I don't think the right question is whether translations are "faithful" or "cultural", I think it's whether they translate what was said, or what a native speak

I don't think the right question is whether translations are "faithful" or "cultural", I think it's whether they translate what was said, or what a native speaker would have said in a similar situation. To me, when JP dialog is translated precisely the results tend to sound overly neutral and explanatory - i.e. you get flat dialog that an English speaker wouldn't say. So the choice before the translator is either to sound unnatural or to editorialize. But I think there's a second-order thing going on, where audiences who consume a lot of anime/JRPGs/etc are used to a certain kind of translation, and dialog that's too colorful or expressive winds up not sounding "proper" because one isn't used to anime characters talking that way. E.g. when an anime character makes a cultural reference that will be incomprehensible to non-Japanese audiences, I think a lot of anime fans will expect that to be translated "faithfully" (i.e. incomprehensibly), rather than be replaced with a reference they're familiar with (even if the replacement conveys the same meaning to them that the original conveyed to JP audiences).