Ask Localization Megathread

[Selindrile]

That was an awesome read Grekumah, and I'm extremely amused and pleased by your use of the word "grokable".

[Sapphire]

Good day, Sapphire!

Thank you for your questions!

Why thank YOU for your answers!

I'm frankly impressed there was an answer (much less so in-depth) to the Palandin/Knight question given how long ago that call had to be made!

I for one, will admit to have the Fear of Shantotto put in me early and it is strong. After she hit me with a Bind and then nuked me... Yeah any CS where she asks me a question I pick the most groveling way I can acquiesce. Cause she'll kill me. And then laugh.

So Ordostrillicus, eh... Alliteration is amongst his amazing abilities? (Someone stop me.)

And for some background to why I find your answers to fascinating, I work in the US anime industry, and lived with someone who is a J->E localizer for years. The fact that you get to be right there next to the people writing this stuff is rather amazing, I'm used to not just an ocean between creators and localizers, but so many middle men! Pretty sure almost every translator I've ever worked with/been friends with would kill to be able to pick the original creators' brains when they come to a sticky-wicket translation issue.

[Unelonborro]

Good day, everyone!

Wow! That's a lot of questions! I'll try to work my way down the list, but it'll be a bit, since I've got a lot of bug fixing to do today.

[Unelonborro]

Dating back to my first Final Fantasy game, FF II in the US, but the original FF IV, I was always under the impression that all localization was done locally. With you being so open about the process though, we've all learned otherwise. How has handling the English localization shaped your knowledge of items and such? How long have you been handling the localization? You mentioned in the above post that in many of the earlier retro games, we may remember such classes as "knight" that are now referred to as "paladin." Are there any other such examples where SE's stance has changed in order to provide a better name to a class, item, area, etc? One that I THINK I remember from the old days was Dragoon being known as "Dragon Knight" but I may be remembering that from a different game.

This is a really good question. I am not in charge of SQUARE ENIX's localization department in any capacity (just in charge here on XI), but I can certainly talk a little bit about background information.

Back when I was a young'un and Japanese video games first started making their way to the US, localization was handled by Japanese nationals who may or may not have had a strong grasp of English--not just at Squaresoft or Enix, but at pretty much every company at the time. This is how we came up with such classics as "A winner is you" and "All your base are belong to us." As the niche for Japanese games grew, so, too, did the need for competent localization, and most companies started shifting from Japanese natives to English natives (and eventually branching out into other languages as well). At various points throughout the company's history, the localization department has had to make a choice: do we stick to older ways of doing things, because players are familiar with it and that's part of the charm? Or do we update things in a way that might break with past conventions but increases the fidelity of the final product? Here's the kicker--there's no right answer, and different projects within the department have come, do come, and will continue to come to different conclusions. During the remake of FINAL FANTASY IV, for example, there was a huge debate surrounding Tellah's "You spoony bard." During FINAL FANTASY XIV, the question arose of whether to use the Cure/Cura/Curaga or Cure I/Cure II/Cure III naming conventions. It's all a matter of what the team decides best matches the needs of the game.

In the same vein, how about the names of many of the relic, mythic, and empyean weapons? Many of these take on very classic names that players are familiar with, such as Excalibur, Ragnarok, Apocalypse, Mjolnir, etc. Are these names able to accurately be named in Japanese, or do they follow a similar pattern to the knight >> paladin example above, and Excalibur is known as, in example, "the holy sword" in Japanese?

These weapons are, indeed, very classic names that most Western connoisseurs of fantasy and mythology are familiar with, and they are rendered faithfully into katakana (transliterated) in the Japanese. There are very, very few weapons and armor in the game that use kanji and are not ninja/samurai gear (and those we transliterate character-for-character.)

Concerning in game holiday events, I'd imagine many (myself included) westerners are unfamiliar with Japanese holidays, and just as well for Japanese people being unfamiliar with western holidays. How did you guys decide on which to include and omit? How important are some of these in the Japanese culture? Sometimes in dev posts, we'll see them dressed in Yakutas or other festive wear, and I'm surprised to see that. Is that akin to say, someone coming to work in a Halloween costume for one day as a celebration, or are the festivities much more ingrained than that?

I was not around during the times that these decisions were made, so I can't speak to the thought process behind them. I can say, though, that the devs are always mindful that we have players from around the world, and make decisions accordingly. For Japanese-flavored events, the doll festival is probably the most overt, and it's something of which every Japanese person is intimately aware. Other things, like the Sunbreeze Festival, are more "Japanese-inspired" than actually Japanese, kind of like most MMOs' Christmas events are "Christmas-inspired".

This might sway to the battle content end, but instead of bumping my previous Idris topic or creating a report, I was curious if you could shed any light onto why it was decided that Ergons would not received the +30% bonus damage to the Ergon WS, as the Mythic weapons do. Perhaps an oversight?

