I have no knowledge of how the English versions of Bangai-O came to be, but my suspicion has always been that the translation wasn't a conscious stylistic choice so much as something they were handed by ESP/Treasure and that they rationalised as being in the spirit of the original game, in part because they had limited time/resources to make alterations (which was quite common during that era, especially in Europe).
If you A/B the US/PAL versions, you can tell that someone on the US side tried to smooth things over where they could and was generally treating the game with a little more seriousness than was warranted, but given how much they didn't and probably couldn't change, ya have to wonder why they bothered.