Ask Localization Megathread

[Economizer]

First, I've heard a rumor a very long time ago that the /check function has or had a phrase that could be considered rude in Japanese. NA players can spam /check (Player examines you.) quite a bit. Is this or was this ever the case? If it is the case, could this be fixed?

Second, the autotranslate function in this game is a work of art even when not talking to people who don't share your language. When I've played FFXI heavily and switch to other text based communication, I can spam the tab key quite a bit (to be honest, I'm sad the forums themselves don't support this feature... we don't even have open and closing brackets as emoticons!).

I remember "back in the day" that there were guides on how to talk to JP players with romanjii phrases, such as FFXIclopedia's Japanese-English Bard Song List (mostly written in 2007), or their Auto-Translator: In-Depth guide explaining what the auto-translate phrases exactly mean. Additionally NA player's vocabulary has always been affected by JP players, everyone should know what D2 means.

However, it can be frustrating when JP players don't use Auto-Translate at all. Whereas I don't blame the players, it is still a source of annoyance. You can only type in romanjii if you're on the NA client. There is no copy-paste function to even throw in phases into a poor quality online machine translator. If only this game had official support for fan made add-ons, or allowed the usage of the infamous third-party client I don't even need to name, this could be remedied by the fans. I've read about fan based auto-translators that detect Japanese text and compare it to an FFXI specific dictionary. It isn't perfect, but it would certainly help bridge the gap between the two communities FFXI shares.

[Unelonborro]

Good day, Economizer,

Sorry for not getting back to you about this earlier. I'm unable to answer all your questions, but I can definitely hit back on this one:

First, I've heard a rumor a very long time ago that the /check function has or had a phrase that could be considered rude in Japanese. NA players can spam /check (Player examines you.) quite a bit. Is this or was this ever the case? If it is the case, could this be fixed?

I'm in no position to judge what the JP player base as a whole feels, but the Japanese version of this text is じっと見つめる, which is much more aggressive sounding in JP than it is in EN. Let's take a step into the wayback machine.

I'm a bit of an MMO player, having gotten my start in Diku MUDs back in the dark days of 19XX when I was in high school. Eventually what we would consider the first MMOs came out, starting with Meridian 59 back in 1996. UO was released a bit later, and eventually we ended up with the genre-defining giant that was the original Everquest. Whereas today the influence of WoW is undeniable, back then the same was true of Everquest, which anyone familiar with the genre knows is a diku-style mmo. Because of this, many things that would come to be done via a graphical user interface in later years were still done via text commands: /check is one such thing.

Now, keep in mind that more western players were familiar with MMOs when XI came out in EN than JP players were when XI came out in JP. We were already used to working with text commands that echoed things to the recipient, such as /check. However, Everquest did not have a Japanese version, so there was no preconceived notion for what a "/check" command would return in Japanese (there already was in EN). The JP that was eventually chosen (literally, "[Player] stares at you") can be read more aggressively in Japanese, especially if /check is done multiple times in quick succession. The EN reads much softer because, again--it's what an existing EN-speaking MMO player would have expected. (I can't speak to the FR and DE sides of things.)

I'm oversimplifying things slightly, but that's a brief history behind /check in both languages! Why the JP didn't go with the much more neutral verb 調べる like they did in the help text for /check is a mystery for the ages.