*The* students [?]

> *The* students [?]

Perhaps "the students" would sound better, but perhaps just "students" is OK, too.

It looks like the Spanish translated this as "the students."

eng
Students discussed the problem of brain death for a long time.
jpn
学生たちは脳死の問題について長々と議論した。

To me, plain "students" suggests "students in general", not a group of students, and that sounds improbable given the narrow subject matter.

Dropping the definite article like this is characteristic of reportage when the sentence relates to some definite event already mentioned, e.g.:

"The seminar was well attended. Students..."
"During the morning seminar, students..."

I would probably reword it myself, though.

I have no problem with rewording this, but TRANG has asked us not to change things that are correct, so I didn't change it when I adopted this sentence from the Tanaka Corpus.

If other native English speakers feel this is absolutely wrong, then I'll change it and notify the owners of the linked sentences that this one has changed.

Maybe this would be a case where it's best to just add the alternative variant as a new sentence. The sentence itself isn't clearly wrong.