This is something I don't have any knowledge of, and my feeble attempts at answering it would only leave you wanting. Sorry.

[Martel]

I have a few questions relating to FFXI's localization versus the naming conventions of previous Final Fantasy games:

Why Inferno and not Hellfire for Ifrit's Astral Flow?(Is it because of the ESRB rating that you can't use "Hell"?.
Why Earthen Fury instead of Gaia's Wrath for Titan's Astral Flow?
Why Tidal Wave instead of Tsunami for Leviathan's Astral Flow? (Is it too sensitive in Japan to use Tsunami?)
Why Aspir instead of Osmose? (FF4/FF9)
Why Spirt Surge instead of Lancet(Dragon Sword) as it's called in the JP and FFV)
Why Sabre Dance instead of Sword Dance as in FFV?
Why Ryunohige instead of Dragon Whisker as in FF9/FFTactics?
Why Souleater instead of Darkness for DRK's job ability?

Whoever decided to leave this in the original JP, good call!

While the literal meaning may be the same, the western and eastern concepts of dragons are so very different that you don't get the same feeling from the names.

Heck, the classic western interpretation of a dragon doesn't typically even have what could be called whiskers. You say dragon whisker around a westerner and they're like... "Dragons have whiskers?"

Because of this, the name felt really silly to me when I first encountered it(which I admit, was a really long time ago.) It'd be kinda like finding some boots called snake's boots.(Not boots made of snake skin, but boots for a snake.) Evokes that, "Huh? what?" kinda feeling.

I think silly is not the feeling we want to get from the names of our legendary weapons.

But Ryunohige doesn't give me that feeling. And leaving it in JP links it to the eastern concept of dragons. Which are more symbols of power, good fortune, wisdom and benevolence. And do tend to have what can be seen as "whiskers", and "beards".

So thank you, localization team, for ignoring the precedent, and leaving it as Ryunohige. ^^

[Unelonborro]

I am curious about the process involved in taking player feedback - In the past we have seen responses come from the community teams that seem vague, confused or perhaps just factually incorrect, additionally I'm curious as to what extent what we say has been sent over. Are threads distilled down to their most basic points, or are specific points and ideas taken by players and translated? For instance, if someone were to suggest in a thread about job balance a new ability would that get sent over, or would the finer points of the thread such as requests for a buff be taken into consideration. At any time during this are you or other staff on the team asked to clarify some points on the NA/EU forums?

I also am curious as to what qualifications are necessary to become a community representative - I'm assuming experience with the game is in there, but what else? It must be hard being one, the amount of misplaced shouting..

I honestly cannot speak to the community team's processes, because my contact with them as a member of the localization team is somewhat limited, but I can say I know they work very hard to ensure your voices are heard in ways that I cannot. The community teams for both languages relay what information they have, and report back whatever they can (there's no conspiracy, honest!) On the Japanese forums, the non-Matsui devs will sometimes chime in, but more often than not it's the community team relaying information. As for me, I speak to you as someone from the dev team whose involvement in the process is rather specific, and I hope that my being here adds something positive to your FINAL FANTASY XI experience.

As for the requirements for becoming a community rep or GM--that's something I have absolutely no knowledge of. Sorry.

How do you decide what does and does not get added to the autotranslate? And is there a possibility for the short versions of Job names to be added - I ask, because when trying to create a shout asking for certain jobs you'll find that the text buffer gets too full to accomodate everything you're asking for. Also, is it possible for Difficult, Very Difficult, Easy, and Normal to be added?

Autotranslate is a bit of a tricky one, especially when we had all four languages, but the planner in charge is always adding things as the situation arises. As for the short form job names, that's been brought up before, but the problem is that because the entries in Japanese would be so short, it would almost certainly cause issues when people try to use it in unintended ways.

To what extent to the developers play FFXI and other MMOs, and RPGs? It must be hard to both develop and enjoy a game at the same time, seeing how the sausage is made and what have you.

Although I can't speak to the gaming habits of all of our devs, the answer to FFXI is a resounding yes, we play it. A couple of our newer planners applied to the company specifically because they were XI players who wanted to work on the game. A lot of our battle planners are hard-core users. I can think of at least two people who met their spouses in-game. As for me, personally, I play pretty much anything and everything, from MMO to FPS, RTS, turn-based strategy, smartphone, PC, console, and more!

What difficulty is there in translating story elements? Are there any common idioms that would be hard to explain to a western audience that get changed? Any jokes that rely heavily on japanese pronunciation or culture? What decisions then have to go into translating these, and how much creative freedom do you have to do so?

