Live Letter translations on Twitter are not acceptable

This honestly really sucks. What they post on Twitter are literally 1 sentence promotional "this content, coming soon!" with a screenshot. The Live Letter is - like you said - 120 minutes of information and conversation. It's really unfair that we have to miss out on all that extra dialogue just because laziness/they assume we all watch the mr happy recap video.

Meanwhile the community itself sits there translating it word for word, hosting streams, doing videos, creating discord servers. Honestly, the community team is lucky this happens (though it's out of necessity anyway and for that they should be ashamed).

Hell, the community team even outright employed one player doing unofficial translations to join the community team. Can't remember his name unfortunately but it's true and he used to be the guy we relied on for unofficial translations 2 years back. Which is proof there's at least one guy on their team who can do English translations on the fly.

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Originally Posted by Tadacho

Hell, the community team even outright employed one player doing unofficial translations to join the community team. Can't remember his name unfortunately but it's true and he used to be the guy we relied on for unofficial translations 2 years back. Which is proof there's at least one guy on their team who can do English translations on the fly.

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Really, what happened to that guy? Never heard of him since. >.>

If the community team is unsure of what the people want, take a look at the unofficial translations. Live translations with translated small talk.

If you want to know the interest compare the numbers:

Official:
300? audience watching live letter (according to the number shown in recap video)
4.000 views on twitch so far
No official youtube video yet
Last live letter: 16k views
(One would guess that many don't tune in at all since you can't understand the majority of it anyway.)

1 Unofficial Mr.Happy recap video:
19000 views on the 1day? old video
Last live letter: 37k views
(Keep in mind people watching the official live letter very likely tune in into the unofficial translations.)

The question is: why is a game doing such a poor job at communicating with the majority of their audience?


p.s. seriously, even the forums feel super limited with their 1000 character limit and you want to squeeze the translations into the 400 character format twitter supports?

I wish they would just give up this nonsense with "Live Letters" and instead give us ordinary letters.
Not only is streaming/video a highly inefficient way of providing information in the first place, but trying to do it live also adds problems for everyone that do not speak the language used - which in this case is the majority of the playerbase.

Much better to give out a plain text letter, which can be translated in advance, so all the languages supported get the same information at the same time.

Um...Seeing as live letters have live audience out there...I'm pretty sure the reason why they are there is just an extra way for Square Enix to make money off of tickets...and get extra advertisement for their events/merchandise that they are paid of, instead of paying for. That's why they are live and not pre-made. For a spectator of a live stream, it doesn't make much of a difference whether they watch the stream or a recording of it. They don't accept questions from streamers, do they?! I don't think (but can be wrong) that they accept questions from audience either. So yeah...It's just a publicity stunt for money.

They compile the important info a week later or so on a forum post. It's a Japanese game afterall. Though I still feel like a faster translation could be done

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Originally Posted by BunnyChain

Really, what happened to that guy? Never heard of him since. >.>

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He is on the community team now. He posts on these forums sometimes. Lately I haven't seen them around much. The team must be preparing for Fanfest I guess since it is 7 months away.

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Originally Posted by BunnyChain

Number comparisons

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You have to keep in mind that most JP players aren't going to be watching it through Twitch/Youtube Live, since the Live Letter is also being streamed on Niconico (sort-of the JP version of Twitch).
If I'm looking at the Niconico page correctly (since I can't read Japanese, but it does list a number of views), it's showing 54593 views.

I can’t help but be frustrated at some of the Eastern’s company policies like this. They make every non-Japanese consumer feel like they’re second rate customers, and they’re always a step behind other companies (European and Western developers) when it comes to communication. I’m not asking Square to conform to my mentality, or anyone else — I’m asking them to treat their customers like equals. I shouldn’t have to search reddit or go to MrHappy’s YouTube channel for an unofficial translation... they should provide it for us.

Unfortunately this is Square, who has been notoriously bad with their PR ever since circa 2003 with FFXI. I hope for the best, but I always expect the worst.

When we had this on forum, we had translated fresh information (before there was the "definitiv" translation) but ... it doesnt makes a free marketing.

When you see those tweet, you could, maybe... retweet those, and then, making more and more hype on twitter. . . :)

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

You have to keep in mind that most JP players aren't going to be watching it through Twitch/Youtube Live, since the Live Letter is also being streamed on Niconico (sort-of the JP version of Twitch).
If I'm looking at the Niconico page correctly (since I can't read Japanese, but it does list a number of views), it's showing 54593 views.

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Yes, and how do these poor translations communications efforts affect the JP players?
These numbers do show however, how different the interest is in the live letter across the communities. And what could be a possible cause for that I wonder...

If you want decent translations, just join the ffxiv reddit discord server.

