If you would be so kind

I'm in a party with this Japanese fellow, and every time a new member joins, he says
{Hello!}{If you would be so kind.}

Could someone give a better/different translation of what the "If you would be so kind" text means to the JP? I've never found a use for "If you would be so kind", and it doesn't make much sense in this context, so I'm curious what this guy thinks he's saying. Perhaps there's a more clear way to translate it? Or maybe it's just one of those expressions that simply doesn't make much sense in English?

It could be a reverse of the "Take care." situation, where this JP is associating the term more strongly with a colloquial phrase than with the direct translation.

In the NA to JP situation, "Take care." directly translates to "Be careful" not "Take care of yourself" in the sense of "Be well." Imagine if you were a JP who was unaware of that, and directly following, "(Disbanding party.) (See you again!)", all the NAs started going "(Be careful!) (Be careful!)"

My gil's on this situation happening to you in reverse.

Yikes, I did not know that. Perhaps they should change "Take care" to "Be careful.", or perhaps "Use caution."

(Would you kindly) kill Andrew Ryan?

Hey guys!

Sorry for the belated response.

Preparations for the Alpha version have become mighty hectic, and while I'm not authorized to say much, I can tell you it's looking AWESOME. Aside from quest translation/localization, the majority of my time has been working with the UI team, trying to come up with ways to adjust the various elements so they will appear natural and intuitive for EN (and DE and FR) speakers, as well as those playing the JP version. It's difficult because the Japanese can say things like Elemental Magic Defense in 6 letters, when we are stuck with 23 (unless we do something like E Mag D). There will still be a few rough spots when Alpha is released, but the new UI system seems pretty flexible (program-wise) and changes suggested by us (and you guys) shouldn't be that difficult to implement.

BUT that had nothing to do with your question about the "If you would be so kind".

Yeah, this happens to be one of those Japanese words that has several different meanings depending on when and where you use it. It's an almighty phrase that is used to show respect to someone you are asking something of. It could be a please or a thank you, depending on what comes before it.

Just a handful of examples are:

A: Do you want me to kill this pesky snurble for you?
B: Onegaishimasu -> Yes, please. (If you would be so kind)

A: Let me synthesize this Excalipur for you.
B: Onegaishimasu -> Thank you.

A: Welcome to our party.
B: Onegaishimasu -> Thank you for having me. I will do my best to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women.

In that 3rd case, basically, the person entering the party has asked permission to join, and because was granted that request, is showing their thanks.

It's a tricky word to translate, because while in JP, it can be used anywhere and everywhere to mean a plethora of things, pesky EN has different ways of dealing with each situation. 'Thank you' might work better in some cases, whereas 'please' might in others. What it may come down to, is trying to flesh out the JP into something that is more restrictive, and then have several different variations depending on situation, which, in turn, could have independent EN/FR/DE translations.

Either way, the current phrase does appear very awkward, and should be fixed one way or the other.

The other phrase is also one of those with extra meanings in JP.

"Ki wo tsuketekudasai" can be used to either say "be careful" / "use caution", as well as the farewell "take care". Because this phrase is located under the Greetings section, we translated it as 'Take Care'. However, crafty JP adventurers have decided to use it to warn party members of danger, hence the strange "Take Care" messages popping up in instanced raids, etc. A quick solution would be changing it to "use caution", but then you will probably have JP users sending messages such as [goodbye] [use caution] to their EN counterparts. We can probably solve this problem as well by making the greeting "Ki wo tsukete kudasai" into "Ki wo tsukete okaeri kudasai" which would be roughly "take care on your trip back". The two JP phrases pretty much are the same, with the first simply being a little more colloquial. The second though, could never be mistaken for 'be careful'. Then, what we could do is add another phrase (maybe in General) that was closer in JP to "Use caution".

I'll work on both of these, as well as other suggestions that come up over the course of Alpha and Beta.

Thanks again everyone for the feedback, and sorry about the rambling! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fernehalwes

Hey guys!


A: Welcome to our party.
B: Onegaishimasu -> Thank you for having me. I will do my best to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women.

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Are u freaking serious? thats what the actual translation is in that situation? XD

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Norack

Are u freaking serious? thats what the actual translation is in that situation? XD

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If you invited the Japanese equivalent of Conan the Barbarian (which, incidentally is localized as Conan the Great in Japanese) to your party, I would assume that the onegaishimasu would be chock full of manly-man nuances. ;)

Fernehalwes you're my hero. <3

I would not be surprised if your DE counterparts had a simmilarly complex problem dealing with "bitteschön" mixed into all of this. :/

Bitteschön = Please, thank you, or simply a politeness.

i first thought it was because they use the dozo yorshiku when they met new pepeol who basically means please be nice to me

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fernehalwes

[snip] ... and hear the lamentations of their women.

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This line needs to appear in a Hildebrand quest. It's too appropriately inappropriate to keep to just the LOC enthusiasts.

I'll be over here - holding my sides.

Yikes, translation can be quite the pickle sometimes! I bet that would translate strangely over to JP. A pickle, what? (Actually, you guys would probably just find an equivalent expression in JP, since 'in a pickle' only has one meaning! Ack, I tried.)

Thanks for the explanation! Things are probably fine as-is. To be entirely honest, I was looking for an explanation instead of a change, and I didn't know who else to ask. You didn't fail to deliver!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fernehalwes

to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women.

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I thought this was only an appropriate reply when you are asked, "What is best in life"?

Great post, Ferne! Thank you!

I really like your idea for splitting Japanese phrases like onegaishimasu and ki wo tsuketekudasai into two different versions to avoid confusion in other languages. Changes like this will really help people communicate better across language barriers.

It seems to me that there has been a gradual shift in the development of the autotranslation tool away from this:

"Hey, here's a Japanese word. Go ahead and translate it to English, French, and German."

and toward this:

"How can we make it possible for people to communicate X effectively?"

It's exciting to see this kind of progress being made, and to hear that the LOC team is helping to develop elements such as the UI as well. I can't tell you how many games I've played where translated English text has been awkwardly scrunched into tiny and/or narrow fonts in order to make it fit into a menu window that was never designed with English in mind.

The fact that the LOC team is affecting the development of FFXIV from the ground up really makes me confident in the overall direction of the game. You guys are doing a great job!

When i saw the thread title all I could think of was

http://static.gamesradar.com/images/...icle_image.jpg

Then I stayed for the localization dev post. Woo!