One of the technical aspects of translation is the space in which those translations have to be placed.For most anime and manga translations, how much space you have to do the translation is a very important consideration.

Here's my favorite (that is to say, most frustrating) Japanese phrases.

"Da to."

It translates out to "That's what he/she said." Or, "See what he/she said?" In fact, the Japanese phrase can be reduced to "To." It isn't even a long vowel! Now how can a person get a four-word sentence into the space it takes to write a single Japanese kana character?! Or in anime, I'll give odds the director had the person saying, "To," on screen for exactly the 1/3rd of a second that it took to say it, then he cut away some someone else's dialog. No way a four word subtitle could be read in that amount of time.

The reason why that's so frustrating is that there is no good way out. But there are things you can do for longer sentences.

For manga the thing a translator has to remember is that the word balloons are thin, and wherever possible, you need to use short words. That isn't to say that long words are out of the question -- there's always hyphenation -- but hyphenation can lead to misreading, and sometimes the reader has to pause on a balloon to parse out exactly what word is being said. So it's best to avoid long words wherever possible. I've had sentences that looked like hyphen stepladders after they were lettered. For example:
The
forti-
fied
emplace-
ment ap-
pears im-
possible
to sur-
mount.

Hyphens everywhere!!!

Since Japanese balloons are ovals, the middle part will be widest, and it's always easier to fit your big words in the middle. Also if you start your sentence with two or three small words, the reader has a chance to get the rhythm of the sentence, and will be much more able to parse the sentence when the hyphens do come along. For example:
We
can't
over-
run a
position
that's so
well
defend-
ed.

A few hyphens, but they parse much easier, right?

So the rule is: Start a sentence with two or three short words, long words in the middle of a sentence, and if possible end it with short words too.

Subtitles have a different problem, and I'll get into that next entry.