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Originally Posted by BunnyChain

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You can edit past the 1k character limit, just a heads up.

Does it really need to be live, why not prerecord and add subtitles from your official translators?

I'd really like to watch the Live Letter, you know, LIVE, but

A) I only speak English and
B) It's usually at 3-4am in my time zone

It's almost like they don't care if I watch or not, and that really bothers me as a paying customer. Why even do it live if they can't reach over half of their audience? What's the damn point? And twitter? Hell no!

+1

3rd Party Applications are against the ToS

Where is our translation? :mad:

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Originally Posted by Remedi

That would make the whole we lack communications point moot, since that could imply we don't care about infos.

The problem is that we don't have access to the informations regardless of their nature.
Also pls think about the fact that without LL we would've not known the horrible app premium thing.

Informations are always good regardless of what we gain from them

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A couple of hours of talking at me in a language I don't understand isn't "good information", nor is having to go to a third party site and hoping their translations are right. As we've seen with the app fiasco, there's disagreement on what the translation even means in terms of how it works.

That's not good information. I'd rather they give me nothing until the patch notes if that's how it will go, because the patch notes are generally highly detailed and properly translated.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

You have to keep in mind that most JP players aren't going to be watching it through Twitch/Youtube Live, since the Live Letter is also being streamed on Niconico (sort-of the JP version of Twitch).
If I'm looking at the Niconico page correctly (since I can't read Japanese, but it does list a number of views), it's showing 54593 views.

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Since the JP players get far better communication than we do, that's kind of the point. Almost nobody uses the LL in NA itself, they wind up looking at fan recaps and translations. That illustrates the problem perfectly. We need third party intermediaries to make SE's "fan communication" possible to understand. That's a total failure at communication.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

A couple of hours of talking at me in a language I don't understand isn't "good information", nor is having to go to a third party site and hoping their translations are right. As we've seen with the app fiasco, there's disagreement on what the translation even means in terms of how it works.

That's not good information. I'd rather they give me nothing until the patch notes if that's how it will go, because the patch notes are generally highly detailed and properly translated.

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While how they give us informations is bad, getting absolutely no informations is worse

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Originally Posted by Remedi

While how they give us informations is bad, getting absolutely no informations is worse

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Well, if we're to simplify thing is: LLP is really aimed to their Japanese fan-base. They expect (and know) international customers rely on third parties because that also saves time and quite the good amount of money. Even when we get the twitter or forum translations, they are almost as ambiguous as the fan-lations and nothing really matters until patch notes.

So, nothing until patch notes is what we get as is. The difference is we get the ambiguity to speculate and "look forward to it".

That's why I said it's bad and why I've said in the communication thread why they should improve the visibility of those infos

lol is ok, e no as valuable as JP community

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Originally Posted by Remedi

That's why I said it's bad and why I've said in the communication thread why they should improve the visibility of those infos

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Oh they do. But for the Japanese and Japanese only, and is painfully obvious it's deliberate, rather than by happenstance.

I was ofc meaning that they need to improve the visibility to us.
Deliberate or not we should ask for a better treatment in regards to infos, not to remove them since their work is sloppy and let's be realistic at the very least the power point is understandable, they literally need to bring some translators and it's all done

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Originally Posted by Remedi

I was ofc meaning that they need to improve the visibility to us.
Deliberate or not we should ask for a better treatment in regards to infos, not to remove them since their work is sloppy and let's be realistic at the very least the power point is understandable, they literally need to bring some translators and it's all done

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I think the communication thread is a noticeable bonfire and they have trivialized it with the QA segment by literally not addressing it, considering bots a WIP/Semi-trivial and to my personal cynicism, a dumbing down of "Da rulez" slide which was a hefty amount of time that could have been invested better on more things in regards to the international community.

I agree with you 100%. But without any high tier English-native rep that has considerable leverage in the team, we're just silly dramatic foreigners who give them money cuz whatever.

Aren't the bulk of their players in Japan? That's an honest question because I'm not sure. Not saying there shouldn't be a translation, but if this were an NA game and they didn't translate it to other local languages where the game is live (which happens a lot, I'm sure) people here would be saying, "Well, what did you expect?"

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Originally Posted by Lium

Aren't the bulk of their players in Japan? That's an honest question because I'm not sure. Not saying there shouldn't be a translation, but if this were an NA game and they didn't translate it to other local languages where the game is live (which happens a lot, I'm sure) people here would be saying, "Well, what did you expect?"

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Based on unofficial census sources: about 39% of players are japanese, meaning around 60% of the player base are not.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

I agree with you 100%. But without any high tier English-native rep that has considerable leverage in the team, we're just silly dramatic foreigners who give them money cuz whatever.

