Translation - point of contention...

[Syri]

As I said, it was just my personal opinion.

Personal opinion or not, your understanding of the system in the context of the Japanese language is wrong, as is your attempt to like for like compare it with English. I think this is the part that people are jumping in on, not whether or not you think the system is right or wrong in any language, but your misunderstanding of the system as it is used in Japanese.

In my attempts to learn Japanese, as a native English speaker, I've learned that there is very little in common between the languages, and there is a lot more connection between language and society in Japan than in the UK at least. As for the things they have in common, they have nouns, adverbs, verbs and adjectives. That's pretty much it. Seriously. Sentence structure, writing format, pronunciation rules, all totally different.

The translations that preserve the Japanese honorifics do so in an attempt to preserve the context, usually accompanied with some translation notes somewhere, to allow the reader to understand the societal impact they can have on a conversation. For example, using only someone's given name when talking to them, with no honorific or anything, is perfectly normal in the UK, but in Japan that would imply a closeness to that person, and if they don't feel that way about you, it could then be seen as rude, especially if you know how they feel. If you cut that entire system out, you can actually lose a lot of the context of a conversation.