If you have to resort to strawmen, you’ve lost your argument.
Lack of anything else to indicate a subject means the speaker is the subject, that is how Japanese works. With that in mind, aye, you may actually be confused about how Japanese works.
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It wasn’t a strawman — I thought that might actually be what you were trying to say. I was just trying to be clear.
Now I see that that’s not what you were saying; you’re just with @Ryouki in believing we should treat a review card as if it were not extracted from some larger context.
I don’t agree, but whatevs. 
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Well, fair enough, then. We’re not going to see eye-to-eye, in that case. Since it’s obvious to me, and others, that since there is no conext, there is no context, ergo the subject is the speaker. GLWT.
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I’m not saying it should be that way. I’m saying it is that way. In the “real world”, if someone walked up to you and simply said 友達と一緒に宿題をした。, they would be telling you that they did homework with a friend because they didn’t specify otherwise and you were given no other context. Period.
If they were actually trying to tell you that Mary did her homework yesterday, then they need to specify that and it would be their fault that you’d be confused as to who they were actually referring to, because in that case, the subject shouldn’t have been dropped.
I understand your argument, but you’re looking at it the wrong way. Yes, the example sentences are probably extracted from some larger context, but you’re never going to have to worry about that in the “real world” because you will always be given the context.
Edit : added some words for clarity
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I haven’t properly translated much beyond a few pages of a book(and I’ve compared it to an official translation). I agree with the notion that the translation has to be literal. I don’t think that additions like “my” or “I” where it is 99% likely to be the case are the culprit of potentially harmful translations. What’s problematic is how slightly larger changes stack over time - perhaps the actual agent or speaker might switch places with an observer due to a misplaced pronoun, or a blank statement might show more emotion than it should.
Single sentences are troubling and up to interpretation, so their translation could potentially shift around, but with sets of sentences and paragraphs, I think it helps to get into the content light, context heavy Japanese language mindset through direct translation.
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You’ve been given an answer repeatedly that this is how Japanese works. No context specifying someone else = a person is talking about themselves. In this case there’s no context, so in Japanese it means this is in the first person. This is the way it is.
If, on the other hand, the latter 2 lines of dialogue were in the card, the sentence “友達と一緒に宿題をした” would’ve been ambiguous, since you don’t know whether Person B is Mary or not.
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Recommendation: Stop trying to learn Japanese in English. It gets in the way.
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Agreed. Admittedly, I still struggle with this from time to time, which is why I understand @jstrout’s argument more than he (or she? idk) seems to think. But each day I read something in Japanese, which is every day, it starts to make more sense and feels more natural. I think once you get over the first big hurdle of thinking in Japanese instead of English, it’s a little smoother from then on out. That’s how it was for me, anyway. Not sure about others.
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Even on a review card, if context was relevant to the interpretation, they would have included it in the excerpt because it would have to be there if it was relevant. So don’t overthink it. If information is not supplied, it’s because it’s not relevant.
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Aye, exactly my point above. There is no context, so there is no context. The subject is the speaker.
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In the very narrow context of studying Japanese, with zero additional context around the words you’re studying, it’s perhaps defensible to be very literal, as you suggest. Now, I wouldn’t say including “I” in this example would hurt your learning, but everyone learns differently, so do whatever works for you.
If this were literally any other context, however, you’d want something more on that sentence. And since the goal we all have in studying Japanese, I assume, is to be able to engage with Japanese texts and speakers, there’s always going to be some context there that will let you know if “I” or “she” or whatever is appropriate, if it’s not stated.
Of course the end goal isn’t to consciously translate everything in our heads - it’s to “think in Japanese”. It’s to get to the point where the English translation doesn’t directly matter, so to speak, unless you are literally creating a translation of the work.
So do whatever helps you get to that point while you’re learning and still have to rely on conscious mental translation. But I would suspect that for most people, wording things in a way that makes sense in their native language is a help, not a hindrance.
Note that this can go too far, of course. It’s not like it’s a binary, and I’m personally not a fan of, for example, translations drenched in excessive colloquialisms or memes or slang that probably won’t age well. I prefer, for lack of a better term, “neutral” language in translations - though that doesn’t have to mean a lifeless or unemotional translation. It’s a balancing act, of course. But I don’t expect many teaching materials are being extremely liberal in their translations (at least, stating a subject where it’s ambiguous doesn’t count as extremely liberal to me), so for studying purposes this probably won’t come up too often.
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If I don’t know in what situation the sentence is being said, I would rather do the literal translation, like you said. It does help me to understand the sentence structure better, and “natural translations” are kind of pointless anyway.
That being said, since I’m no native English speaker (I’m Brazilian), I couldn’t care less about the lack of a subject in a sentence, since this is done all the time in Portuguese.
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Give me a study conducted by someone whose focus is pedagogy and whose conclusion supports your position and I might consider it. Until then I’ll stick to the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” method.
Also if we’re going literally isn’t it: “Friend and together homework did”. Try pitching that to a group of individuals with little to no experience learning other languages.
The term “yoot” should have died the moment it was conceived.
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Actually “Did homework with a friend” is totally acceptable in a written context. I think we jot things down this way all the time (memos or even texting). As for the translation, it is fine. I think if you zoom back a bit and not look at this sentence in a bubble, you’d be okay with it. If your goal in Japanese is primarily reading and writing then I can see why you’d want to know exactly who studied with the friend etc… But if just for understanding, it is fine. If you watch a lot of Japanese television (TV Japan has a very good variety of shows btw), you will definitely hear this type of blurbs (sentences without subjects). Give is some time and I’m sure you will develop an ear for natural Japanese. All the best. Gambatte!
Yep. I’m losing my French for the same reason (dated too many anglophones). Also a lot of my clients use English. And my mom is outraged I speak in this weird dialect where I use English conjugations for French verbs.
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Wait what? Now I’m curious… english conjugations…? Can I have an example of an english conjugation?
Let’s say that I want to say “I updated something” in French. The proper translation is “j’ai mis à jour” but I’m a lot more likely to say "j’ai updaté " . Which is a mix of English past tense and French and sounds similar.
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I guess saying this is an efficient way to torture French people
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I get three reactions: the blank stare, laughing at me, or outrage/disappointment at my massacre of the French language.
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Just yesterday I said North Coreia (Coreia = Korea in Portuguese) when I was talking to my brother. This happens with me a lot and I don’t even practice my English speaking at all 
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