Isnellman

The correct translation for 「いただきます」 "itadakimasu" in a secular context is "thanks for the food". In an at all religiously-charged context, you can and sometimes should add whatever the characters' god is. The reason for this, is it is a cultural custom born from offering a prayer before a meal. The direct analogue for Christian cultures is saying grace and it even mirrors our own cultural gestures. Any form of quick thanks will make it immediately comprehensible to Western viewers, and deliberately avoiding the comparable cultural ties (especially if the story involves White characters or is set in the West) because "well it's secular now" at best misses the forest for the trees and at worse, is deliberate vandalism of Japanese culture. Like, for example, the widely reviled "rub a dub dub thanks for the grub". That is cultural vandalism, it reduces a genuinely meaningful gesture of cosmic thanks to a fucking joke. My final note is that on the subject of 'perfect linguistic translations', they almost never exist. Ironically, Japanese to English is one of the easier ones because of how modernized Japanese behaves and how much the two languages have borrowed from one another. Similarly, Dutch or German to English is also relatively easy, as they share root languages though the latter has some acquired grammatical differences. All the Indo-European language group languages have an easier time translating between themselves, much like the Romantic Language Group languages can translate between themselves relatively easily as well. The reason why this is difficult is beyond the grammar or words; it's the culture and worldview. The Elizabethan translators of Homer's epics, from Greek to English, debated heavily whether to anglicize the story or to remain as close to original as possible. Ultimately they settled on the latter, whilst Victorian translators applied the former theory. This is, in essence, the localization vs translation argument. So, to bring this back to the subject at hand; many Western fans who actually know a little bit about Japanese and can therefor understand the original voice acting are staunchly against localizations, primarily because localizers are retarded and openly vandalize the works they're tasked with handling out of contempt and vanity. When the Umamusu translators localize "Merry Christmas" as "Happy Holidays", that is nothing but vandalism. The same is true for "rub a dub dub thanks for the grub"; it is vandalism inflicted on Japanese culture, portraying a culturally significant gesture as being contemptible. This is why people, myself included here, advocate for direct literal translations. Yes, some things are going to be lost in the sauce and will not make sense. Yes, that is better and preferable to letting works worthy of genuine respect get vandalized by a bunch of self-important English majors who couldn't cut it as actual writers (and that's with the entire English literature industry trying to prop them up!). When in doubt, always use the direct, literal translation. Never use meme speak or something degrading or "funny" in place of what normally reads as dry text.