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[Reelya]

But we do ... "lightly salted" means "lightly salted". The argument is about when it's better to not translate at all, because the meaning would be lost. Not one source I can find suggests that "comrade" is anything but an ideal substitute for "nakama". Comrades are closer than friends and almost like family.

e.g. the shitwad who wrote this explains how "nakama" just can't be translated yet he never even mentions the word "comrade".
http://www.japanesewithanime.com/2017/03/nakama-meaning.html

Basically, nakama 仲間 means the people around you. The people you trust. The people you live with, the people you commute with, that you work, that you study with, etc.

In shounen anime, manga, and games, that would be the people in your "party" that would go around battling monsters, saving the world and stuff.  Practically everybody around you that's together with you that you can trust is your nakama.

Uhh ... well people already understand "comrade" to mean all those things. It can be your direct "party" members i.e. your gang/buddies/immediate allies, but it's also understood in the broader sense of compatriot.

[Neonivek]

But we do ... "lightly salted" means "lightly salted".

Those are two words!

[Reelya]

But that's a silly distinction - "lightly salted" is understood as a single concept. So you can translate it thus. Leaving the original word is only necessary when you can't translate meaning. e.g. "Bushido" is sort of like "Chivalry" or "code of Honor" but it's not the same. And to translate the meaning of Bushido into purely English words would require more text than the viewer can be expected to read in a subtitle. Hence, it must logically be left as "Bushido".

"must translate single words to single words" is not a sensible translation rule. Japanese doesn't even have spaces between words. Hence, word-breaks are arbitrary. In fact if we compounded it as "lightlysalted" then literally nothing else in the English language would need to change. That proves that space positioning is in fact a purely arbitrary rule of the written language, and not a necessary part of the spoken language itself.

e.g. say the word for "lightly salted" in your pretend language was "sherbo" then why not just translate it as "lightly salted"? You've said "but that's not one word!" Well ... what if the other language had two words to be cat. Say they called "cats" "chibi neko" i.e. two words which translated as "small feline". Should we now leave the phrase "chibi neko" instead of translating it as "cat" because cat is only "one word" and to be "equivalent" we much translate it to a two-word phrase or not translate it at all?

e.g. you're now proposing a rule that "number and location of spaces in the translation much equal number of spaces in the original text!" which is plain batshit stupid, as translation rules go.

[Criptfeind]

That's uh. Not at all a universal way to use the word comrade. There's really different ways to understand the word, I suppose your way is probably legitimate but it's not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the word comrade.

Other things that come to my mind before your definition: an ally of some sort or member of the same group but without that implication of deep trust and friendship. A fellow soldier. Or a stereotypical communist address (which I have no idea how accurate that stereotype is... But there's the association.)

I don't know why "friend" or "good friend" wouldn't normally be an appropriate translation for nakama, that seems perfectly fine to me and at this point the lack of translating it seems to maybe just be more of a meme then anything with a solid reasoning. But Comrade I don't think totally works. Could be culturally specific.

[Flying Dice]

Uh. Camaraderie literally means that feeling of trust and friendship between people who spend a lot of time around each other. Comrades possess a mutual sentiment of camaraderie.

I'll agree that the meaning of "comrade" has been distorted, but solely by the association with communism (which is not actually entirely true but delves into a whole mess of etymology and repeated cross-language translation of meaning that's not entirely relevant). The original usage back when the word first developed was, essentially, "roommate", so it ought to be easy to see how that morphed into "close friend/associate", since the two would have been often conflated anyways.

Not translating nakama at this point is mostly a meme.

[Reelya]

Translator's note: gasoriin sutando means gasoline station

[Neonivek]

"must translate single words to single words" is not a sensible translation rule.

It isn't, perfect for Fansubs

[Sirus]

"Just according to keikaku"

(Translator's note: keikaku means "plan")

[scriver]

...Is that where that is from? From a translation that didn't want To translate keikaku into plan?

[Sirus]

That's the impression I got from knowyourmeme. I didn't read the page in-depth though.

[Flying Dice]

Yep. It was, IIRC, a bad fansub of Death Note. Hit peak meme and has since been crossed with Tzeentch memes to produce new ones.

[scriver]

That is hilarious. What was that translator even thinking.

[Tawa]

I believe that it was an image specifically made as a parody. Most of the sources I've found seem to believe or passively claim it was from a legitimate fansub, but I've never found the sub itself, KYM says the earliest reference to it was ten years ago, and although it's not far from the truth, these words usually have a (possibly imagined or unimportant) secondary connotation, unlike "keikaku" which translates very directly to "plan", AFAIK. Overtranslating and abuse of translators' notes usually has the same kind of rationale as infographics like these; they ascribe way too much meaning to a single, relatively innocuous word and get caught up with trying to convey every nuance and connotation when a basic getting-the-point-across translation would be fine.

Sort of reminds me of this horrendous anime crossover fanfic I saw once where the author kept trying to include gratuitous Japanese for "immersion" but half the "translations" were just English words spelled as if they were pronounced katakana (e.g. "Merry Christmas" became "Meri Curisumasu".)

[Rose]

Translator's note: Nakama means Brother.

[Reelya]

Translators note: Japa means mutter.