FFXIV in Arabic?

I'd like to know if it's possible in the future to have the game supported in Arabic. I know it costs a lot, but I'm sure it's gonna pay back with all the Arab fans.

There is a pretty large Arab population on Durandal, so I know a bunch of people would appreciate it. But yeah, huge cost to translating, so don't see it happening :|

That would be pretty awesome~(funny at times) but yea, as rau said would prolly be way too much to have it done.

P.S. Halla walla ganbachi matwaqa3t ashoofik ehny! Esh7alik?

I haven't seen any Arab players. Chances are their population in this game is very small, and therefore translating would not be cost effective.

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Originally Posted by Astrix

That would be pretty awesome~(funny at times) but yea, as rau said would prolly be way too much to have it done.

P.S. Halla walla ganbachi matwaqa3t ashoofik ehny! Esh7alik?

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wow....... long time no see O_O same server as well woah!

To be completely fair, the Arab game market is still fairly young, during the PS1 and PS2 era most (1995~2004) most game consoles available in the middle east were modded and pirated games were so common that there are many people that weren't even aware that 50$ games even excised.

It's only at this gen of consoles with the previously un-hackable PS3, and the online functionality of the Xbox360 that people were inclined to get legit games.

Arabic titles are starting to come out and sites like IGN is now available in arabic. (http://me.ign.com/ar/)

Who knows, maybe the next FF online title will will have arabic in it.

Some other Final Fantasy's were translate dto Arabic and Turkish. THey may do it in 2.0 ALso be cool if they could some how integrate the newer google tranlation program.

Odds are you'd see Spanish before any other language- it's been requested quite a few times. As of yet though there's been no plan for additional supported languages.

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cool if they could some how integrate the newer google tranlation program.

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Google translate is not anywhere near close to being good enough to be used in a production software title. You can't translate context, so even if it accurately translates the literal meaning of all words correctly, people often use these words in ways software can't predict. This is why machine translation gives you a basic idea of what's being said at best.

If anything they should translate it into Spanish first. It's the second most spoken language worldwide. Make it happen, SE!

More spoken than english, or more spoken than chinese?

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Originally Posted by Mirage

More spoken than english, or more spoken than chinese?

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Maybe more spoken than chinese worldwide -- I know it's a major language in America, but outside of that no where near as spoken as English or else we'd have been taking English and Spanish classes in Japan for example when I was growing up (was only English.)

What they should do is allow more characters to be used in chat, that way people can at-least use their native language in-game.

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Originally Posted by Klefth

If anything they should translate it into Spanish first. It's the second most spoken language worldwide. Make it happen, SE!

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iirc chinese > english > spanish

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Originally Posted by Klefth

If anything they should translate it into Spanish first. It's the second most spoken language worldwide.

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You should Qualify that statement. Spanish is the second most spoken natively, after Mandarin, but it's not second in overall number of speakers (non-native speakers count as well; I play in English, although it's not my native language). There's discrepancy in the count, but in the overall number of speakers, Spanish figures as either 3rd, 4th, or even 5th, depending on the list and its criteria. Spanish is also third in the number of countries where the language is significantly spoken, after English and French. Undeniably one of the world's most widely spread languages.

Having said that, I don't think for a second the raw number of speakers are the first consideration for a game's localization: The economy of the language's population (including the median budget for non-essential items and activities), the availability of computers to that population, and its internet connectivity, are all more important factors for localization than raw numbers of either native or overall speakers.

Korean and French do not figure among the 10 most overall spoken languages. However those two language blocks would be logical, prime localization targets, because of the economic and technological factors listed above. South Korea, however, is a very good example of how numbers are not all: Because it has a large number of non-native English Speakers, and one of the strongest MMO development environments in the world, it does not usually get the blessing of foreign MMO localizations. North Korea, on the other hand, which speaks the same language, does not meet the basic economic and technological requirements. The combination of all this boils down to the fact that very few American, European, Japanese and even Chinese games are ever localized to Hangugeo.

Thanks for typing out what I was suspecting to be the case.