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The auto-translate function is one of the greatest things conceived in an MMO especially one like Final Fantasy where you have many different people with many different languages coming together to share in the experience but it's not without its faults.
The idea of this thread is to compile some of the less useful or unclear parts of the auto-translate:
(Buy?) and (Sell?) Have always been remarkably unclear to me. Am I buying or are you looking to buy? Am I selling or are you looking to sell?
"Please assist" translates in Japanese to "please save me" as in you are in danger of dying, IIRC. There's a lot of things that don't mean what we think at the other end of auto-translate.
I remember that (Reward) was one of them and that's why they added (Reward:) to the translate function because the ability we call reward was called treat to the Japanese or something along those lines.
I remember /checking JPs said something along the lines of "x stares intently at you" or some such non-sense, at least that's what I remember people saying was the cause of JPs ALWAYS gear swapping the second you checked them lol.
I'd be interested in knowing what "Can I have it?" and "Do you have it?" come out to, as JPs always seem confused when I try and communicate with those phrases. "Excuse me..." too would be good to know, since that alone means different things in English. It's classified under greetings, but the ... always felt odd with it.
And "Are you alone?" just to know if it's as awkward sounding to them as it is to us. XD
{Are you alone?}{I'll follow you}
Speaking of Auto-translate, (and this may not be possible to do in game) I would really like it if we could see both versions of the word/phrase being used. Take the aforementioned (Please assist.) for instance, since I know a bit of Japanese I always wonder if it translates to 助けてください or to 手伝ってください, both of which can have very different meanings.
Or maybe it translates to something else. How would I know? How can I avoid the Reward / Reward: mistake if I can't type in Japanese to avoid it and don't know how the A-T phrase is actually being translated to Japanese?
So while the Auto-translate can be very useful it, along with the inability to type Kana in the NA/EU client, doesn't work as well as a learning tool to encourage communication between people speaking different languages. XI and anime encouraged me to learn Japanese, yet, paradoxically the way the system is handled in game discourages me from attempting to use what I've learned to communicate with Japanese players in a better way.
HOWEVER! Now that we only have English and Japanese language, and that PS2 support has been dropped outside of Japan, it would be a very good time to finally have IME enabled at least on the PC version of the game. Also, if the client can't display both versions of the phrases maybe they could at least make a little XI app that contained all current Auto-translated phrases in both languages for easy access. Even better if it also contained information about the context in which the phrase is being translated, which would be very helpful for both Japanese and English-speaking players trying to communicate with each other.
I see stupid people use (May)(Bee) from time to time.
But that's just to be silly and not to actually use the auto translation properly. It's just like the shouts one sees that ask for a BJ from mithra.