Issue with the Japanese to English translation

I have a question for Michael Koji-Fox (or for someone else who does the translation from the Japanese version to English).

Why is the script that appears in our text boxes within the main story-line quest not accurately representing what the voice actors are saying in Japanese?

I have the Japanese voices turned on in my game and I have noticed that a lot of the words that the Japanese voice actors are saying do not appear anywhere within the text box that comes up on my screen for that bit of audio.

Why is there such a difference? Is the story-line still the same or are we getting a completely different version?

It concerns me that the Japanese audio doesn't appear to be more closely translated.

(Just FYI, I took two years of Japanese in HS, but I don't remember a lot of the words. So I don't understand everything that they are saying but I can understand enough to know that something isn't right.)

Please help me understand this better. Thanks!

I'm curious about this as well. As wonderful a job as the localization crew are doing at making the dialogue in the game snappy and engaging, I wish they could make it snappy, engaging, and also accurate? We already have the ability to swap all game text into a variety of other languages, so maybe it could be possible to add a more literal translation to those options someday?

There have definitely been times when I've been tempted to break out my Japanese dictionary and replay a scene with Japanese text because the localized line is awesome, but makes me wonder what the actual Japanese line was...For instance, there's an NPC in Highbridge who quotes Alice in Wonderland at you, which made me happy, but leaves me dead curious whether he does that in Japanese too, which makes me sad because my kanji is definitely not good enough to tell yet.

More than anything else it's probably because an exact line for line translation can be incredibly awkward to read, so lines in a given scene will be "shuffled" to make everything flow better in English.

While I fully understand the need for changes in a localization having done translation on both an amateur and professional level myself, what I can't understand is why some lines that are actually important were simply left out of the English version.

Case in point: in the Lancer story quests, in either the first or second meeting with Foulques (I forget which one it was), he talks about how the Lancers' guild is full of cowards and how no one there has the courage to challenge him. However, in the Japanese, he also says "Things haven't changed at all since back then," making it very clear that he was in fact once a member of the guild himself. That line was completely omitted from the English version, leaving those who play it in English unaware of his connection to the guild until the final level 30 quest. What was the purpose of that? Why leave that out?

That's the kind of change I don't understand as a translator.

I think the english version goes a bit overboard with trying to make almost every fate/quest title be some kind of pun or reference to western movies and songs. Just doesn't seem very final fantasy to me.

There is a very detailed breakdown of the way some of the exchanges between Haurchefant, associates, and the player go. I feel like I would have liked THAT Haurchefant more (and can understand, perhaps, more why the Japanese side of the fandom seems to like him a great deal).

On that note, I don't think I know a single person who likes the way the 2.4 quests handled Ala Mhigan characters and their stories, but I think that might be a deeper issue than just localization.

It's not meant to be a "translation" of the JP audio. This isn't anime where the "original" source is JP audio. The storylines are cooked up and then written out in English and JP. The four different voice acting languages are recorded more or less at the same time.

In other words, it's not supposed to match up. There's a difference between translation and localization. The essence is there as far as the storylines go (in all four languages) but each version has its own distinct way of telling it, for its own intended audience.

A few reasons.

The first is that English and Japanese are extremely different languages. Some things simply don't translate, and that problem gets worse with languages that are distant. Take the phrase "a tangerine on an aluminum can." In English, it's just a phrase, but anyone who knows the Japanese would recognize it as a (extremely lame) pun. Not puns get lost in the translation. Take the Swahili phrase "tuko pamoja." It literally means "we're together," but to a native speaker, it conveys a much deeper meaning of shared purpose. A good translator would have to render it differently. It's why machine translations suck: Google translate is great at the actual meaning of words, terrible at putting them in proper context and getting the meaning of the entire text.

The second reason is that culture doesn't translate. My character's name, "Taylor Swiftcast" is humorless to people who don't know who Taylor Swift is. Even among people who do, it's considerably less funny to some people who don't like her music.

The big reason is that localization is not quite translation, and it shouldn't be. Go play FFVII (make sure to remove nostalgia goggles.) Even ignoring the errors, it's translation is flat. Characters don't talk like actual people. They don't have speech patterns or any sort of flow to their speech. Then play Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII, both incidentally, translated by the excellent Alexander O. Smith. Both have characters talking in a believable way. Sydney speaks in a roundabout way, with lots of metaphors, whereas Ashley is direct and blunt. Larsa and Ashe speak with lots of carefully chosen words and a high-class diction. Penelo and Vaan speak much more colloquially.

XIV is localized extremely well. Everything is understandable, and artful. Yes, some things are lost in translation, but the writing can stand on its own as good video game writing, not some dry academic translation of the original Japanese.

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Originally Posted by Trashy

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I agree, the writing is masterful and the translation is, for the most part (at least from what I've seen in both languages) rather faithful. The changes like those between the JP and EN Haurchefant are completely understandable, as I can't see his JP self going over nearly as well with English-speaking audiences ("This weirdo pervert is a lord of one of the four High Houses?"). The EN version keeps his quirky personality and flirtatious nature, just toned down to a level that's more acceptable to the average English speaker. I think it works quite well.

My own issues are more with things like the example I gave, where things were left out when there was no good reason to leave them out. There's a difference between localizing a character to make them more acceptable/appealing to the target audience and just plain omitting lines that add to the overall understanding of a situation.

I just want the puns for the English text to be dialed back a notch. I get immersed in the world and then yanked back out when I see an NPC make a Family Guy reference.

