Ask Localization Megathread

[Unelonborro]

Since you handled localization and know about the new character introduced in Rapsodies...

My question is :

In your opinion, will she be an even better waifu than Arciela?

I'll like you to decide if she's a better waifu than Arciela, but since the patch releases in less than a day I'll tell you that she's a bit more stoic!

[Dragoy]

Hies!

Xzomit: ZOH-mitt
Hu'Xzoi: who-ZOI
Pso 'Xja: SEW-ja
Abdhaljs: AB-dolls

As for our unusual naming tendencies, you'll notice that over time we have moved toward more grokkable area names, particularly in the Adoulin areas: less "Bostaunieux Oubliette" more "Kamihr Drifts." This reflects the tendencies of whoever was the lead translator at the time. I make it a point to visit fan sites and unofficial forums, where players tend to be more frank about their opinions, and I know that many of you refer to Bostaunieux Oubliette as "Boston Omelette." This tickles me to no end, but when I became lead, the devs and I agreed that things should take on a more direct approach--something that was memorable yet easy to remember. What do you think about the shift in direction?

I, for one, don't mind it. However, being Finnish, I might automagically think of, and pronounce all these very differently. I may often prefer the old ways, but if I do think of these “in English”, I certainly understand the change. ^^


Many thanks again for all your replies here, as well as for all your (and the rest of the team's) efforts in general! (Past and present, as well as the crescent... I mean future!)

[Merton9999]

1. Vitiation is a word, whereas vitivation is not. We argued this one back and forth for probably a week, and eventually decided that "vitivation" rolled a little bit better of the tongue, so that's what we ended up going with. What do you think? Does it sound better to you, or would you perfer we stay faithful to the word? There's no right or wrong answer, so feel free to offer your insight!

Thanks for the answers, Unelonborro!

I appreciate the process of starting with something classic or official, then adding a unique and personal, but subtle, twist to it. Your approach was similar, and I think vitivation does in fact sound better. Good choice!

One other thing I find interesting is that when I first read vitivation, I immediately thought of vetiver, an essential oil I've used in the past. It's used to relieve stress and emotional trauma. Vitiation + Vetiver = Vitivation? Spoil (Enfeeble) + Relieve (Heal) = RDM? I like your "it sounded better" answer but this was fun to think about too

For the azimuth attire, for example, one aspect of geomancers in XI is their focus on circles and spheres. You can see it in a lot of the ability names (concentric pulse, etc.) and also in the way the geocolure and indicolure spells operate.

Yeah, azimuth made complete sense to me as being fitting for geomancers. I was just trying to imagine how fun it would be to pore over old math text books and websites looking for that perfect word that was both fitting and obscure!

I know that many of you refer to Bostaunieux Oubliette as "Boston Omelette." This tickles me to no end...

This has always been one of my favorites. It's up there with Temple of Ugly People.

[Ophannus]

Drakesbane in the JP is 雲蒸竜変 which according to Google Translate is "Strange Cloud". I'm sure this is an idiomatic phrase only understood by Japanese people in the context of their culture's mythos surrounding eastern dragons (e.g. Mistmelt/Cloud Evoker). I couldn't find anything on the interwebs about it but I was wondering if you could provide a brief description of what 雲蒸竜変 really eludes to. I know it was localized to "Drakesbane" before your time. I'm presuming that dragons require clouds to fly, and 雲蒸竜変 related to disrupting clouds somehow which I suppose would result in a dragon 'falling'. And an attack which destroys the clouds necessary for a dragon to fly, would be a bane to a dragon? I'm just using deductive logic here based on my extremely limited japanese, but was just curious!

Also I was wondering why Ryuken (Dragon Sword) DRG's SP1 was localized to Spirit Surge in FFXI when in previous FF games it was simply called Lancet/Lancer/Dragon Sword. Was Dragon Sword/Lancet not 'cool' or dramatic enough for an SP name? I also remember getting hyped about DRG's SP2 before it was released, back before you guys actually named it "Fly High", and I remember being so disappointed at its name. 1) because 'Fly High" sounds so mundane, and 2) I was halfway hoping you guys would name it "Highwind" after Highwind being a very prominent term relating to DRGs throughout the FF series (and also the name of DRG's ultimate Jump attack in several other FF games). Seeing as Manafont, Benediction, and Summoner's Astral Flow abilities are all names of ultimate skills those jobs use in other games, Highwind would have been a better name than "Fly High", which I think is actually almost seems like a synonym for High Wind as both terms allude to altitude/flying, but I think Fly High as not having as much fan service as Highwind, in the same regard as Hellfire, Gaia's Wrath, Tsunami, Dark Messenger being renamed Inferno, Earthen Fury, Tidal Wave and Ruinous Omen. Even if the latter are more 'accurate' translations.

