My precious tiger boy is finally translated and boy, was it a trip trying to find his voice. Subaru speaks VERY roughly and I tried my best to convey that in the English. It’s one of the reasons I have him cursing. He doesn’t actually use the words we typically associate with Japanese swear words as much as I have put in English swear words, but I decided those few extra curses really helped to get Subaru’s tone of speaking across.
Some of the indicators for this rough tone in the Japanese are his use of テメィ (temei) and オマエ (omae) which are typically derogatory pronouns. オマエ isn’t quite as bad, and he does use it most often to refer to our protagonist, but the fact that it’s written in katakana is what tells us the tone is rough. Subaru also uses オマエ for the protagonist for almost the entire story until near the end when he actually starts using her name, indicating a new sense of intimacy.
His speaking also often ends with shortened conjugations like ねぇ (nee) as opposed to the more formal ない (nai) to indicate a negative. This is another sign of his rougher way of speaking.
In addition, I wanted to make a mention that Subaru uses the word 好き (suki) when referring to his feelings for the protagonist. Normally I prefer to translate that as ‘I like you’ or ‘I really like you’ and leave the ‘I love you’ translation for 大好き (daisuki). However, Subaru is very blunt and straight-forward, so it seemed more fitting for his personality to just jump straight into the ‘I love you’ rather than the weaker ‘I really like you’. Also in the Secret Story, Subaru’s inner dialogue uses the term 愛しい (itoshii) when referring to the protagonist, which translates to ‘beloved’ or ‘dearest’. That was also a factor in my choosing to use the ‘I love you’ for Subaru’s declaration of feelings. Plus it’s just so much more impactful that way!