"Supplementary Glossary of Japanese to English Terms and Definitions for Media Translators"
It's a mouthful but that's the tagline and it pretty much sums up what I want this to be. Chances are you've come across Japanese terms that have convincing English dictionary definitions that break down once sufficient context comes into play. It could be because of the genre, the format, a quirk in the subculture it belongs to, what have you. These terms tend to "trip" people up, or miss the intended nuance, or it's a smart take that can only be used in a certain context. In my experience, a lot of these terms keep showing up in tweets or community discussions in an endless cycle of discovery and rediscovery. You may have even thought up a snappy translation yourself, only to find out that someone else had done it before.
I think these terms should be documented. I've seen tons great takes with reasonable justifications, but the "blink and you'll miss it" nature of social media and scattered "you have to be part of it"-ness of communities is not for everyone.
Raising the floor of what a decent translation can do is a good thing. Apart from skill, I think having a capable termbase or glossary plays a role in that. When we simply aren't sure that a translation of a word or phrase works, we might never give it a fair shot because the common definition is convincing enough. We might get too tired or intimidated to translate something in a clever way and fall back to the tried and tested defaults. Or we simply forget how to convey something a certain way because we've been at it for too long. In the end, we get into a weird situation of safe ideas being the norm, even preferred, with even slightly different ones being considered novel or radical. That really shouldn't be the case in a creative art. Translators are writers and they should be able to build and innovate as much as writers have done. And like writers, they need tools as well. I know building a glossary is an ordeal in and of itself so I hope this gives you a bit of a jump start in making your own.
Let's document these good ideas, take some of the doubt out of "has anyone used this before?", and hopefully advance the craft by letting new ideas grow and breathe. よろしくおねがいします!