When translating story elements, our general rule of thumb is that the story should always be the same, but it should read as if it was written for a Western audience, not a Japanese one. We are a Japanese company, and the original text is in Japanese, but there's one factor that trumps all--Vana'diel is not Japan. One of the critical missions that the event and story planners have to is create a Vana'diel that feels comfortable, familiar, and believable to a Japanese audience. My job is to take their framework and create a Vana'diel that feels comfortable, familiar, and believable to an English-speaking audience. Both of our English MMOs have extremely wide latitude in our translation processes, and we are able to change things like patterns of speech, jokes, dialogue structure, and the like if it means creating a final product that will resonate with the playerbase.

One example I like to give is what anime fans will recognize as the "tsundere" character. You know, the stereotypical "B-but it's not like I like you or anything!" This works for a Japanese audience. This works for an anime-enjoying Western audience. The problem is that it's a character trope that is incredibly vexing if you're not a Japanophile--and we don't create games for Japanophiles, we create games for a broad Western audience. We don't want you to have to have any prior understanding of Japan to enjoy yourself.

What are some of the most difficult tasks you have had to overcome as Localization leader?

I'd say the most challenging aspect is naming. I've mentioned this in another thread, but the localization team is in charge of naming all weapons, armor, NPCs, content name, ability names, spell names, target names, etc. etc, and it is my responsibility to make sure our proposals are sound. With weapons, armor, and NPCs there's a bit of leeway, but content and ability names in particular are quite difficult. The words need to accurately describe what the content is while also being easy enough for a Japanese player to understand. We get the naming request from the planner in charge together with a spec sheet, and spend half a a day or so coming up with upwards of twenty different suggestions. We throw about fifteen out and propose our favorites of the remainder to the devs, who have the final say. Sometimes they like it right away. Sometimes they like the meaning of the word but feel it's too long, which is why we have "Skirmish" in English but "Skirm" in Japanese. Sometimes they don't like any and it's back to the drawing board (I think it took about a week to finalize "Alluvion Skirmishes.") For an even more recent example, I spent about four hours researching waltzes to come up with "Contradance," including watching a bunch of youtube videos.

I'll lead this into another story. In Japanese, the Trust Initiative is called "Faith." We originally proposed the name "Trust," which the devs absolutely loved, but then right before QA started Japan's Prime Minister Abe gave a widely-panned speech about the Tokyo Olympics in which he used the English phrase "Trust Me"...aaand that was it for "Trust" in Japanese. They decided to go with "Faith," but when considering what the system is about (you earn the NPCs' trust--they dont put blind faith in you) we decided to keep it as "Trust" in English.

[Raydeus]

One example I like to give is what anime fans will recognize as the "tsundere" character. You know, the stereotypical "B-but it's not like I like you or anything!" This works for a Japanese audience. This works for an anime-enjoying Western audience. The problem is that it's a character trope that is incredibly vexing if you're not a Japanophile--and we don't create games for Japanophiles, we create games for a broad Western audience. We don't want you to have to have any prior understanding of Japan to enjoy yourself.

This is the reason why I've been very tempted over the years to just mod the Japanese text into my game. Unfortunately I've been very lazy learning Kanjis to do actually it. =/


And my Question(s) :

How satisfied are you with the changes NPC's personalities suffer when localizing their dialog?
Which characters do you think are the most affected (if any)?
And if there are, which characters would you personally like to go back and rewrite the dialog for because of this?

[Zubis]

One example I like to give is what anime fans will recognize as the "tsundere" character. You know, the stereotypical "B-but it's not like I like you or anything!" This works for a Japanese audience. This works for an anime-enjoying Western audience. The problem is that it's a character trope that is incredibly vexing if you're not a Japanophile--and we don't create games for Japanophiles, we create games for a broad Western audience. We don't want you to have to have any prior understanding of Japan to enjoy yourself.

Gotta say I appreciate this a lot, there's nothing worse than playing a game and having an incredibly dry story because someone decided that a direct translation from Japanese to English was better than localising it.

I think FFXI's quest and mission dialogues are certainly more fun and quirky in the last couple of years - some of the very early stuff was not perhaps as entertaining as it could have been.

Some related questions:

• Is there a huge story bible for the game?
• What happens if a quest is added involving a NPC that maybe hasn't been in use in 5 or 6 years? Do you have to go back to the original quests involving the NPC to get a feel for how they speak?

[Nyerieri]

Unelonborro,

Are you the localization lead on FFXIV as well? If not, do you help out at all? If you help out, is there anything different between localization of the two games?

Why do some pieces of gear flow over with one word or number on the second page? Buremte gloves for example have +13% by itself on the second page of the text

[pancakesandsx]

I have a more recent localization question, why delve and not menace inspector? I personally like the way the latter rolls off the tongue, so if there's a story behind the change on that one I'd like to hear it.

Also, when you use a delve shard to get plasm, the message has said menace plasm instead of mywea since the event was introduced.