I know that many of you refer to Bostaunieux Oubliette as "Boston Omelette." This tickles me to no end...

While true, the newer zones are easier to pronounce, the former stylized naming conventions were probably more 'grown-up' and actually preserved more accurate meaning. A dungeon is very generic, but an Oubliette is a very particular kind of french-style dungeon, and Sand'Oria is very much based on medieval France. Calling it simply a dungeon wouldn't confer the same 'feel' as calling it an Oubliette, though 90% of players don't care about that sort of deeper connection to lore and maintaining meaning, but moving forward it probably is a better choice to use terms like "Drifts" or "Fields" rather than archaic terms.

Also one more thing. I'm extremely proud of the FFXI localization team for sticking with FF style naming conventions of items. I groan when I play any other RPG series and items are named like "Staff of Fiery Striking" or "Sword of Frozen Spite" or "Helmet of Magick'd Fortitude" I hate RPGs that use "[Blank] of [Blankity] [Blank]" for items, it's so cheesy and feels too D&Dish. Whereas FF games typically name items after a noun or a single adjective Cleric's Robe, Bloodsword, Masamune, Noble's Tunic, etc... It's less pretentious and a lot less annoying, also it's more fun reading about the lore behind some of these items and their terms (i.e. Estoqueuer) rather than boring names in other games e.g. Shield of Divine Light---BORING.

[Unelonborro]

Good day, Ophannus!

Let me get to your questions one by one.

Drakesbane in the JP is 雲蒸竜変 which according to Google Translate is "Strange Cloud". I'm sure this is an idiomatic phrase only understood by Japanese people in the context of their culture's mythos surrounding eastern dragons (e.g. Mistmelt/Cloud Evoker). I couldn't find anything on the interwebs about it but I was wondering if you could provide a brief description of what 雲蒸竜変 really eludes to. I know it was localized to "Drakesbane" before your time. I'm presuming that dragons require clouds to fly, and 雲蒸竜変 related to disrupting clouds somehow which I suppose would result in a dragon 'falling'. And an attack which destroys the clouds necessary for a dragon to fly, would be a bane to a dragon? I'm just using deductive logic here based on my extremely limited japanese, but was just curious!

雲蒸竜変, pronounced "Unjo-ryohen" (for you kanji fiends out there, the third character is actually prounced "ryo" in this instance, not "ryu"), is what's called in Japanese a "yoji-jukugo," a four kanji compound phrase that plays a role very similar to what we would term an "idiom." A well known example of a yoji jukugo is 一石二鳥 (isseki-nicho), which in English is "Kill two birds with one stone." Many of these translate into phrases rather than single words. When we coming up with a skill or ability name, anything longer than about two words is out unless there's a really good reason (I know there are a couple with three, but they usually contain filler words like "of" (Knights of Round, Chant du Cygne, etc.))

Now, let's talk about the meaning of "Unjo-ryohen." I'm creative licensing this a little bit, but it essentially means "a great leader or hero will appear in times of need to save the land." The third character, 竜, (usually pronounced "ryu") refers to a dragon. Let's take the two of these aspects together: In western lore, our fantasy heroes often do things like saving kingdoms, rescuing princesses, and--you guessed it--slaying dragons. With a term like "drakesbane," you get a triple whammy: you keep the dragon present in the original Japanese, you call forth an image of of heroism, and you have a short, pithy word that sounds like an ability name.

As you mentioned, it was named before my time, but I have a feeling my guess is pretty spot-on.

