No Real-time Translation at Tokyo FanFest 2019?

Hey there, Warriors of Light!

Three days ago, on Lodestone, we had a chance to look for the first time on the updated Stage Schedule for Final Fantasy Festival in Tokyo. Beside introducing guests that are coming to FanFest, we were informed about lack of the real-time translation at the event itself. Instead we'll receive a commentary that will be separated from the main event.

My question is: why? Both American and European FanFests were bilingual and it worked nicely. Suddenly, Tokyo FanFest, which no doubt will introduce plenty of new features and content connected to incoming patches for Stormblood and launch of the Shadowbringers expansion. Mind you, I have not watched the Japanese FanFest last time and it might be that the formula is the same as last time. Still, in those two years, game evolved, became bigger and more international then it was by the time of the last FanFest in Japan.

Yet, with the most important, since it is the last one before the expansion, FanFest we (and I mean here, widely spread ''non-Japanese speaking fan base, whose common language became English" - not to mention other groups) were in a sense disregarded for the favour of Japanese only audience. I do understand that FanFest is happening in Tokyo and most likely great majority of participants will be speakers of Japanese. At the same time, FanFest in Paris was not conducted in French at all, not even in passing - same with the one that happened in Frankfurt, if I'm not mistaken. I was not present on that one.

With all due respect to Japanese audience, but the signal for speakers from other regions seems to be quite clear. It is Japanese audience that is more important than other groups. I confess, and here I am writing my personal opinion, plus certain people's from my surroundings, that it made me feel rather forgotten about, as a non-Japanese speaker, or, more accurately: it feels like the aforementioned English Commentary was created as an afterthought, so that we could still in some way participate in the stream from Tokyo.

The reason I am only mentioning English is not in favour of it over other languages but because I have a feeling that it became a second language for ''Final Fantasy XIV'' over the years, as the chosen language of the ''other'' audiences, those different from the Japanese players.

You may not share my opinion, and you have full right to it. I'm interested in feedback on how this information about lack of real-time translation affected you or whether you don't mind it at all. What is your opinion on this?

May you ever walk in the light of the Crystal!

I actually don't mind if Japanese players are who the game is being made for. From what I've heard, Japanese players act much nicer to each other, they play the game as it was intended (regarding Eureka and the like), and they don't complain nearly as much as the American or European userbase. So if the Japanese players are the priority, it doesn't surprise me in the least bit and I can't say I'm upset about it.

Yet we had no german or french, had japanese and english, so they could "endure" the english part as well, after all its the language that connects us all... i feel its sad.

To Wilford111:
I see your point. Thank you for the replay. :)

To Kuroka:
Yes, that's why it isn't the most satisfactionary way to resove this. :/

The NA and EU fanfests have their events translated in real-time because the expected audiences are mostly English-speaking (NA for obvious reasons, and English is the most commonly understood language in the EU, even if it's not the most common native language), so there is the desire to cater to that audience. The JP fanfest, in contrast, expects a mostly Japanese audience, meaning immediate English translation is not as much of a priority. The 'commentary' stream is effectively the same as what happened last time (in 2016), so this isn't really any different than what happened previously.

As for the sense that they're catering to the Japanese playerbase, do remember that SE is a Japanese company, and that the development team is also primarily Japanese. Just as a lot of US game companies will prioritize the US playerbase, they'll prioritize their native playerbase as well. And while the census numbers are never wholly accurate, the JP data centers tend to have nearly as many players as the NA data centers, and outside of a few international servers most of those players will likely be Japanese; it makes sense to have a specific event that caters to them.

Yes, this is true as well. There were some panels at American FanFest that were also not translated real-time to Japanese, if I'm not mistaken. I personally would rather like them to be translated, as even though they are mostly targeting English-regionalization with those, I feel that not only English-speakers might have interest in them. :) Thanks for your input! :)

BUT the point is, that this one is the most important one, so either they should translate it too (even if ppl only watch it later) OR should not have choose Japan for the last one.

Lets face it, you cant enter the internet or looking for anything gaming related without gettin spoiled >_>

But on the one hand, they can fit more information into the keynote / PLL if they're not spending half the scheduled stage time stopping to translate everything. We'll get live commentary on the English stream, at least, enough for those who don't hanasemasu to understand the main points without impacting the quantity of panel content.