The Old English melodrama dialog is a bit over the top

[Mholito]

To each their own then. I am surprised that so many people like such decorative dialog.

For a lot of people, it's something they don't see that often, and that makes it more interresting.

[Anonymoose]

I'm always embarrassed because of how terrifically horrible the English voice acting is

I'll defend the fancy language quirks until the catoblepas come home, but I've got to admit that the English vocal audio is an elephant in the room. I know a lot of people who tone it down out of love for the rest of the game, but quietly play with vocals muted or in another language.

I think because the voice actors are mostly seasoned performers, they don't have the freedom to be on hand throughout the majority of the development process. All of their lines may be recorded well before the cutscenes are crafted, leaving the performers with little to go on in terms of situational context and appropriate tone/inflection for how their characters are feeling, thinking, moving. Perhaps they have them read each line a few different ways and pick which one clashes the least. Or, perhaps the scenes are proofed by someone who doesn't hear English conversations very often and can't hear how awkward the tone and infection get, or maybe the cutscenes are lovingly tailored to the Japanese audio and English has to make do the best they can. I'm not sure, but, I'll admit that the result is often... still pretty clashy.

I don't talk about it very often myself, just because it's one scuff on an otherwise beautifully cut gem, and I'm nigh on positive that they're doing the best they can under whatever their circumstances are, but I don't quite understand how experienced talent working with Soken, whose direction has nailed all other aspects of the aural environment, combine into an awkward English track.

[LunaHoshino]

Minfilia: “Please, you must go on! You’re the warrior of light! We need you! The whole realm needs you! As long as we have you, we still have hope!”

Ugh, no. That's horribly generic-- there's no personality to it at all.

In other words, the translators did a poor job of mimicking the syntax structures and word choice of sixteenth century English.

They aren't trying to mimic sixteenth century English, though. What they're trying to do is create their own syntax and language that is specific to the FFXIV world. See their use of 'sellsword' instead of 'mercenary,' for example. That's a word that was coined in sci-fi and fantasy novels, not medieval English. It sounds unnatural because it is unnatural-- that's the entire point. It isn't supposed to sound like 21st century English or sixteenth century English. It's a language all of its own, and on that front, I think they did just fine.

[Diarumuid]

Minfilia: “Please, you must go on! You’re the warrior of light! We need you! The whole realm needs you! As long as we have you, we still have hope!”

Oh my god, that's a even worse localization. You could plop that line in any random shounen anime/video game - sci-fi, fantasy, horror, katamari damacy - and it would not sound out of place in any of them because of how generic and devoid of flavor it is.

[Velox]

snip

You are correct for the most part. One of the most glaring issues in VA for gaming is that actors are not given the same amount of time nor context prior to recordings, unlike movie/television VA. In fact, David Lodge addresses this himself in an old interview (on a side note, although I'm sure many people will recognize him as the voice of Jiraiya for the anime Naruto, he also does the voice of Louisoix for FFXIV). This is mostly due to the nature of video games requiring a much more rapid development cycle with a different central focus. The primary focus of a TV show or movie is the entertainment of the view THROUGH the actors/actress' performance. The primary focus of a video game is the player him/herself and how he/she interacts directly with the world. Voice acting suddenly becomes less important in the grand scheme of the game. No, I'm not saying it's unimportant, merely pointing out that it's "less" important overall when compared to other aspects.

[MercuryD]

Honestly, as far as VA is concerned English does better in my opinion than Japanese. For example, the Admiral. She is a strong character which is shown in English but in Japanese I feel like that's lost...

[Alice_89th]

I think because the voice actors are mostly seasoned performers, they don't have the freedom to be on hand throughout the majority of the development process. All of their lines may be recorded well before the cutscenes are crafted, leaving the performers with little to go on in terms of situational context and appropriate tone/inflection for how their characters are feeling, thinking, moving. Perhaps they have them read each line a few different ways and pick which one clashes the least. Or, perhaps the scenes are proofed by someone who doesn't hear English conversations very often and can't hear how awkward the tone and infection get, or maybe the cutscenes are lovingly tailored to the Japanese audio and English has to make do the best they can. I'm not sure, but, I'll admit that the result is often... still pretty clashy.

I once had the displeasure of reading part of the (Dutch) recording script of a certain game starring a certain small purple dragon. It was a collection of sentences, with no coherence and no context. Some of them were simple exclamations, mixed with sentences that were obviously part of a longer conversation but other sentences from that same conversation turned up much later. It looked like someone had pulled all of the text strings of a specific character from the game and just listed them there, without any regards for their actual order. In a case like this you'll have to pray that the recording producer does know the context. A worst case scenario, true, but it happens.

