[romaji & translation] Microphone

[truehappiness]

I think preserving the nature of the Japanese understanding of the lyrics should take precedent over making it nice and pretty for international audiences.

but the language we are translating into should still flow well and not sound completely unnatural, no?

masa's translations imo tend to be mostly direct translations that capture the essence of the Japanese lyrics even if they are a bit unnatural sounding. (I vaguely remember some ungrateful user would basically pop up and talk about how masa is terrible at translating. It's like... he's been helping us for years now and this is how you treat him?)

If you want to put your own spin on it, why not just start your own translating blog/site? Or start a thread here and put your own translations in them? Whatever the case is, masa's page is where he'll be hosting his translation (with feedback) so he can pretty much do whatever he pleases, haha.