"Kanon is great, murmured John." Query for transla

[DragonmasterX]

From my experience with Japanese prose, in Japanese, the topic title would be something like:

カノンは凄いです。
ジョンはそう呟いた。

It'd be 2 sentences in Japanese. When you across something like that in Japaanese, do you turn it into the English style:
"Kanon is great, murmured John."

Or leave it the Japanese way?
Kanon is great.
John murmured.

Ok, maybe that's not the best example, but surely you visual novel translators get the idea?
---
Here are cases where I've come across this and I left it the Japanese style.

“What are you doing? You’re not at peace.”

Sitting next to him, Luca’s mother said that in a quiet tone. Her words may have been harsh, but she said it in a really soothing voice.
-
“I’m Anabelle. Nice to meet you.”

As she said that, she quickly held out her hand.
-
“No~! I want to be together with mother!”

As Luca said that, a sharp pain rushed across his cheek. The mark left by the pain gradually grew hotter. His mother slapped him. She held on tightly to Luca’s shoulders and looked quietly into his eyes. His face looked incredibly serious, but beautiful at the same time.

[AstCd2]

Originally Posted by DragonmasterX

カノンは凄いです。
ジョンはそう呟いた。

It'd be 2 sentences in Japanese. When you across something like that in Japaanese, do you turn it into the English style:
"Kanon is great, murmured John."

Or leave it the Japanese way?
Kanon is great.
John murmured.

I'd go with the former. The latter, while technically grammatically correct, almost seems like an expression of two separate ideas. Faithfulness to the original Japanese is a good thing, but it doesn't mean everything has to be translated literally =P

[l|ammamama]

I agree with AstCd2 whole heartedly.

Originally Posted by DragonmasterX

“What are you doing? You’re not at peace.”

Sitting next to him, Luca’s mother said that in a quiet tone. Her words may have been harsh, but she said it in a really soothing voice.

Because you left the Japanese sentance structure, these lines come across sounding almost as if they were machine translated - which is a bad thing!

[DragonmasterX]

Hmm, damn, I've got a lot of editing to do then.

[l|ammamama]

Although I can only guess at what the original Japanese was, instead of saying things like "sitting next to him, Luca's mother said that in a quiet tone" try a sentance structure like "Speaking in a quiet tone, Luca's mother sat beside him." It's clear from context that Luca's mother said "that" - and a phrase like 「そう言って、」 does not come across very well when translated literally. 　

[DragonmasterX]

Hmm, this made me realize that there's a pretty big difference in the paragraph structure of the two languages. Japanese paragraphs are generally short as hell.

In professional translation of novels, I guess they totally change the paragraph structure?

That's probably not much of a concern for visual novels, right? Since you just need to display the text in the text box?