(for what its worth, I've heard stories where the translators had to work with similar texts. Imagine translating something like that *shudders*. Thankfully SE seems to work with in-house translators so their situation is probably better).

And lets admit it, voice acting is difficult. You only have your voice to show all of your emotions. If you don't show them to a point where it sounds near ridiculous to yourself it will sound incredibly bland later. Plus, Moose has a valid point with the visuals possibly not being available when recording the voices (because they were not yet finished or because of other reasons). If the voices don't match up with what we see, it will appear to clash, even if they might have been near perfect otherwise.

I'm.... not a fan of the English voice work, but I've heard much much worse.

Honestly, as far as VA is concerned English does better in my opinion than Japanese. For example, the Admiral. She is a strong character which is shown in English but in Japanese I feel like that's lost...

This is partly due to cultural expectations. We, as western people (to use a lovely generalizing term), associate being powerful with a more powerful and perhaps deeper voice. While her smoother Japanese voice might suit their expectations better. For each language the person doing the casting will have searched for someone to voice "a strong female leader" but they came up with different answers due to different cultural expectations. Just because it doesn't fit our (western) cultural expectation does't mean it doesn't fit the Japanese one. And even then, those expectations might vary from person to person.

[Terin]

I'll be honest, having read more direct Japanese translations, I *VASTLY* prefer the English localization to more "direct" translations. Now, as I understand it, this last patch didn't has quite an informative a translation as many would have preferred, but in all honesty, localization team has done a fantastic job of just giving the dialogue a sense of *character* and personality, as opposed to "just words".

As far as I'm concerned, the localization team has been hitting home-runs all season long. This last patch was just a little light on dialogue, which left some things feeling under-explained.

[Tenkuu]

I'll defend the fancy language quirks until the catoblepas come home, but I've got to admit that the English vocal audio is an elephant in the room. I know a lot of people who tone it down out of love for the rest of the game, but quietly play with vocals muted or in another language.

This is so late it's embarrassing, but... on the subject of the localization, it is absolutely poorly done. The language quirks, I don't care about them, but the whole changing the entire meaning of a sentence just so the english version can sound cool? That's not localization, that's Americanization, and it's also a very poor translation job. I know that literal translating is bad, but when you change the entire meaning of what a character is saying, that's entirely worse. There has to be a middle ground that this game just hasn't found yet. Having looked at a few of the 1.0 lines, they seemed to be much better translated than ARR, for whatever reason.

I think because the voice actors are mostly seasoned performers, they don't have the freedom to be on hand throughout the majority of the development process. All of their lines may be recorded well before the cutscenes are crafted, leaving the performers with little to go on in terms of situational context and appropriate tone/inflection for how their characters are feeling, thinking, moving. Perhaps they have them read each line a few different ways and pick which one clashes the least. Or, perhaps the scenes are proofed by someone who doesn't hear English conversations very often and can't hear how awkward the tone and infection get, or maybe the cutscenes are lovingly tailored to the Japanese audio and English has to make do the best they can. I'm not sure, but, I'll admit that the result is often... still pretty clashy.

You can't blame the voice actors for having crappy lines, but you certainly can for making the lines sound even worse than they should. I've borne witness to Minfilia's and Y'shtola's wooden lines, for instance in Castrum Centri, though thankfully not in my own game, and by god they sounded horrible. I even remember that what first made me look for a japanese voiceover option for this game before I even knew for certain that one existed was my very first meeting with Thancred. I *adore* his japanese voice actor, even if he is not known to me in anime, but man does his english one sound cheesy. Thancred's personality differs a bit between both versions, and his japanese one is infinitely more charming as the roguish bard. He has both language and personality quirks which make him so likeable in japanese, like how he switches between "ore" and "watashi" depending on who he's with.

I don't talk about it very often myself, just because it's one scuff on an otherwise beautifully cut gem, and I'm nigh on positive that they're doing the best they can under whatever their circumstances are, but I don't quite understand how experienced talent working with Soken, whose direction has nailed all other aspects of the aural environment, combine into an awkward English track.

If the gem to you is the game, I agree. However, I find myself wishing I could play an entire game on the japanese client, and record everyone's lines and translate them to get more accurate lines. I feel like a lot gets lost in translation in this game. Sadly, some characters are considered particularly annoying in the english version, whether because of their voices or because of some of their lines. Minfilia and Alphinaud are both victims of this, and playing with the japanese audio, I can't quite understand all the hate they get.

[Chasely]

What bothers me is the frequency at which they use these phrases. When they say 'Mummer's farce' at least twice a paragraph and 'must needs' every other line it just gets to me monotonous. Maybe the translations team needs a thesaurus for Christmas.