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I dunno how big of a leverage koji-fox has on the team, but regardless I think that if we keep bringing the issue up, they might relent.
SE has shown that they can change in the past, they can do it now too in my opinion especially since I don't think we are asking the impossible

Tbh they should have english translator for EVERY LIVE LETTER.

A live letter should have a english speaker always for a game that has english players.
I dont want to to wait for a player to figure it out and making us look at the powerpoint while they talk in japanese. I question myself why im watching this when i dont understand what they are saying.

Digest is here :)
It's only 6 days later and it has corrections from errors spoken during the live letter, faster than digests in the past.
So I think they delivered on their goal of getting it out faster for a better version. There was no need to freak out.

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Originally Posted by Squintina

Digest is here :)
It's only 6 days later and it has corrections from errors spoken during the live letter, faster than digests in the past.
So I think they delivered on their goal of getting it out faster for a better version. There was no need to freak out.

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It's not that much different from the fan translations and that was done live (the information on the digest i remember reading in the fan translation). I think I will stick with those.

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Originally Posted by Remus

It's not that much different from the fan translations and that was done live (the information on the digest i remember reading in the fan translation). I think I will stick with those.

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Of course it's not that much different.
But it is slightly different, and it clarified things that the fan translations (at least the reddit one I read) were a bit more ambiguous about.

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Originally Posted by polyhedral

I'd really like to watch the Live Letter, you know, LIVE, but

A) I only speak English and
B) It's usually at 3-4am in my time zone

It's almost like they don't care if I watch or not, and that really bothers me as a paying customer. Why even do it live if they can't reach over half of their audience? What's the damn point? And twitter? Hell no!

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EU can usually watch this but... we don't speak japanese.

I love the work the people in the reddit discord do but would loved a official translator during the streams. We need Koji!

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Originally Posted by Rinuko

EU can usually watch this but... we don't speak japanese.

I love the work the people in the reddit discord do but would loved a official translator during the streams. We need Koji!

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We don't really need Koji (he would probably see an opportunity to "add flavor" to the translation since plain Japanese -> plain English isn't good enough), but professional subtitles or a live translation would be very welcome.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Is it really too much to ask for, that the devs give our community manager all the important informations before the liveletter so that it can go live shortly after that?

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Is the important information the announcement of what is coming, or the examples of what the slides mention/motivations for doing whatever thing they are doing or changing whatever thing they are changing? I find the first to be of greater importance, and we get plenty of info on that, clear as day, on the slides during the LL. Yoshida and crew then comment on the stuff presented on the slides - it's live commentary based on talking points (which ultimately allows for more flexibility in the presentation as well).

Also, how would they give the stuff that has to be translated - the live commentary - before it's been said? Not sure how you expect that to work.

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Originally Posted by Squintina

Of course it's not that much different.
But it is slightly different, and it clarified things that the fan translations (at least the reddit one I read) were a bit more ambiguous about.

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Which is how the official "as the LL was going on" translation also worked - it was routinely more succinct and typically as vague (sometimes more so) than the unofficial translations, with occasional corrections afterward and the full info provided later via the digest.

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Originally Posted by Berethos

Which is how the official "as the LL was going on" translation also worked - it was routinely more succinct and typically as vague (sometimes more so) than the unofficial translations.

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I'm well aware of that.

And that meant that people would still wait, either way, for the digest to get the most accurate information.

So if them doing a super non-translation on twitter means they can get out the digest faster (6 days!), that's better imo.
Why harp about live translations that need to be revised if we can get the revised version faster by letting them focus on this instead?

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Originally Posted by Berethos

Also, how would they give the stuff that has to be translated - the live commentary - before it's been said? Not sure how you expect that to work.

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It's not really live though... I mean obviously it is "live", but everything they talk about, even the questions they answer, it has all been prepared long before the actual event. I don't think it's unreasonable to have English translations of everything ready at the same time, so even if they're talking, without a preset speech, if they've already given all the info about how things will work to the translators, they should be able to also give an translation near live as well.

Heck why don't they have two streams, one like they do now, and one with a translation overlayed on it (visual/audio)...

Still relevant~

New item in 4.3: for only 25 kupo nuts, get an official translation sooner than two weeks after the LL.

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Originally Posted by alimdia

Still relevant~

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yes!

i don't understand why the community team has to wait for the actual live letter to get the informations and then translate them for the different languages. this is really poorly executed. translate them / write down the letters BEFORE yoshi goes live and publish them right AFTER the live letter ends.

should not be too complicated to spread the informations of what will be talked about in the live letters in your team. but i have the feeling the official community team has no clue about upcomming stuff and gets the informations through the live letter translations from mr happy and reddit like everyone else here...