If you've spent even one day in anime fandom, I'm sure you've caught sight of some translation discourse. Did this line mean this or that? Was that character referring to this thing or that thing? Are the subs superior to the dub? Is localisation evil? And I could go on, and on, and on.
As per usual, the reason for all this discourse is that translation is hard. And Japanese especially is a hard language to translate, because it is very different from English (or just, roman & germanic languages in general.)
So here is an article on Japanese as a language, and all its little quirks that make any manga translations a nightmare.
The writing systems
The first and most obvious difference: Japanese has a different writing system from English. Or rather, writing systems, plural.
- Kanji, which are traditional Chinese hanzi adapted to Japanese meanings and phonemes. Kanji have multiple readings depending on context, and the same sound might be transcribed with different kanji for different meanings.
"Traditional" as in "not simplified Chinese." For exemple, the kanji for "orchid" in traditional Chinese & Japanese is 蘭, while it's 兰 in simplified Chinese.
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Hiragana, which is an alphabet transcribing individual sounds.
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Katakana, which is the alphabet for foreign words. More generally this alphabet is used for its phonetic value, not necessarily its meaning.
Arguably, the roman alphabet, or romaji, also counts as a fourth writing system. For obvious reasons I'm not going to talk about that one here though.
So a Japanese person reading a manga will be provided extra information just from the way a word is written, which is obviously not translatable to any language which uses only one alphabet. If I call something a 車 in kanji, I am referring to a car. If I call it a くるま in hiragana, I am spelling out the word "car." If I call it a クルマ in katakana, I am using the sound "kuruma," which may or may not be related to the word which happens to mean car.
For a more concrete example: In the light novel Kara no Kyoukai, two siblings are named respectively 式 and 織. Both of these are pronounced "Shiki." A Japanese reader can immediately tell who is speaking in any given scene, but translated into English, any sentence becomes "Shiki said x" "Shiki did y" with no additional indication as to who that is. Which is, as you can guess, a problem.
For the record, the translation opted to refer to the siblings as Shiki and SHIKI to keep the same vibe.
The reverse can also happen! In Detective Conan, one case introduces the character of Narumi. Later on, you learn that the murder victim had a son named Seiji. A well-versed Japanese reader might pick up that Seiji and Narumi are the same person, as both names can be written as 成実. That clue is obviously absent from English translations.
Whether a character speaks in kanji, hiragana or katakana is also a characterization tool in itself. In the video game Fate/Grand Order, there is a character who speaks solely in hiragana without ever using kanji. That is likely a way to convey that he is not all that knowledgeable about the world, and is not used to articulating himself either, by virtue of spending all his life in a cave (long story.)
On top of the writing system, written Japanese media often make use of ruby text. Ruby text is small text that appears above a different text to provide a translation or a pronunciation. Typically this is used in children's manga to write out pronunciation on top of kanji, to teach kids how to read. This can also be used if, say, a character starts speaking German in the middle of your manga; ruby text will likely be used to provide a translation on top of the German text.
Ruby text is mostly used as an accessibility tool, but it can also be used as an artistic tool. Think of it as subtitles. You can transcribe exactly what the characters are saying. But if you assume that the viewer can perfectly hear and understand what the characters are saying, using the space meant for subtitles to write down a character's true thoughts or meanings can add flavor to a scene.
For another example: in the light novel Fate/Apocrypha, a spirit refers to her summoner as お母さん ("mother.") The ruby text reads as マスター ("master," how spirits typically refer to a summoner in this series.) This is meant to show that these two have a relationship much closer than regular mages & spirits, and that this spirit in question is really fucking weird about motherhood in general.
Grammar
Much to be said about Japanese grammar. I'm not gonna go into details here- if you want to learn the language, there are very good resources out there. For now I just want to mention two things.
First, the typical word order in Japanese is Subject - Object - Verb, while in English it's Subject - Verb - Object. The sentence "my name is Verse" in English becomes "Name Verse is" in Japanese (名前はVERSEです if you're curious.)
Which means that if for some plot reasons a character gets interrupted mid sentence... well, from a translation standpoint you're gonna have a hard time conveying the same level of information without accidentally adding more!
Forgive me for giving an example I don't actually have the original line for (the raws are hard to find, alas) but: I am told that in Detective Conan, a character tells another something along the lines of 君はボス, and then gets interrupted. So literally "you, the boss." What verb connects those two elements? Who knows! That's the mystery! Is it You are the boss? You killed the boss? You fucked the boss? You met the boss?
The English localisation took a bet and went with "You are the boss's," assuming this character was the boss's something (sister? Caretaker? Lover?) but that could be very wrong. Who knows.
