Offtopic but:

OMG I can just imagine if my mom gave birth to another kid who grew up in the US and only spoke English, mom’s English would be like: “Go where come back?” (去邊度返來啊？)

Lol that sound so weird to a native English speaker but that makes complete sense in my multilingual brain xD

(“Where did you just come back from?” would probably be a more grammatically correct translation)

On the titular question, I would say that there’s a realm in English where it’s possible to omit the subject. However, it is generally considered necessarily terse and wouldn’t be suitable for general conversation, due to distilling the language down to what essentially is a series of verbs strung together. That realm would be commands or instructions, with the specific example of highway/motorway signage.

It’s a unique challenge for English highway signs, to convey exactly what’s important but also not be too long to read. There is a physical limit for why “DO NOT ENTER” is preferred over “Automobiles May Not Turn Right Onto This Road”. In the UK, they even reduce this to “NO ENTRY”, which is in line with the pattern of “no parking” or “no lorries over 3 tonnes”.

Even more reduced are the words “EXIT ONLY” which means “this lane will soon terminate, vehicles in this lane will be forced to exit the highway, and vehicles should change lanes to remain on the highway”. All of that is from the very context of a road, made common through the context of driver training, signage, and lane markings.

This is one of the reasons why a language like Japanese gets “lost” in translation

I would argue that translation is not the exercise of converting words like-for-like, but to convey the same meaning or experience in the target language. As an example, expletives in other languages will reference different things, be it name-calling or dishonorable comparisons in Japanese, genitalia in English, excrement in German, etc. But there is no requirement that a mild expletive in Japanese needs to be perfectly preserved into English. Rather, the overall work when read in English should use an equivalently mild expletive, with proper consideration for what the original audience was. So if the Japanese source was a children’s anime and light high-school insults are in the dialogue, the English translation might render this as minced oaths in English. The character building should be mostly identical for the English audience.

But done only mechanically and without artistry, such a translation is going to sound very “American” and lose much of the soul of the original. IMO, this is something that older Crunchyroll translations suffered from, and fansubs did a much better job of preserving the dialogue faithfully. Even while doing this, some parts of the language are necessarily untranslatable, since things like post-nominal honorifics don’t exist in English. As a result, some fansubs might stylistically choose to always render the honorific every time – eg spelling out Kami-sama rather than translating as God.

This is in tandem to other subtitle-specific considerations like keeping the surname-then-given name ordering, so that the subtitles read in the same order as they are spoken in full (eg Kudo Shinichi) and correctly shortening to just the surname when addressed as such (eg Kudo-san or Kudo-sama).

Even still, it could be acceptable to translate as “Mr Kudo” or “Master Kudo”, if that’s the vibe that the source material was going for. Translation is, as I understand it, a holistic work. And perhaps the best example I can cite to is the English translation of The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. Ken Liu did the translation, and made an explicit choice to hew towards Chinese terminology, explained in footnotes, because the ordering of the cosmic velocities (first, second, third) is more clearly a stair step towards space travel, rather than using the typical terms of “orbital velocity” and “escape velocity” in English.

The English translation intentionally makes itself clear as a translation, but care was taken to make sure it is uniquely from eastern source material yet still perfectly readable in English for someone that knows nothing of Chinese 20th Century history or much of anything about space travel. In that sense, it is accessible sci-fi, where even us Americans will understand the great work that Liu Cixin set into ink.

You can, if the context allows it e.g. you can answer the question “Where were you earlier?” with “Went to the doctor” and it means the same and would be understood as “I went to the doctor”.

Preface: I’m no linguist. Just someone who speaks both JP and EN. But boy do I love thinking about stuff like this. I’m not going to answer your original question though, cause the short answer is really just no.

Subject omission in JP is somewhat interesting because it’s tied to their culture, but I’d like to sort of push back a bit on the thinking that it requires some thinking to figure out who the subject is.

Japanese is a context-heavy language, and this subject omission is an important cultural rule under that. But it does mean that the context needs to first be established between participants.

Suppose you walked up to a friend, waved at them, and said イギリスに行った (lit: went to the UK), most JP speakers would first think that you’re talking about yourself. But if, prior to this conversation, say the day before, you and this friend A were talking about another friend B, and B was deciding where to go and you went to the airport with them, then this friend A would be the only one to know that you’re talking about B. But suppose it’s been a few more weeks before meeting with A. Then A might think you’re still talking about B, especially if you’ve not mentioned going overseas to A. Then a misunderstanding can happen, and the onus is on you to clarify who you’re talking about in the first place. You’d be thought of as someone who can’t “read the air” if you constantly leave the subject vague without considering the context you’ve thus far established with others. Friend A can certainly ask for clarification if they know your tendencies, and within their own personal context. 「Bが？」 (t: B did?) they might ask. 「いや。私。」(t: No. I (did).) you might reply. Notice how I just used 私 with no particle; the particle is implied!

