yeah, i talked about this before in an earlier post! about people getting so used to mediocre/poor (fan) translations that it's now the norm for them (when it SHOULDN'T be). to be honest, the #1 thing you should be looking for is how natural the translation is. like, do the characters in the translation sound like people you would hear around you? though this is hard if you're not in a country that mainly speaks english. in that case, does it sound like the people you see on this app? the people you hear on english-speaking tv? youtube videos? books? etc? if it doesn't...there's a problem. a character can also have a quirky speaking style, but would still sound "natural" in english if done properly.

there's a sorta formula to it that native speakers just Know how to piece together. i'm actually ESL myself, but i was raised in burgerland and my mind can only think in english, so i'm pretty much native level. i can almost pinpoint if a dialogue doesn't sound like natural english because of that. it's kinda hard to really explain how to do this other than to pay close attention to your surroundings and the media you consume

there's some peculiarities that japanese has that english doesn't have. one of them is how you rarely use second-person pronouns in jp. using second-person pronouns towards a person you're speaking to is often seen as impolite, so people use the other's name instead. english does NOT, i repeat, DOES NOT work like that. if you keep using a person's name in conversation in the same way as jp does, you will sound unnatural as hell. you can literally hold a whooooole conversation without mentioning a person's name in english thanks to second-person pronouns. so when translating to english, REMOVE THE EXTRA NAMEDROPS!! FOR THE LOVE GOD. PLEASE. so easy to fix yet so many people just don't. tell me, do you guys speak like this towards your friends? no, right? then remove it in your translation. thanks

another thing is...word choices. there's certain things in jp that people looove to tl to some stock phrase to eng, even if it's not what people actually use irl. such as the beloathed "it can't be helped." who the hell says that irl if you're not influenced by anime? and another common one, "embrace" and "hold." it can mean those things, but there are situations where it will not sound right at all...and that's because the character is using the "fuck" definition of the word. please. there's ways to say that in english too

those are the basic (?) things to notice if you don't know japanese. basically in all: does it sound natural? does it sound like something you'd read in english media? if it does, then it's an ok translation! if it doesn't? that translation is shit