Translating thoughts

[Dohma]

Usually thoughts are written within brackets, so I translate it by making it italic as I commonly see in English books. But I come across this problem a lot in LNs: suddenly the text changes to first person and then you get something like と彼は思った. Sometimes, it also happens when something is spoken.

Because I want to stay consistent in English and not change perspective, I get the urge to either put it between quotation marks or change it to third person like:
'He said/thought that...'
However, that goes against my wishes not to overly change the original meaning of the text.

Basically, I'm wondering how other translators or editors deal with this, or if there's a unwritten rule to this I don't know.
Should I change perspective, place quotes while there aren't any in the original text, or keep it literal?

[Cosmic Eagle]

I use brackets or " " whichever is more suitable followed by , he thought.

[pudding321]

1. Directly dump the sentence there.

2. If it feels strange, just add whatever you need to—he thought, he guessed, he wondered etc.

3. If it still feels strange, rephrase it or what. Don't mind about the alter in sentence anymore. You're translating it into English (or whatever other language) and not Jap-English.

Just don't do everything mechanically the same.

[Dohma]

Thanks, both.

I think I'll just change it into what sounds best in English. If an editor/proofreader thinks something gets lost in the translation we can always discuss the matter.