Give us our hiragana

[Laciante]

I fully support the need for us Japanese-literates to be able to legitimately type in Japanese. I know there's a long history as to why it hasn't been allowed us, but it is a continuing serious problem. I only play on PC, so the PS2 thing doesn't really affect me, but I would pay to use the legit. IME

For those who say just use romaji, even if the Japanese were willing to attempt to read it, it would be similar to having to read English in kana (I know the example is shot because katakana is made for foreign words so i'll expect to be reading an English word) I can read it, but it'll take a little longer
For those who say to use the "other forms" there's always the risk that a GM notices and is feeling strict that day.
For those who say use the JP client, My (and I'm sure many other JP-literates) Japanese is decent enough for a conversation, not to play an entire game in, particularly such a richly RPG one like this

[Meyi]

For those who say use the JP client, My (and I'm sure many other JP-literates) Japanese is decent enough for a conversation, not to play an entire game in, particularly such a richly RPG one like this

This. I had forgotten about having to read the entire game in Japanese, but I would struggle with that as well.

PS2 version uses the ATOK IME. SE wants the console version to have the same capability as the PC version, or vice versa, so they don't let the game use the Microsoft IME in regions that the console version doesn't have an IME. An ATOK license is about $60 per user, and accidentally triggering it would generate a lot of tech support calls from people that don't know how to use it, or the keystrokes to toggle it.

I'm not sure if I'd be willing to pay $60 for the Japanese IME, but I would be willing to pay $30.
If the community had always been very welcoming of me in my attempts to communicate with romaji and the auto-translator, I would be much more willing to pay $60 to make their lives easier. But for now, I would like to speak in a language I at least know the basics to.

Another question is, if Square Enix knew that they would never release the Japanese IME to anyone outside of the Japanese region, then why did they allow all regions to play on the same servers? Did they honestly think the auto-translator would solve everyone's problems? They are Japanese themselves; did they not find the auto-translator cumbersome when using it? (This is often the excuse I hear about Japanese not using it.) Clearly communication would be an issue from the start, yet it seems it wasn't well thought out.

Add to the fact that we're approaching the maximum auto-translate capacity. And also add that generally it's only the English player base that uses it.

[Alhanelem]

I'm not sure if I'd be willing to pay $60 for the Japanese IME, but I would be willing to pay $30.

You don't pay that fee, SE does- based on the number of people they expect to be licensing the game to when they released it (not at this time). Now, i'm sure there are bulk rates for larger numbers, because the game would have cost a lot more if it was really $60 per user, even just in japan.

[bungiefan]

It's not just the cost of the IME, it's the cost of answering tech support calls for people that accidentally hit the keystroke to change to Japanese text input and get stuck typing kana and kanji with no understanding of what they even did by accident. The manual for the IME in the Japanese PS2 launch version of FFXI is something like 10 pages, and Japanese is a more compact written language. It's also hard to get some customers to read a manual nowadays, and the instructions assume some knowledge of how Japanese works and is romanized. It will cost SE a lot to support it, in English, German, and French, for a feature that won't get a lot of legitimate use, compared to accidental use.

They'd also be cutting out the Xbox 360 and PS2 users if they allowed the MS IME, but didn't pay for the ATOK license on consoles.

The solution they offer is to do a dual install of the Japanese and native clients you use, and switch to the Japanese one when you need that communication. Of course, I haven't been able to get a simultaneous dual install working since WotG released...

At least the PC discs have no copy protection. You could always borrow the discs from someone with the Japanese installer.

Auto-translate wasn't so discrimated against before they added the colored parentheses around it.

[Duelle]

If you can speak Japanese, why not romanize it? Pretty sure some Japanese players can easily comprehend what you want to get through to them.

Not really. I used to get yelled at a lot for trying to use romaji. The reasoning was that they couldn't understand me.

[Meyi]

The solution they offer is to do a dual install of the Japanese and native clients you use, and switch to the Japanese one when you need that communication. Of course, I haven't been able to get a simultaneous dual install working since WotG released...

At least the PC discs have no copy protection. You could always borrow the discs from someone with the Japanese installer.

Auto-translate wasn't so discrimated against before they added the colored parentheses around it.

I didn't know they offered a dual client. If I could find one that functioned properly and was released by Square Enix, that would work fabulously and be fine with me.