Also I was wondering why Ryuken (Dragon Sword) DRG's SP1 was localized to Spirit Surge in FFXI when in previous FF games it was simply called Lancet/Lancer/Dragon Sword. Was Dragon Sword/Lancet not 'cool' or dramatic enough for an SP name? I also remember getting hyped about DRG's SP2 before it was released, back before you guys actually named it "Fly High", and I remember being so disappointed at its name. 1) because 'Fly High" sounds so mundane, and 2) I was halfway hoping you guys would name it "Highwind" after Highwind being a very prominent term relating to DRGs throughout the FF series (and also the name of DRG's ultimate Jump attack in several other FF games). Seeing as Manafont, Benediction, and Summoner's Astral Flow abilities are all names of ultimate skills those jobs use in other games, Highwind would have been a better name than "Fly High", which I think is actually almost seems like a synonym for High Wind as both terms allude to altitude/flying, but I think Fly High as not having as much fan service as Highwind, in the same regard as Hellfire, Gaia's Wrath, Tsunami, Dark Messenger being renamed Inferno, Earthen Fury, Tidal Wave and Ruinous Omen. Even if the latter are more 'accurate' translations.

I find it very interesting that you bring up Highwind here, because it was originally on the short list of ideas that we thought up during the naming process but ultimately discarded it. It's a term that we have to be very careful about using, because Highwind has been a bit over the map historically: sometimes it refers to dragoons, sometimes to airships, sometimes to Cid. (of course, sometimes Cid is ALSO dragoon-like, but that's neither here nor there)

I believe the most recent main title we've used Highwind in was the ios/android Final Fantasy Dimensions (good game--if you're interested in retro Final Fantasy I would give it a go), and there it was an airship.

So that's the background behind "Highwind" as a term. That in and of itself wouldn't be a reason to cross the name off the list, but there's one other consideration--at the time of naming, we were right in the middle of the Adoulin questline involving Midras, and Cid pops up as a guest figure. This gave me pause, because bringing Cid back into the picture at this juncture opens up the possibility that the planner in charge of the quest decides to trot out the name. As such, it was decided to discard the name in favor of Fly High.

What do you think? Would you have kept it as Highwind, or would you have looked for something else? If something else, what direction would you liked to have seen it go in?

As an aside, most of those continuing Adoulin subquests will be getting closure in the next few months, so you'll be able to find out exactly what happens to Roskin, Nashu, the Blackthorn Coven, and a bunch of other Adoulin characters.

[Ophannus]

Awesome, very cool indeed! I guess I figured the words Fly High were already so near in meaning to a more parsimonious and no-brainer name like Highwind which would have been gratuitous fan service, but I do see your logic. I just wondered if it even came up or if it flew over your heads (no pun intended of course :P)
A minor correction, I think in Dimensions, it was Highwind Tower during the Dragoon Chapter.

I asked a Japanese friend of mine to translate the idiom for me and his definition was similar to yours:
"From turmoil, a hero arises to save his people, like a dragon ascending from dark clouds towards the sky/heaven."

I also hope the devs make reference to the "Drake Tamers" we heard about back from Achtelle in WoTG, an Adoulinian DRG NPC who makes mention that Adoulin is home to Wyverns....which we've seen 0 of either Tamers or Drakes in the entire expansions
I think they mentioned the Mummur's Coalition being Drakestamers but I don't think it's ever been shown/mentioned at all, and I heard they were working on a quest...keeping my fingers crossed for this update.

[Economizer]

First, I've heard a rumor a very long time ago that the /check function has or had a phrase that could be considered rude in Japanese. NA players can spam /check (Player examines you.) quite a bit. Is this or was this ever the case? If it is the case, could this be fixed?

Second, the autotranslate function in this game is a work of art even when not talking to people who don't share your language. When I've played FFXI heavily and switch to other text based communication, I can spam the tab key quite a bit (to be honest, I'm sad the forums themselves don't support this feature... we don't even have open and closing brackets as emoticons!).

I remember "back in the day" that there were guides on how to talk to JP players with romanjii phrases, such as FFXIclopedia's Japanese-English Bard Song List (mostly written in 2007), or their Auto-Translator: In-Depth guide explaining what the auto-translate phrases exactly mean. Additionally NA player's vocabulary has always been affected by JP players, everyone should know what D2 means.

However, it can be frustrating when JP players don't use Auto-Translate at all. Whereas I don't blame the players, it is still a source of annoyance. You can only type in romanjii if you're on the NA client. There is no copy-paste function to even throw in phases into a poor quality online machine translator. If only this game had official support for fan made add-ons, or allowed the usage of the infamous third-party client I don't even need to name, this could be remedied by the fans. I've read about fan based auto-translators that detect Japanese text and compare it to an FFXI specific dictionary. It isn't perfect, but it would certainly help bridge the gap between the two communities FFXI shares.

