I would like a more loyal localization (story quest dialogue)

[kyuven]

There was a whole panel on this at the NA fanfest (with Michael Christopher Koji-Fox aka Fernehawles). He works directly with the head Lore planner, as stated in this article:

http://www.dualshockers.com/2013/06/...tion-and-lore/



tl;dr version: Ferne works directly with head loremaster and all the dialogue and stuff in the English localization is approved.

All this says to me is that someone who works on both teams has a really confusing way of looking at what "global" players want, nor do they consult with the voice actors about what would actually sound natural.
Let's contrast for a moment: The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Dragon Age all have very similar settings to FFXI and FFXIV. The former two use antiquated linguistics as a style choice by the author and were brought to life in a reasonable sort of way by the actors, the more notable of which have roots in shakespearean acting, such as Sir Ian McKellan.
Game of Thrones also has some more "dated" linguistics but is willing to sacrifice them when verisimilitude and comprehension would otherwise be sacrificed.
Dragon Age takes existing accents and dialects in the real world and applies them to the fantasy setting. The state of the language's evolution is the same as it is now, but they shed more modern nomenclature for the sake of verisimilitude.
FFXIV's localization tries to hard to be LotR/The Hobbit with a dash of Shakespeare (who, I'll reiterate, invented some words or at least is the earliest record of their usage) without considering the actors and audience.
And they're very inconsistent about the application to boot! The Beast Tribe quest dialogue, despite having characters that are supposed to have bizarre speech patterns, actually make better use of approachable language than the main story quests.
This is jarring because the Beast Tribe quests aren't voiced.
In short, two of this game's biggest criticisms are the wooden acting and excessively flowery dialogue full of "squeenixisms." If they held back on the latter and actually consulted with someone who reads lines for a living in addition to someone who writes buckets of lore, they'd fix a lot of their problems.

That said, I do like the humor. The game's funny, it'd just be funnier if they used "Perhaps you'd like to sleep with the coeurls?!" rather than "Mayhaps you would prefer to slumber with the coeurls?!"

[Intaki]

The people responsible for translating and localizing the script likely have very little (if any) input into how voice talent is managed. Poor voice work is to be blamed on the actors, the casting managers, and the voice directors; not the translators.

[Corfish]

And speaking of voice acting for FFXIV, it has actually improved quite a lot since early ARR. It was pretty stale before, but I think for the most part everyone is doing a much better job now.

[Vilhem]

The people responsible for translating and localizing the script likely have very little (if any) input into how voice talent is managed. Poor voice work is to be blamed on the actors, the casting managers, and the voice directors; not the translators.

THIS ^^^^^. The loc team handles the text and adaptation.

All this says to me is that someone who works on both teams has a really confusing way of looking at what "global" players want, nor do they consult with the voice actors about what would actually sound natural.

And I'm sure the head lore master, as well as the devs, and the localization team, as well as SE, know more how to handle their global product than you. Could call me crazy, but the current formula more than works.


I encourage you to read the entire article, because he also goes in-depth on how some stuff originates in English, by request of the devs to have more Western influences, and is actually translated INTO Japanese.

This is a collaboration by both teams, with ideas originating on both sides. They don't want just a "Japanese game translated into English"

[Mholito]

I think the best way to put it; is that it's the same story between all the different languages, but it is presented slightly differently in each of them.

I also think that a lot of people, who understand "some" of a language, might believe that the translation is more different than it actually is. When something is localized, words and sentences need to be switched around to make up for differences in grammar and the overall structure of the languages. This means that the voice-acting of one language might not match up with the actuall text on the screen while it is spoken, but it might match another part of the text instead. (or, it might be split up between multiple text-boxes)

[MageBlack]

first, my sig is usually misunderstood, i love this game so much and i can't leave it, these are things i would like just to add more flavor to the game.

Bah, no worries. i know people who actually don't care about/for the game will just disappear. posting on the forums is a good sign and should not be discouraged. we all have our own little things that pick our asses about the game and our position on single topic (or two even) is not a comprehensive representation of our feelings about the game.

and now on topic:

The straight translation was more an example of a bad solution than what i want, i'm not native English speaker, i have translated a few literate texts and articles to my native language, so i know what localization means, that's why i don't want a straight translation, just a more accurate one which is more true to the original story.

see, the fact that you are this adamant about discrepancies has me curious about how bad it really is. If its not too much trouble, can you point me towards one of the best examples of a difference that you would consider "story breaking"? Unfortunately or fortunately (depending on how you want to look at it) i'm a mono-linguist. I have a hard enough time speaking english so i have a huge respect for someone intelligent enough to take on more than one language. So if you don't mind to much showing me the actual english translation compared to the localization translation, that would be groovy.

Anyway, you have your opinion and i have mine, i just wanted to let the forums know how i feel about it, that's why the title says "i" instead "we," i just hope this get passed to the dev and localization team alike so they can make a decision, who will this decision please? i can't know and it's not in my hands, as long as they base their decision on a big number opinions it will be good.

Edit: Sorry about my "outrage" i can be very temperamental, but i have no bad intentions.

I've been here for quite a while and I know that they will see your OP and it will get passed along. I appreciate the "I" instead of "we" and recognize you said this. Thank you. Most of my posts on the forums in general are more toung-in-cheek than anything but its hard to read that in text. I apologize if I came off as condescending at all. Its good that people have different views on these things and I do hope things like this get passed along, at the very least it will help keep the lore team in check. I mean, they already created a Diety that was not in the game to begin with just because the english lore team wanted to have a curse word. Yes thats right, Nald Thall was not originally a god for the game, he was put in because they liked Thalls Balls as a curse word. Learned that little tidbit from the fan fest.