I have read that part of the issue is they can't add extra dialogue windows, so they have to make use of the same space that the other languages use, and English needs more words and letters, so some changes must be made. When it comes to spoken dialogue, they have to keep the same length of time as the other languages as well.

In the specific case of the lancers quest, I thought it was to build suspense for the big shocking reveal at the end.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

I just want the puns for the English text to be dialed back a notch. I get immersed in the world and then yanked back out when I see an NPC make a Family Guy reference.

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What NPC and what did they say? I haven't watched Family Guy in a while, but from what I remember of FG it's probably a situation of FFXIV alluding to something that FG alluded to, instead of being a reference to FG itself.

That being said, I enjoy the punny names for quests/FATEs/titles. I would burst into random laughter several times a day after the EX primal patch, anytime I thought of "Quake Me Up Before You O'Ghomoro" because I could hear it in the song in my head.

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Originally Posted by Grayve

I have read that part of the issue is they can't add extra dialogue windows, so they have to make use of the same space that the other languages use, and English needs more words and letters, so some changes must be made. When it comes to spoken dialogue, they have to keep the same length of time as the other languages as well.

In the specific case of the lancers quest, I thought it was to build suspense for the big shocking reveal at the end.

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Checking that particular exchange, there was more than enough space in the dialogue window to have left that line in, which makes the omission even more puzzling. I wouldn't really call it a shocking reveal either-- it was heavily implied throughout the quests, but the Japanese came out and said it outright.

I don't recall it hinted at. but it was ages ago that I did lancer.

I am still following this thread, I promise. And I appreciate all of the responses to my post. But in a way, I do wish that they would treat this more like an anime by making the translations a bit more faithful to the Japanese text. At least for the job classes and the main scenario quests. Change the quest names and the FATE names to make Western references all you want; I just want to make sure that we are getting a truer translation of what the writers in Japan initially wrote than what we appear to be getting. Pretty sure Urianger doesn't speak Ye Olde English in the Japanese version. Although he may speak very formally, and at great length.

As others have said, not every single piece of text from Japanese translated to English would make sense for English readers. I remember reading in a guide for FFX where one event in the game had "Operation" in the title since it was a military based gathering and battle. The Japanese name was different (don't remember what) and it didn't make sense in English due to how the word is used and defined between the two languages.

Trashy summed it up best; you can't do a literal translation due to (grammar issues aside) the direct translation getting mangled in places.

While my opinion of the translation is generally positive some changes are downright baffling. Among those are the Megaflare joke taken out from Gilgamesh trial and making Shiva speech flow in a way that makes her not call out her Diamond Dust attack. Also removing Ninja's unique naming system for the relic though I can kinda see why that was swept under the rug. Still, they didn't alter their Ninjutsu skill names, so why here? Guess they didn't want to confuse people? Maybe.

And Medicara -> Medica II etc of course but that horse is dead.

Short version; Ted Woolsey (and his modern equivalent) is the devil. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Woolseyism

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Originally Posted by Karen_Cerfrumos

...making Shiva speech flow in a way that makes her not call out her Diamond Dust attack.

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I don't see this instance as an issue at all, none of the primals do it. They all directly go to something in their story with Shiva's being the absolute MOST tied in. For example, [風よ、光よ、そのすべてを凍てつかせ、 世界に静寂をもたらせ！
砕け散れ！　ダイアモンドダスト！] Wind, Light, freeze everything and hold this world in silence! Scatter, Diamond Dust!

Compare to:

[Embrace the serenity... Renounce the hatreds that consume you... And scatter them like dust in the wind... ] This actually SOUNDS like Shiva or Iceheart in regards to the war and their roles in it (sacrificing self in order to bring an end).

Overall, I prefer almost everything in the EN version compared to JP.

In general, I do like the localization, personally, but there's one huge problem I have with it: puzzle clues. The S-rank hunt mark spawn condition clues are totally different in JP and EN, and a large number of the EN ones omit the actual clue part of the text. Some suggest spawn conditions that have nothing to do with the actual spawn condition, like the mess with Eastern La Noscea, where the EN clue highlights fire and a cave but never mentions rain, and the JP clue mentions rain but nothing about fire or a cave. The actual spawn condition involves rain and has nothing to do with fire or a cave.

I had to give up on the Siteseeing log, because the clues there are so poorly localized that in many cases, one of the conditions is totally unclued in the EN translation. The Greatest Story Never Told appears to also have some clues that are just missing.

It's almost like the EN localization team was given these puzzle clues and told to localize them without ever being told what was actually important and what was misdirection or fluff. In some cases, they preserved the fluff while leaving out the important part of the clue. In other cases, they just wrote something else entirely that had nothing of the original clue in it, but instead had a similar feel to the fluff in the clue.

As someone who really likes puzzles and who was super excited about the Siteseeing log, this makes me so sad.

If they have to artificially stretch it out because they have no control over text-boxes that explains a lot. So not only do they need an editor, they need an engine overhaul :P.
Also, that they're taking massive, totally unnecessary liberties with the translation figures too.

Not a fan.

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Originally Posted by Verlyn

If they have to artificially stretch it out because they have no control over text-boxes that explains a lot. So not only do they need an editor, they need an engine overhaul :P.

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I've done game translation before (on the translation side of things rather than the technical side, but I was in constant contact with the tech guys) and it's not a simple matter at all to change the coding to insert more text boxes. That's not to say that it can't be done, but it is a major undertaking. In my experience, most game translations opt to work with the space that is already there rather than try to alter the coding itself.