@bookdragonlibrary
Short answer: Translator’s choice. As my personal rule, when I see the long expression Konohagakure no sato I translate “Village Hidden in the Leaves”, and when I see just Konoha I leave it as it is.
Long answer: There are mainly two reasons why I change names when I translate.
1 – Naruto is a work of fiction. Most of the names of places are “talking names” that convey something a mere Romanization wouldn’t do.
I know that, in the real world, nobody in their right mind would translate Tōkyō o sanpo shimashita with “I took a stroll down the East Capital”. But if I followed the general rule of not translating place names in Naruto, then I would have to leave as they are even other names such as Shūmatsu no Tani (Valley of the End), Hi no Kuni (Land of Fire), Shi no Mori (Forest of Death), and Myōbokuzan (Mount Myoboku).
Even the official translation sometimes swings from Japanese names to translated names. I’m not sure about the English dub ‘cause I’ve never watched it, but in the Italian dub sometimes they say Leaf Village, sometimes they say Konoha. I guess it mostly has to do with the fact that using only ‘Konoha’ wouldn’t explain the leaf symbol on the forehead protector, at least not to an average watcher with no knowledge of Japanese. And this leads me to the second reason…
2 – not every Naruto fan has the same level of Japanese skills. There are some fans who cringe when they see Team Taka translated as Team Hawk, but there are others who are forced to look up on the internet every single Japanese name of the techniques if they want to know what’s going on. There are some longtime Naruto fans who are well aware that Icha Icha means “make-out”, but there are people who started watching Naruto from the Shippuden arcs and so they didn’t know what the kanji on Gaara’s head meant until it was made clear in the Fourth Shinobi world war. Then there are ‘specialized’ fans who know by heart all the Japanese names of Naruto’s versions of the Rasengan, but don’t know what Sen’ei Jashu means (Hidden shadow snake hands).
As a translator, I try to please everybody and have no way to know how much you do know about Japanese. Even then, there are various viewpoints on how/how much translating things: Narutopedia’s way (literal translation), Viz’s translation (creatively), the dubbed anime? This gag manga doesn’t have an official translation (that I know of), it hasn’t been turned into an anime (though word on the street is that they’re thinking about it), so it all depends on me.
Translating names (or, well, translating in general) is not something I do for my own sake. ‘Cause squeezing something like “Village Hidden in the Leaves” into a tiny bubble speech sure ain’t easy.
(Btw I had thought, in the past, of making something like a poll to ask you if you preferred translated names over Japanese names, but eeh I kinda gave up on the idea because I thought nobody would care enough to participate.)
^Sorry for the wall of text. This thing of translating names is something that’s been on my mind for quite a while, and finally someone brought the topic to attention. m(_ _)m