And, lol. I had used "outrage" in quotations to denote sarcasm more than anything. I do not feel you are in a blind rage. I can see the difference and you have not really given me that impression. No apology needed here. in fact I think was is needed is more of an understanding on my part of a particular reason for your frustration. I guess thats where we part ways is I just don't see why you would even be concerned enough to post about it.

Edit: Sorry, I know I said I wasnt going to bother you again.

[Spellbinder]

Yes thats right, Nald Thall was not originally a god for the game, he was put in because they liked Thalls Balls as a curse word. Learned that little tidbit from the fan fest.

Just thought I'd stop in and say this isn't accurate.

The lore team was planning to introduce a God named Nald'thal from the get go. However, per Ferne's suggestion, it was made into a dual-aspected God, allowing him to use Thal separately. So no, Nald'thal was not created for the sole purpose of the phrase "Thal's bloody balls."

[MageBlack]

Just thought I'd stop in and say this isn't accurate.

The lore team was planning to introduce a God named Nald'thal from the get go. However, per Ferne's suggestion, it was made into a dual-aspected God, allowing him to use Thal separately. So no, Nald'thal was not created for the sole purpose of the phrase "Thal's bloody balls."

My mistake, thanks for the correction. I knew Ferne had something to do with coming up with the curse word that was not initially part of the game. I just accredited the god's existence to the same thing.

[LunaHoshino]

On the other hand, it's a bit sad what they did to characters like Haurchefaunt. I would appreciate more consistency in characterisation. Don't really care about "flavour text" in fates and such, as all the Japanese ones are really serious and quite boring.

Having seen Haurchefant in both languages, he really, really isn't a good example to use as a reason for why characters shouldn't be changed in localization. If anything, he's a perfect example of the opposite. Don't get me wrong-- I love him in both English and Japanese (he's one of my overall favorite NPCs), but I can also see exactly why they altered his characterization for the English version. He's very much an outright lech/pervert in Japanese, which is fine because that's a common and well-known trope in JP media (the pervert with a heart of gold). The JP audience would see him and recognize immediately what sort of character he's meant to be.

But an English-speaking audience... I really don't think a character who propositions you and not-so-subtly hints that he wants to get you in bed would go over that well with most English speakers, especially not when he's supposed to be a noble of high standing. (Doubly so because he does it whether the PC is female or male.) There's enough left in the English version to make it clear that he's still got a major thing for the PC, and if you've seen the Heavensturn quests from last year or the dialogue about the Cascadier uniforms you know they haven't totally omitted his eccentric side-- they've just toned it down to make it more suitable for non-Japanese players. And I think that's fine. Certain character types are more prevalent/more easily accepted in some cultures than in others; part of localizing works is knowing how and when to make changes to make something more appealing or acceptable to your target audience.

[kyuven]

And I'm sure the head lore master, as well as the devs, and the localization team, as well as SE, know more how to handle their global product than you. Could call me crazy, but the current formula more than works.


I encourage you to read the entire article, because he also goes in-depth on how some stuff originates in English, by request of the devs to have more Western influences, and is actually translated INTO Japanese.

This is a collaboration by both teams, with ideas originating on both sides. They don't want just a "Japanese game translated into English"

You're missing the point. None of those people writing the script have job titles that imply any experience with SPOKEN language.
Translators are not speakers.
Lore specialists are not necessarily playwrights.
It makes no difference which language the dialogue originates from. If they're not receiving input from the people who will be speaking the language (such as, oh i dunno...THE VOICE DIRECTORS)
Let's look at who is actually involved in this game's voice cast on the English side:
Richard Epcar, the voice of Gaius, has 278 credits to his name including the likes of Raiden from Mortal Kombat, Zangetsu from Bleach, Ansem from Kingdom Hearts, and many others.
Kyle Hebert, the voice of Lahabrea, has 230 credits to his name.
Cindy Robinson, the voice of Kan-E-Senna, has 135 credits to her name
Sam Riegel, the voice of Alphinaud, has 211 credits to his name as well as AWARDS for his work including a nomination specifically for voice acting.
Grant George, the voice of Cid, has 142 credits to his name as well as award nominations.
Taliesin Jaffe, the voice of Thancred, has 84 credits to his name, 2 awards, and 4 nominations
Gideon Emery, the voice of Urianger, has 163 credits and 6 awards for acting.
David Lodge has 180 credts and 1 nomination
Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, the voice of Hydaelyn, has 191 credits to her name

And that's the tip of the iceberg. I left out quite a few.
The point is, these actors have long, LONG pedigrees in the industry and many roles where they haven't turned in stale performances. Hell, many of these actors worked on other final fantasy and kingdom hearts games where they turned in great performances. But on FFXIV, they come off as stale.
Compare with the Japanese track, which is decidedly NOT stale in delivery (Raubahn's speeches are awesome, for example) and has a cast with similarly long lists of roles.
The only unifying feature is the script and the direction. Hell one of their VA directors was on EQ2, which also had similar problems with stale performances and flow in the spoken dialogue despite having decent voice actors.
Blame the directors, the scripts, and the localization team. Do NOT blame the actors.