[Unelonborro]

Good day, Economizer,

Sorry for not getting back to you about this earlier. I'm unable to answer all your questions, but I can definitely hit back on this one:

First, I've heard a rumor a very long time ago that the /check function has or had a phrase that could be considered rude in Japanese. NA players can spam /check (Player examines you.) quite a bit. Is this or was this ever the case? If it is the case, could this be fixed?

I'm in no position to judge what the JP player base as a whole feels, but the Japanese version of this text is じっと見つめる, which is much more aggressive sounding in JP than it is in EN. Let's take a step into the wayback machine.

I'm a bit of an MMO player, having gotten my start in Diku MUDs back in the dark days of 19XX when I was in high school. Eventually what we would consider the first MMOs came out, starting with Meridian 59 back in 1996. UO was released a bit later, and eventually we ended up with the genre-defining giant that was the original Everquest. Whereas today the influence of WoW is undeniable, back then the same was true of Everquest, which anyone familiar with the genre knows is a diku-style mmo. Because of this, many things that would come to be done via a graphical user interface in later years were still done via text commands: /check is one such thing.

Now, keep in mind that more western players were familiar with MMOs when XI came out in EN than JP players were when XI came out in JP. We were already used to working with text commands that echoed things to the recipient, such as /check. However, Everquest did not have a Japanese version, so there was no preconceived notion for what a "/check" command would return in Japanese (there already was in EN). The JP that was eventually chosen (literally, "[Player] stares at you") can be read more aggressively in Japanese, especially if /check is done multiple times in quick succession. The EN reads much softer because, again--it's what an existing EN-speaking MMO player would have expected. (I can't speak to the FR and DE sides of things.)

I'm oversimplifying things slightly, but that's a brief history behind /check in both languages! Why the JP didn't go with the much more neutral verb 調べる like they did in the help text for /check is a mystery for the ages.

[Olor]

This is my favourite thread. Thanks so much for everything Unelonborro.

You talked about making place names more grokkable... but where do they come from? Do you just put some syllables together that sound good? As far as I can tell Morimar isn't a word for example. How do you come up with those names? I think they sound very authentic - like real names of real places.

I am a gamemaster for a tabletop RPG, in a homebrew world and I find coming up with good place names is hard. What's your process?

[Unelonborro]

This is my favourite thread. Thanks so much for everything Unelonborro.

You talked about making place names more grokkable... but where do they come from? Do you just put some syllables together that sound good? As far as I can tell Morimar isn't a word for example. How do you come up with those names? I think they sound very authentic - like real names of real places.

I am a gamemaster for a tabletop RPG, in a homebrew world and I find coming up with good place names is hard. What's your process?

It really depends a lot on the context. We have a list of stock NPC names that we draw from whenever we have characters who are relatively unimportant in terms of lore--for example, Affi and Dremi in the Escha areas were drawn from our pool. Every so often we run out and have to think of some more.

Most Elvaan, you have noticed, have French-sounding names. These names were always thought up by the French team, so when the FR and DE versions were canceled I had the FR team come up with 200 male and female Elvaan names before they got reassigned to different projects.

Obviously, other names need to have specific directions based on how they are being used. For example, over in Vagary one of the bosses is Perfidien. We wanted to make a name that sounds like "Melvien" but is more sinister, so I asked a former XI French translator who now works on XIV to come up with an evil-sounding French name, and that's what we ended up going with.

Balamor is another recent example. When we were coming up with names for important figures in Adoulin, we were given concept art, background stories, roles that they would play, and dev names. Balamor's dev name was "Death Jester," and he looks a bit like a clown, so we decided to come up with something cool-sounding that went along those lines. "Balatro" is a Roman word for someone who is a professional buffoon or jester, and those of higher economic classes often hired them to perform at their feasts and banquets. "Mors" is, of course, the latin word/root for "death." Combine those two and you end up with Balamor!

Sometimes we just want something that has a certain "ring" to it. For example, we have the Celennia Memorial Library over in Adoulin. Celennia, whose full name is Celennia Wexworth, was actually originally intended to have a bit more of a role in the Seekers of Adoulin story, but we ended up not finding the proper timing to fit her in. The event team wanted someone who sounded pure and heavenly, so we took our cue from the word "celestial" and massaged it into a very feminine sounding name. As an aside, the reason we ended up at "Celennia Memorial Library" instead of "Wexworth Memorial Library" is because Celennia is easier to pronounce in JP.