Ask Localization Megathread

[Unelonborro]

Good day, everyone,

I have some more time to answer your questions now that my work for the May patch is done. In terms of text volume, it's approximately equal to the November patch, when the final chapter of Seekers of Adoulin was released--and this is the shortest of the three chapters in Rhapsodies of Vana'diel.

I love this thread. For many years I’ve appreciated the work the localization team does on XI. You guys do a fantastic job. I could list many examples from story moments and character dialog, but I’ll stick to one of my favorite elements: artifact, relic and empyrean equipment names.

The names of artifact and relic equipment were a way to imagine my character graduating to the next level of his discipline. Through hard work and study I was promoted from a Red Mage to a Warlock! And then a Duelist! It was like getting a fancy new title at work, but with a more badass name. Just as important, it reminded me of the famous class evolution of FF1 that I’ve loved since I played the original on the NES decades ago.

Artifact and relic names were mostly familiar to anyone with a fantasy background. This wasn’t a bad thing; they evoked nostalgia along with that feeling of graduation to the next level. However, when the Empyrean armor sets came out, you guys took the title promotion up another notch with obscure references that were totally fitting, but also new to many people. I actually spent a few hours one night researching all of those names. Some of them were good but obvious, like Creed and Savant, but I had a blast with Goetia, Orison, Estoqueur, Mavi, and many others. Once again Final Fantasy was teaching me something. Excellent job on these!

I was happy to see this become a trend. When reforged armor was announced, my secret hope was for new titles, and not just bland “Duelist’s Tights +3”. I was ecstatic to see more interesting names used in all three reforged sets, as well as the GEO and RUN armor. My favorites are Arbatel (which I had never heard before but enjoyed reading about) and Azimuth (which I actually vaguely recalled from my college days as a math major).

Now for my questions:
1. What exactly is Vitivation from? I can make sense of vitiation, but not vitivation. I have to admit though, vitivation actually rolls off my tongue better.
2. I know absolutely no Japanese. Are the JSE names translations of the same word in Japanese or do you guys come up with your own “new titles” for us?
3. I would love to know more about the process of deciding on these names from empyrean to reforged sets. I think it’s fantastic that you watched YouTube Waltzes for hours to decide on Contradance. What kind of research went into Arbatel and Azimuth? Where on Earth did you pull Estoqueur from? By the way, I still find it funny that Duelist and Estoqueur sets have no melee stats on them while the Warlock set does, but the names themselves sound great

Thank you for your comments and questions, Merton9999!

I've commented a bit about the way we name equipment earlier in the thread, but here's the Reader's Digest version: has to fit in 9 katakana or fewer when rendered into Japanese, has to match with what the equipment does, and has to be a word we haven't yet used in equipment to date. The process was a lot easier when all we had were wax swords and cesti, but it has grown very complicated now that we have over 20,000 pieces of equipment, items, and attachments and are still tied to the same restrictions.

That said, we have had a numerous number of translators over the life of this project, and each lead has their own philosophy of how items should be named in a way that still evokes fantasy images that are worthy of the Final Fantasy brand. For me personally, artifact/relic/mythic/empyrean armor and weapons should have a much more special feel about them that makes the player feel "this is cool, and the name just fits with what a white mage/corsair/thief should be using." Interestingly enough, this restriction breeds a lot of freedom: when a piece can be equipped by 10 different jobs, the name naturally becomes more generic, but with the above types of items we can really dig deep into what a particular job would use or where. I'm glad to hear that you liked them! As for your questions:

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!

2. Most things in the game are named by the localize team and then put into Japanese from there. The armor, weapons, monsters, spells, abilities, monster abilities, beastmaster pet names, attachments, NPCs, actors (things like veridical confluxes), most titles, and content and system names (like Vagary or Unity) are all named by the localization team. Things that the Japanese devs name and we translate include quest names, usable/unusable items, key items (almost all the time), some titles, and ninja/samurai equipment. There's probably some stuff I'm missing, too, but that about covers it.

As for number 3, see my comment above! I will say that we try to nail down one aspect of each job to focus on. 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.

[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.