Ask Localization Megathread

[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?

[Unelonborro]

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?

I wouldn't use the word "suffer" when I talk about character personalities in the English localization. It's comparing apples to oranges. The other day I was watching an episode of a popular American spy spoof cartoon and thinking about what kinds of localization processes would be needed to successfully localize that show into Japanese, and the only conclusion I was able to draw was that the viewer would need to have a relatively deep pre-existing knowledge of America to make half the jokes work. The characters need to be American for the show to work, and if you don't have knowledge about American culture, it's simply not going to make sense.

I'll give you a recent example: in the "A Thirst for the Eons" quest (which you should go off and do if you haven't already--the planner had a field day with it) the character Palomel is characterized as a "fujoshi" -- a woman who is into comics and other art forms depicting male homosexual love. Western players don't have that trope in their collective consciousness, so if we kept her as blatant about it as she was in the Japanese, someone without a knowledge of Japanese culture would come across with entirely the wrong impression of what the planner was going for. The planner was going for "comical quirky archetype", but if we kept it in wholesale, it would come across as "crazed sexual deviant" in English. So we changed some aspects of her to maintain the "quirky" attitude the planner was going for in a way that your average English speaker could understand.

In terms of who I would rewrite if given a chance...I can't think of any off the top of my head. Obviously, there are things that I would go back and brush up or change if I had the chance or more time to do so, but most of that is from the earlier days of the game before I joined the project.

[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?

[Unelonborro]

Is there a huge story bible for the game?

Without getting into too much of our internal workings, I can say that we do have an extensive list of resources to draw on!

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?

Oh, most definitely. Every time we have a Trust NPC with an accompanying event, I go back and look over all the quests they were involved in. In terms of the amount of time it takes to translate something, an individual alter ego takes me about three to four times as long as something more recent like the Tarutaru Sauce quests or the Seekers of Adoulin missions. These NPCs are beloved by the playerbase, so we have to do them justice!

The one exception was Ingrid, because she was released nearly simultaneously with her breakout mission and thus was already ingrained into my consciousness.

[Zubis]

Without getting into too much of our internal workings, I can say that we do have an extensive list of resources to draw on!

These NPCs are beloved by the playerbase, so we have to do them justice!

And you did, it's fun going back and seeing the new dialogue for NPCs I haven't spoken to in 8 years :3 Thanks for the reply and thanks for all your team's work on the game.

[Dragoy]

What a delightfully surprising thread indeed!

It's times like this when I want to ask about a plethora of things, but can't think of anything!


Hrm... Something does actually come in mind, that which I have oft pondered about. Why trust and not fa...

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.

...okay. That was quick.

How about del...

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.

Goddess dang it!

I'll just be here in the corner then. -.-'

That is to say, I, too, have hoped for menace inspection and menace plasm.


Anyblue, I guess I'll stay in the corner until I manage to think of/remember something to ask!

'Til then, I would comment on the need to adjust for the audience. While I do understand and even agree on that it's probably for the best in the bigger-like picture of the schemes and things, I have always been in favour of the “original”. I can't fully enjoy (though at times it can be hilarious) watching a Japanese (or any other language) movie/anime with an English (or whatever) dub for example. English isn't my native language; I probably dislike native-to-me dubs even more, but thankfully that almost only happens with things geared towards children on the TV here, or perhaps similar things screened at movie theatres, but I don't watch the TV or the theatres, boring as I am, so that is as they say, that.

I probably do agree with that Vana'diel should not be Japan, however, and in that sense, it makes sense... I maybe guess!

Speaking of dubbing, that's something that has almost made me angry with the more recent games that have voice acting and no option to switch it (a big thanks to those who did it for titles such as Soul Calibur III, though I realise that such games are likely to have a little less dialogue than, say, FINAL FANTASY X, but I take that as no excuse!). FINAL FANTASY XII might be the last one for me, and I sure am glad XI doesn't have this problem. Not that it's a huge issue since I don't even want to play new games any longer (which makes voting with my wallet most effortless), but I digress!

The so called 'international' releases were/are pretty annoying, too!

Another reason for not always appreciating the variance is that I've played nearly half (4-5 years) of my time here (9'ish years) with German players who are not too skilled with doing the English. While we still had German and French clients around, it was more than a few times confusing when names of something (atma and different events for example) are completely different from locale to another. That is, even though it might make sense to adjust to the specific area, those areas do play together, and when each have an event named wildly differently, it can make things confuddling to say the least. Of course the confuddle will only be initial, and when people learn about the differences, it's not such a big of a deal.

A couple of more examples could be jetton, which was used for two different currencies in the German client, and signet and (kindred's etc.) seals (both siegel in German). The in-game text-command for translating items was most helpful, but it didn't help with key-items, and many of those could not be 'fetched' with the auto-translate function either.

Some, if not most of that is of course a thing of the past now, since those locales are not supported any longer. My personal experiences are no doubt a tiny droplet of minority in the vast ocean, but I simply felt like sharing them.


My gargantuan apologies for not actually having any questions (yet), but I'll work on improving upon that!

Many thanksies to you, and everyone else in the team for your work.

Special thanksies for the quite in-depth indeed replies so far!