I don't know anyone with a Japanese PC disc to borrow from.

The auto-translator wasn't discriminated against? I see. That's interesting to know.

[bungiefan]

No dual client, I meant you install both Japanese and American/European FFXI and load whichever one you need at the time. Native language for missions/quests, and Japanese one for party communication. You used to be able to have both installed and working, but now it complains about registry errors for the one you installed first.

When they first added the tab-autocomplete/translation, it didn't have the colored marks on either side of the phrase, so it was hard to tell if someone was using the translator. The JP playes complained about this and the translator phrases got marked. This was because they thought you were fluent in the language without the markings, and then if they didn't use the translator or used Japanese text that wasn't in it, they expected you to understand them, and then you wouldn't and the party would suffer. They wanted people to not be able to fake the ability to understand Japanese, however it's hard for us to prove our knowledge if we aren't using the Japanese version to have the ability to respond in their written text manually, even if we can read it.

I can read a bit more Japanese than I even know how to type, but if I had regular access to the IME in-game, I'd have more chance to practice and get better with the language.

[Wenceslao]

There are terms in kanji that are unpronounceable? Isn't "Romanji" or romanization simply a phonetic spelling of what a japanese word sounds like when spoken?

The IME tech used for the PS2 was developed by a third party, if it was from Sony I don't think it would have been a problem.

Yes but the problem comes with many words that have the same sound, and you only know what word is when u see it on kanji, an example for this kind of words are:

Rain - Ame
Candy - Ame

Bridge - Hashi (橋)
Chopsticks - Hashi (箸)
Border - Hashi (端)

Write down (written document) - Kaki (下記)
Summer - Kaki (夏期)
Flowerpot - Kaki (花器)

I know this is just an example and im sure many people who speaks fluenty have this kind of issues when speaking to a japanese..

[Nashreen]

I agree. A lot of people in Japan would also like to try to play in English for fun or for studying, but this is made impossible by the fact you can't type in Japanese.

It's also impossible to type European characters on a JP version, although it's possible on the USA and Euro versions. While this is not a big problem, I don't see why the game should block someone from typing "ü" etc.

Also, it would be nice to make all languages available to all versions. EU version has 3+ languages when JP and USA versions have only one. Unfair...

SE would only sell more copies of the game if they allowed it, so why have these limitations?

[Venrymel]

At this point, it seems like we're being allowed to speculate all we like on the issue without official comment. Typing romaji is possible for Japanese players, many of them do it when communicating with me despite repeated requests that they keep their text to Japanese characters. I think they think they're being polite when they do it, but I'm not sure. One Japanese player felt there wasn't a difference to typing in either text style, that communication was still possible. I can see where he was coming from, but I think it's as confusing as typing in German, French or Spanish without the appropriate tittle with a letter.

For those unfamiliar, but curious, some elaborations:

English — Typical Japanese form — Romaji

Table — テーブル — te-buru
Playing — 遊んでいる — asondeiru
I — 私 — watashi
Difficult — 難しい — muzukashii
Please teach me — 教えてくれ — oshietekure
I want to write in kanji. — 私は漢字で書きたいんです。 — watashi ha kanji de kakitai ndesu

Romaji is almost twice as many characters to get through, so sentences can wind up being much longer. Even words foreign to Japan written in kana, then romanized. "Final Fantasy" itself for example: ファイナルファンタジー fainarufantaji-

Venrymel — ヴェンリメル — venrimeru
McDonald's — ミカドナルドス — mikadonarudosu

Rather interestingly, it's much easier to read a sentence written with kanji than with kana alone, let alone romaji (ローマ字 - which literally means "roman lettering"). One friend laughed with me over how difficult it is to read a sentence written using only hiragana. 私は漢字で書きたいんです。 versus　わたしはかんじでかきたいんです。 It can be like reading a number that is in the millions without commas to help you recognize it.

As others have mentioned, some kanji have multiple readings/pronunciations and pronunciations that are represented with different kanji. した and 下, both are "shita", but the kanji makes it clear that you mean "under" and not "did". (This is an easy, but poor example as context helps differentiate.) Really, it's very similar to English homonyms and heteronyms. Knowing the difference between a tear in a piece of paper and a tear falling down your cheek. "Kanji" itself can mean the ideograms or one's emotions; 漢字 or 感じ.