That’s interesting. Which C64 font and libraries have you tried? (I would like to experiment with them myself.) The C64 font was the commercial one AFAIR?
Oh, yeah, that’s absolutely true! I had to be pragmatic in the past a lot of times too. 
And as I said above: It’s easier for translators to change a bitmap font (with Photoshop) than a TTF font. So it’s wasn’t a “bad” decision.