The other thing I want to point out is that Japanese doesn't really have a future tense for verbs. You use the same tense for present and future. While I don't have a specific example of a case where that caused some translation mishap, I'm sure you understand that the same sentence being translatable as "I do x" and "I will do x" can lead to interpretation clashes.
Levels of formality
Japanese as a language has a lot of degrees of formality. The most well-known ways this shows up is in how people address each other. Whether you use someone's last name or first name, with the suffix -chan, -kun, -sama, -sensei, -neesan, -niichan, or any other... this is going to say a lot on how you consider the other person. Each of these indicates a different degree of closeness or formality, which in context can reflect respect, affection, or irreverence. Without going into details, the entirety of the Japanese language is subject to this. There are verb conjugations that are considered formal, others informal, others soft, others rough. There are particles that would convey respect or disrespect.
For an example: in Magic Kaito, there is a gag where a character, in disguise, originally responds to a stray comment with his regular speech pattern (よくねーよ, "yokuneeyo.") Then, realizing he's about to blow his cover, he repeats the same thing with a softer, more formal grammar (よくないわよ〜, "yokunaiwayo.") Both mean the same thing, "this is not good." But the first one is way rougher and more informal, while the second one is way more appropriate for someone who, presumably, is meeting these people for the first time.
There is also a gendered aspect to all of this. Generally, "rough" speech is perceived as more masculine, while "soft" speech is perceived as more feminine. That being said, you can sound soft and be informal, so it's not as simple as "rude = masc and polite = fem."
My point is that conveying those degrees of formality, and the characterization that comes with it, can be very difficult. Not that English doesn't have degrees of formality, but they're a lot less obvious than the Japanese ones.
Personal pronouns
Japanese has many, many, many first person pronouns. There's watashi, but also boku, ore, atashi, and less frequently ware, watakushi, wan, and probably even more I have forgotten about. There's a whole wikipedia page about it in fact. All these pronouns have implications of their own. Which is, again, an extra characterization tool that can't be easily conveyed into English.
For example: in Detective Conan, there is a character who uses a different personal pronoun depending on whether he is here as himself (オレ, "ore") or as his secret identity (ボク, "boku.") When he considers revealing his identity to a friend, he starts a sentence with a pronoun, stops, then restarts the same sentence with a different pronoun. It's neat! And utterly untranslatable.
Context and omissions
Japanese is a language where it is perfectly acceptable (and encouraged) to remove bits if they are obvious in context.
So for instance, it is rather rare for a manga to feature a sentence with a subject. Because the subject of the sentence is generally obvious, so might as well omit it. So if, for example, I were to say 音楽を聞きます ("Ongaku o kikimasu," listening to music,) without further context the assumption would be that I'm the one listening to music. If I said that while, say, my colleague was wearing headphones, this could be taken to mean "he's listening to music." The subject is optional. As are any other parts of the sentence. If it's obvious, cut it out.
That's an issue with translation because one, what's obvious to one person might not be obvious to another. And two, sometimes the ambiguity is the point.
Example! In Fate/Grand Order, a character gets her friend coronated to be a king as part of her plan to save the world. Unfortunately, the guy gets immediately assassinated. She responds with this line:
ねえ、ここでもダメなの！？ ("Nee, koko demo dame na no!?") ここまでやってもダメなの！？ ("Koko made yatte mo dame nano!?")
The fantranslation transcribes it as "Come on, can't you overcome this!? Is even this much too much for you!?" The official translation goes for "Am I doomed to fail here, too!? Is it still not enough? Am I not enough!?"
The thing is, both of these are correct. The original line, translated very literally, is something along the lines of:
(Expression of frustration,) this here not?! So much done, not!?
There is no subject in this sentence. There isn't an object either. What is impossible, what was done "so much of," and who it's impossible for is not mentioned. "Can I not do this" is as valid an interpretation as "can you not do this." "So much effort and it's still impossible" is as valid a reading as "is it impossible for you to take this much." And in this context, either could work! Maybe the ambiguity is the point, even. Short of the author himself adding a 50 page long explanation on what specifically he intended when writing this bit, any translation is gonna have to make a choice here. Because English is very much a language where you have to spell everything out, lest you sound like a caveman.
Closing words
Japanese isn't a difficult language (frankly I think French has way more rules and quirks.) But it is a language that is very different from English, and as a result any translation effort, even in the best of circumstances, is going to be inaccurate. It's not a Caesar cipher where you can just look up every word individually and replace them by their English equivalent. If you tried to do that, you'd end up with half sentences that make no sense.
Hopefully this article helped you understand why some translations can differ wildly, and why some degree of localisation is, in fact, necessary. We cannot simply give a character a rude form of I to show that he's an arrogant asshole, but you can tweak his other lines to make him sound harsher. You can't show that two characters are close through their lack of honorifics, but you can make one speak with softer words to another. Choices have to be made, alas.