I believe I made it clear in my review that I didn’t read the original Japanese. I’m confused by your argument here – are you saying that the original Japanese isn’t very good and so the translation captures that mediocrity well, or that there are nuances in the Japanese language that can’t be translated and so this is the best we can hope for? If the former, I pointed out in my review that I couldn’t tell whether the weaknesses of the prose are the writer’s or the translator’s. If the latter, I don’t think that’s true, since I’ve encountered much better translations of Japanese. Either way it doesn’t excuse flat-out grammatical mistakes.

As far as the switching tenses being “explained later on,” I’m not about to read the second book in a series if the first book is full of what looks like errors (which is what switching tenses are), even if they have a purpose. What reader would say “Well, this book is poorly written, but maybe that will be explained in the next book! I think I’ll buy it”?

As regards the Santa Claus sentence, it’s simply very awkward and passively constructed, so much so that it becomes confusing. A clearer, more active version might read: “No one ever talks about when they stopped believing in Santa Claus. It’s a worthless topic.” (Of course, clarifying the structure of the sentence only makes it clearer that it’s not actually true, since I’ve heard that sort of conversation many times, but that’s beside the point.) And it’s not actually in the past tense – it’s a passive structure to a present-tense sentence.

Finally, I would like to ask you to please read our comment policy. I thought you had some interesting points and I do want to hear from someone who has read the original Japanese, but your comment was borderline rude.

“The question of how long someone believed in Santa Claus is a worthless topic that would never come up in idle conversation.”

What’s wrong with that? It’s saying “how long they lasted until they stopped believing.” Paste tense is right there in the Japanese for that.

The translator did a fantastic job adapting clunky dialog. It’s not the translator’s job to adapt it into flawless masterpiece if the original isn’t one.

If you spoke Japanese, you’d understand.

What I wanted to comment on was the molestation of Asahina… I always took that to be a parody of Otaku culture. The thing about it is, japanese Otaku culture and American Otaku culture are pretty different – in Japan Otaku is an offensive word and Otaku are considered perverted freaks, mostly. So I always kind of took it as… jokey. Not in an okay way, but in a way that may shed some light on it. It’s very much a parody type of show.

That said, frankly I got bored with Haruhi, and as I said, I never read the light novel.

Also: A really interesting well translated series of light novels from Japan that I liked were the 12 kingdoms series. Not at all romantic, I would put them in the “political fantasy” genre, and they’re really quite different and easy to read and understand even if you know nothing about Japan. The first is Sea of Shadow, and they are written by Fuyuimi Ono (I think.)