaining and engrossing script. You might say it's not the job of the fansubbers to write the script, but it is their job to translate the one they have, and the best translations in my view are ones that take intended audience into account.

I watch anime comedies to laugh, not to read an explanation of what the joke is and why it's funny.

[Vaskivo]

Some actually do that. Either have a note saying that they'll explain the reference later during the credits(like the "[0]" we do here) or preemptly give context in the intro or bumper[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_%28broadcasting%29