translator notes are one of my favourite parts of reading something foreign. it’s just a small trivia about something and allows me to understand the target culture just a bit more. this is way better than translators aggressively localizing some text to a comon american phase that will anyway make no sense to me.

tns get bad rep because lazy/elitist translators (i would vote the op is a bit more than being lazy) but they are a very important part and can be very valuable when done well