I find that a lot of newer learners have a tendency to really focus on this particular aspect of the language. I actually don’t find it to be something that speakers need to expend on a lot of energy on. You know who you’re talking to, and thus know and share enough context to carry on with the conversation. It’s also common to remind each other of which context is being talked about to jog your convo partner’s memory. If you have trouble remembering context, you can always play it safe and be sure to explain yourself, or check if your convo partner remembers it.

Oddly enough, I have a friend who got a bit turned off by this “feature” of Japanese and discouraged him from learning by a bit. He’s always had questionable memory, so having to sort of “remember context” is a bit of a difficult ask for him. I don’t think “remembering context” is a strict requirement to be a good speaker in JP cause it’d just be a quirk of his like it already is in EN. We English speakers like to think we’re quite rid of context when we compare it to the Japanese, but how much we know each other is context too.

Also, a small comment: just saying 私 in reply to your example for 誰？ isn’t necessarily weird or robotic. It depends on your relationship with the speaker. If you usually use the polite form with the person, then yes, you should append with です. Now, if you didn’t have the previous part where you’re talking about having a stomachache, then even to a close enough friend, it’s more natural to respond to the “Who?” with 私だ - not too different from EN in this case: it’s “Me” vs “It’s me”. And when the sentence is お腹が痛い, you’re 100% talking about yourself. If you’re actually talking about someone else, it should be お腹が痛そう (looks painful) or お腹が痛いって ((person) said their stomach hurts).

One thing I commonly see in comments out of threads like this is the oversimplification of how the Japanese communicate. They might be polite and sometimes avoid mentioning the subject for convenience, but when you need tell someone to do something, you can do just that, with different levels of politeness.

• Polite: お願いできますか？ Can I ask you for it?
• Instructional (e.g. teachers): 宿題をしなさい。 Do (your) homework.
• Frank: お前がやれ。 You do it.

The Japanese is expected to be polite to strangers. But they don’t interact with people they’re familiar with in the same way, as it’s usually perceived as a distant way to communicate.

In general, it’s considered less clear.

However context matters a lot, for example, if some one asks what you did today, they’re not going to get confused by “went to the store.” As an answer, they just assume you’re the subject.

You can, to a certain extent. Consider:

I woke up late, again. Washed my face. Pulled on a threadbare pair of socks — suppose it’s time to do some mending; toe is visible. Poured a cup of coffee, sour from standing in the urn all day and night, though it didn’t bother, really. Grabbed a bagel from the basket — mold. Guess it’s time to hit the bakery. Or the grocery, possibly, but…

edit: if you want to see a more accomplished author than I resist the first person pronoun, I would recommend the novel The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett.

Guess not, outside of sentences like this one. 😉

You can’t construct grammar on an established language like English. If the speakers are used to having pronouns everywhere, like most if not all Germanic languages, then no. You cannot just leave them out.

It’s my experience that this OCD level of politeness the Japanese apply to all interactions is a hindrance to getting a point across. Yes, you have to use your brain and infer who does what and to whom. But that means that there is still an awful lot of uncertainty. And uncertainty in the language leaves the door open to misinterpretation. So while a group of Japanese folks are playing politeness ping-pong for fifteen minutes, the parallel English universe dealing with the same topic are done after three. “You do that now!” Done. The Japanese would be clutching their pearls at that directness.

In ye olden days, telegrams (not the contemporary chat app but the wire service they took the name from) would use streamlined language dropping any unnecessary pronoun as well. This was done a a cost saving measure when you were charged by the word. So you need a trigger, a restriction that kicks off a grammar change like that. But it didn’t last.

Very few laws govern language. Say whatevs.

In England, at least, it’s not that likely that you’d end up in prison for what you say, unless you use a specific word beginning with ‘P’.

There are lots of phrases like “the fuck?” that can be used by the listener, to ask for clarification; That is, if they actually give an actual fuck. Nine times out of ten, they don’t.

(/joke - please do not learn English from me. But please be aware that it is spoken by a lot of twats like me.)

You know, “went to times square” is very easy to understanding without the “l.” It reads informal, but I’d get it. The end part of your example would leave me wondering what was good. The friend? The time they had together? Was Times Square itself good? I don’t as easily fill in the subject like I did with the missing “I” at the start. I think it’s called “left edge omission?”