User blog comment:Damesukekun/Song Translating and Mistranslating/@comment-11501835-20181130204306/@comment-11501835-20181130225743

Well if it's of any consolation to the rule that "native Japanese gets the most credit", I'm a native JP as well

Having got that out of the way, the way I see it from what I've read is that in this wiki, utmost priority on correctness of grammar and context is present, which is more than understandable. British vs American, I wouldn't know the exact details of all that because I live in neither country.

But I would stress the importance of conserving the rhythm of a song (even if it's less priority than the meaning) and more importantly, its ambiguity. What I mean is, simply put, when a song contains a metaphor, you try to translate the metaphor without letting your interpretation show. Easier said than done of course, but it should be concerning if a translation of a song does not contain its flow, and its beautiful expressions. You would rather prefer translations that take account of that, instead of something that looks like an analysis. For example, in the Senbonzakura translation,

二輪車転がし is translated as "pedaling a bicycle". I would suppose that if the composer wanted to mean that, he would've said "自転車漕いで” but he didn't, which is why the phrase "Rolling two-wheels" is more fitting, even if it sounds ridiculous, because it makes just as much sense as it does in Japanese.

More debatable examples would be something like, is "悪霊退散” exorcising, or chanting "Begone, evil spirits"? Both pretty much convey the same thing, but I would prefer the latter because the phrase "悪霊、退散！” has a similar spirit to it.

Obviously I'm exaggerating here, and I'm deviating from your point (that British-American differences should be taken into consideration) but I would think that these differences have nothing to do with the matter - and I do not know if this community stresses too much importance on this kind of "loyalty", let's say, to the original text. If that's already the case, then that's really great.

However, I do admit that I may have been too nitpicky on the correction that I submitted, especially on the meanings of the old Japanese that none of us here are really sure about.