Equating Japanese honorifics with their Western counterparts

The suffix of -san means mister, miss, or mrs. -san is gender-neutral, not gender-specific

-sama would be equivalent to "sir", "ma'am", or "master"

Sir is used as a honorific before the given name of knights of Europe. For example; Sir William, Sir George.

-dono is even higher than -sama so it is equivalent to lord or lady. Amidamaru calls Yoh "Yoh-dono" in my bootlegged video Shaman King while Amidamaru addressed him as "Lord Yoh" in the Shaman King manga.

-sensei is referred to a mentor or a teacher. It would be equivalent to a Professor in college, to a coach in sports, to a master/instructor in martial arts, or to a mister or miss in elementary, middle and high schools or to an instructor in flight schools, cooking schools, and perhaps the military, etc .

-chan would be similar to "'little", or lass. I have heard peopple say "Little Heidi" or "Little Betty".

-kun would be similar to buddy or pal.

You can'ty really equate them... there some culture involved can't be simply substituted. You just have "to know".

Yes, GP-san is right! There are actually no "true" equivalents for many words between Japanese and English/Western languages because they are rooted in their own respective cultures.

The gap is narrower for technical, scientific and other terms of recent coinage.

The lack of equivalence is one of the things that makes it interesting to learn a new language - like you need a Japanese word to say 'tsunami', unless you want to say 'a very large ocean wave caused by an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption'. I also like the german 'schadenfreude', and I don't know how many phrases that are better expressed in Latin.

Actually I think tidal wave would word... I think it's a similar word to Typhoon, which we use in English to denote a hurricane in Asia. :/

Yeah, but a tsunami isn't a tidal wave.

This might be a little off topic, but here is an awesome page w/ info about honorifics:

All Anime World: Lesson 12: Name suffixes

I liked this page 'cause it explained what -han and -yan were. (I heard a lot of those when I watch Yakitate! Japan since two of the main characters use Kansai-ben)