Translation Troubles

I generally try to avoid topics like this that involve identity politics but given that the guy on the bad end of this story is a dude who translated a number of Megami Tensei games, I at least want to throw my two cents into the sea of lava rage that is this situation.

First, and I kind of can't believe I have to clarify this kind of thing, don't call people nasty slurs.  Even  if you don't like the person you're talking to, there's a million different ways to insult them without resorting to this crass, needlessly upsetting bullshit.  Get creative, get classy, there's no need to use this hyper offensive language because chances are it'll just cause the user more trouble than it's worth.

So the story is a guy who's name I'm reluctant to use since he's already had enough crap thrown at him, released a fan translation of Ganbare Goemon 3 for the Super Nintendo.  In that game a character in the original Japanese text refers to themselves as "new half", which this guy directly translated as "tranny"

Oof, to say the least.

This of course triggers Twitter to go up in arms about the whole thing and start throwing all sorts of anger and abuse his way, which then leads to him basically purging his entire Twitter account and leaving nothing behind but an apology for what happened.  Depending on where you stand on his apology, he says that he wasn't fully aware just how offensive that word was and he didn't mean to upset people (to paraphrase)

To some extent I understand where the mob is coming from, I get that if someone is using an extremely popular platform to spread genuine hate against people of any walk of life, it's probably better that it be shut down, people don't deserve to feel shitty about themselves just because some idiot has ignorant, backwards views about what is and isn't ok.  But the translator in question never came across that way, he's not some "alt-right neo Nazi" using Goemon 3 to try and normalize nasty slurs into the common lexicon, he's just a dude who made a bad word choice when working on a passion project.

I'd be willing to bet money that if it was pointed out to him, without the vitriol, his reaction would have been "oh really? so sorry! I'll change that!" but instead we now have a passionate translator out of the space and a nasty taste in everyone's mouth.