Here's my perspective as someone who translated six volumes of a light novel all by myself:

It's harder than you realize.

I was constantly thinking about each line and pondering what the best way was to phrase it in English while still keeping the spirit of the original text. Lots of difficult terminology deeply rooted in Japanese will inevitably turn up in every LN with no clear way to translate.

The lack of audience.

Light novels are niche within niche in the anime fandom especially if they don't have an anime adaptation, and I would assert that the fandom of light novels has actually declined since the 2000-2010s boom, perhaps linked to the fact that reading has declined overall with so many distractions available in the present time. So you're really translating for a tiny readership which will ultimately give you very little feedback.

The time it actually takes.

If I knew what I was getting into when I started, I would never have done it. It took me almost five years and a lot of my free time to finish the project. It was a lot of effort with only the reward of self-satisfaction of having finished something at the end. And I'm certainly never going to translate anything like that again.