I need this to be translated, please. Anyone else agree?

I agree 100%

This is the Bump Police speaking.

Translation, come out with your text in the air!

My sincere thanks, and likely that of other users, go out to those who have translated the series up to this point. You've all done great work, and I want to make sure you didn't think your efforts have simply been taken for granted.

Now that this series is almost completely translated, I wanted to ask what would be correct. It seems there are people changing "Aya-san" to "Aya", but I think this loses the respectful way that Momiji talks to Aya.

If the Japanese suffix should be removed, "miss Aya" wouldn't be better then?

Also, is it better to have a more freestyle-like or a more literal translation? Those with a limited Japanese (like me) might find it a little confusing when trying to translate.

Except for some scholarly translations, a translation should keep it natural in the target language and preserve the tone even at the expense of the literal meaning. '-San' isn't English, and 'Miss Aya' sounds like dubbed Chiyo-chan -- outside period pieces, it's unnatural for one young woman to speak to another like that.
I don't think we need such a literal translation for '-san'. Just because Japanese has honorific verbal inflections and personal suffixes hard-wired into it doesn't mean that languages like English that don't are incapable of expressing distinctions of formality and deference. If she has a respectful tone in Japanese, we give her one in English. We just need to take care to give characters consistent voices, allowing for changes in tone depending on who they're speaking to and over time as their characters develop.
We can do that in a story of this length, though I admit for something shorter kludges like '-san' or 'miss' might be appropriate as a quick and dirty way to tell what the characters' relationships are like when there's just not enough text to reveal this more naturally.

mrpretzel said:
Just because Japanese has honorific verbal inflections and personal suffixes hard-wired into it doesn't mean that languages like English that don't are incapable of expressing distinctions of formality and deference. If she has a respectful tone in Japanese, we give her one in English. We just need to take care to give characters consistent voices, allowing for changes in tone depending on who they're speaking to and over time as their characters develop.

I agree. A lot of the context that shows how the character is talking has to be lost when translated to English anyway. Making that small tiny difference without relying on terms in the original language is what really determines how good a translator is. People tend to converge to the literal translations that sound as if they're from language exercise books when translating, but translation relies greatly on creativity for quality. Why use direct translations when your language must certainly be flowery enough to express the same context in a huge variety of ways?

Anyway, back to topic: -san has a variety of usage, not all of which are indeed fit to be translated to mister/miss. There uses do mostly correspond, however. Still, while it may sound weird for an English speaker to hear a girl to call another of apparently similar age as "miss", the original context in Japanese is still there: she would talk with honorifics, ending her sentences in things like -desu, -masu and such. So not only are her sentences polite (actually it's obviously possible to be rude while using honorifics) she's lowering herself while she speaks. In other words, translating -san to miss in cases like this actually helps translate the context which would otherwise be lost when translating to English.

When does that not apply? Several kinds of instances, like when Japanese people talk online, they usually address each other with the suffix -san. We don't really do that in English, so there's little sense translating it to Mr./Ms. <username>. But in cases like this, quality translation to show that they're being polite is needed.

Okay, I've been reading this series from the start and I'm very sure that, while miss Aya may not be the best translation, removing the suffix completely is a totally wrong translation.

forum #56302 already has this debate covered, ending in favor of honorifics. Localizing honorifics on a site that insists on original titles, name order, etc... is misguided.

See also howto:translate:

However, leave honorifics in place. They're an extremely important clue that does not map to the English system of Ms./Mr. at all.

RaisingK said:
forum #56302 already has this debate covered, ending in favor of honorifics. Localizing honorifics on a site that insists on original titles, name order, etc... is misguided.

See also howto:translate:

Yes, I have seen that a long time ago. And I'm actually having a lot of internal conflict right now. Between whether I should just do as the rules say, or do what I don't even consider to be translations.

Of course, the third way of ceasing all translations is a choice, too.

Lick_King said:
Yes, I have seen that a long time ago. And I'm actually having a lot of internal conflict right now. Between whether I should just do as the rules say, or do what I don't even consider to be translations.

Of course, the third way of ceasing all translations is a choice, too.

Think in more practical terms: it is easier to keep the honorifics untranslated
The target audience of these translation works is not the general population. The users of this site are more accustomed about Japanese/Engrish and are unlikely to complain about slight inaccuracy in translations, given how much material are not translated for several month, if ever.

With the shortage of translators I say quantity > quality.

Lick_King said:
Okay, I've been reading this series from the start and I'm very sure that, while miss Aya may not be the best translation, removing the suffix completely is a totally wrong translation.

Absolutely correct. "Miss Aya" is not a great translation, and "Aya" is a faulty and wrong translation. That is why the 'non-translation' "Aya-san" is best in this situation -- if you're going to translate something, it had damn well better come out at least as well as the original, and none of the alternatives here do.