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Leaving 'san' in is a perfectly fine translation philosophy only when the term and the cultural significance is explained in footnotes (or explained in the game.) If you'll note, more literal translations in literature are accompanied by hundreds of footnotes at the end, and more liberal translations in genre fiction usually aren't. This is because assuming the audience has prior knowledge of another culture while translating is an incredibly flawed translation philosophy. The idea that 'these words are incredibly common, the audience will know what they mean', which is an idea commonly floated, is weird logic that I don't subscribe to -> you translate for those who don't know the language, and thus during that process you don't assume that they already do, in fact, know the language. If footnotes are incorporated, or explanations, sure, feel free to keep honorifics in. But if not, then under no situation is keeping honorifics a satisfactory translation philosophy and I really don't give a toss what culture seekers think on the matter. Because you're translating for ALL non-Japanese speakers, not just a select portion of them.

I think that honorifics are very important and that they can say a lot about how one character views another one as well as sometimes give you a better picture of characters personality and that they should practically never be drooped out of translation.

>Is this an OELVN? I chuckled... a bit. Thanks for making my day.

As I am a huge weeb, I will always keep my honorifics, Darbury-san. In fact, you could make a list of 1000 valid reasons on why I shouldn't use them, and I would still use them, because moon runes master race.

The only reason to leave them in is because taking them out makes certain situations an absolute pain in the ass. For example, when characters specifically mention the honorific, or go from calling someone A-san to just A, or A-kun/A-chan. For example, one scene in the game I'm editing has the main character meet a heroine for the first time, and the dialogue goes something like, "Okay, Mizunose." "...No honorific?" "Ah, sorry. I'm not really good with these things." If you were to take out honorifics, you'd basically be forced to rewrite the entire dialogue here. I'm sure people that translate literature more than likely just cut things like that out, as they probably do with every "Itadakimasu.", because they can. Though translations of things like VNs and anime are less at liberty with what they can and can't do, so it's more easier to just leave them in and expect the reader to understand them decently enough (which the vast majority of these people do).