1 Month in impressions/criticisms...

[Tint]

In fact I would be interested if the other clients in French and German use similar text in their localisations.

no strange language in the german localisation.

[kazeandi]

I too live in Japan (Saitama) and tried the game out in voiced Japanese and written English - probably for the same reason as you ^^
I cringed at first when I read the English version, where half of what the chars actually say doesn't appear, while the English text adds a ton of stuff the chars didn't say.
You could say the characters are completely out of character in the English version

You're also right about the characters not being very interesting, maybe except for Estinien and Iceheart, who actually grow a bit... Alphinaud starts out as a brat and ends as a goody two-shoes, not at any point in the questline did he become likable for me.

I also think they totally overused "Pray" and "Anyroad" - that was totally uncalled for and is not only not helping with the immersion, it completely destroys it for me, as no char speaks like that.

In the end, I totally ignored the written text and just listened. The story improved by 100% (even though there's so much わけわかんないこと left, it's Kitsch on many levels).

[Serilda]

I played Final Fantasy XI in pure Japanese for a decade, eventually settling down in a group where everyone else played in English. Because the game was so heavily localised I had no end of trouble communicating with my close friends with simple matters; it was genuinely difficult to refer to most in-game concepts without baffling cross-language confusion caused by changes made for the English adaptation. This continued even after the auto translate tool was added (in fact, it became worse in some respects). It was a running joke in my group - this is a made-up example but only in Final Fantasy could something simply called 'poison' in Japanese be written 'a vial of deadly brew most heinous' in English. The fun we had whenever we were partied up with a non-native English speaker using the English client who was trying to decipher everything coherently...

For XIV, I opted to play in English but kept the voices in Japanese as is my preference. It made communication so much less confusing since all of my pretentiously-named items at least had the same names for everyone else in my FC. But hearing the Japanese dialogue being translated so differently at times completely alters the way some characters come across. Alphinaud is one of the worst for me; I really like him in Japanese but his English lines often sound dismissive, ignorant or pointless. It's as though I'm watching two completely different characters at the same time and it makes talking with my friends who use the English dub jolly confusing.

And seriously, I don't understand most of Urianger's English dialogue even though I'm familiar with many forms of classical English; the words are familiar but the meandering way he talks is completely unlike anything which approaches plausibility. Some of the quirky accents and styles of speech are inaccurate Hollywood-style approximations of Shakespearean English or regional (often British) accents and they sound super-weird, just like someone impersonating a regional accent they don't actually use in real life.

Don't get me wrong, some of the localisation choices are absolutely inspired; I've found several of the jokes beyond hilarious and someone on the English script team has a real talent for writing appropriately nasty dialogue for the more arrogant characters. Overall, it's a solid adaptation. But I wish they'd rein themselves in from time to time with the weirder styles of speech or when they're 'reworking' the way a character comes across in English, because we really do miss out on a lot of the nuances in the English script. Maybe that would be ok if everyone played in a bubble and only spoke with people using the same version of the game as them...

[kazeandi]

That's exactly the point. The characters speak according to their personality, but the English and the Japanese versions are completely different.

Take Minfilia, for example, who's just annoying in the English script, whereas she's a friendly, warm person in the Japanese version.

Alphinaud would be a snotty little boy who grows up a bit and fights with regret in the Japanese, whereas the English makes him sound like an emo full of teenage angst - which might be appropriate if you look at his character model, but I digress ^^

Yeah, the localization team most certainly did NOT localize the characters. They all use the same phrasing, the same way to speak. Not a bit of individual personality there in the Japanese version comes through in the English.

[Serilda]

In a way the translation team is disadvantaged as they have the benefit of knowing what the character sounds like in Japanese. They already know that Alphinaud is idealistic and precocious, so they don't always appreciate that removing some of that from the script cheats the viewer out of learning the same things about the character and makes him sound like a simple fool as a result. I think they would be spot on if they had extra checks in place to avoid removing some of the more endearing character building elements without replacing them with anything else. And checks in place to avoid using unfamiliar speech patterns that are simply difficult to understand or inaccurate just for the sake of immersion (when in fact, it's anything but when it's your accent that's being mutilated).

[kazeandi]

Someone in this thread said that the characters do use figures and manners of speech in the Japanese nobody ever uses - which is totally wrong. We do use keigo, we do abuse the passive, we speak in a slalom around issues and avoid being too direct, but that's very much part of our identity, too.

Now, in the English, which could be just as indirect and get the point across nevertheless, everything's spelled out and sometimes, the thing unspoken in the Japanese, becomes something totally unfitting for the character in the English, when they try to "fill in the blanks".

They should maybe hire an English speaking Japanese to glance over the script and point out where the characters are out of their role, where their personality shifts in unintended ways and where things implied but unspoken are different from the things being guessed into the localized version. Then a native English speaker could rewrite it and let it check again.

Yes, one more step, but it'd guarantee that the characters, which this story is supposed to be about, don't become something completely different in the English.

Take Estinien vs Iceheart, for example. They're just bitching at each other in the English, but in the Japanese, they tease each other while actually growing fond of each other. They eventually meet. This is sorely missing in the English.

Add to that the annoying wannabe-Old-English with the total overuse of certain words and you have this train wreck of a localization, which otherwise is not bad. Skill names, quest texts, you name it, all top notch. Just the story ... oh man, the story.

[Calypsx]

Take Estinien vs Iceheart, for example. They're just bitching at each other in the English, but in the Japanese, they tease each other while actually growing fond of each other.

How could anyone ever grow fond of Estinien?

[Avidria]

I am amazed at how many people seem completely baffled by what is nothing more than old English, perhaps they don't teach this in America but in UK it is pretty much taught from the time you can read a book and start reading Shakespeare. So perhaps instead of saying how annoying it is to not understand what they are saying how about educating yourself about some of the early forms of the language you currently speak. In fact I would be interested if the other clients in French and German use similar text in their localisations.

Would you people prefer they spoke modern Americanism's? Maybe Estenien can post a twitter message whenever he goes somewhere new and shout #YOLO before he runs into battle.

Honestly, that would be hilarious. Might even make me dislike him less. Maybe.

...probably not.

[Zykor]

My number one issue with translation? The fact that they don't translate the BLM spells as Fire, Fira, Firaga, because "we felt that having a base name, and then a number offset from that name (with a space) made it quicker and easier to discern the original spell, as well as its level."

Sigh, I even tried to rename those spells with use of macros and /micons, but I learned very quickly that using macros with those skills is bad.

[Morningstar1337]

I'm gonna point out some things

• Unlike a niche anime set in a Japanese high-school where the audience is small enough to be expected to know something about the county of origin, an 100 accurate translation down to the retaining of honorifics is not necessary.
• The game (and Franchise) are inspired by western fantasy and mythology, and I'm pretty sure Toliken (which all modern fantasy rips off by default) did make his world similar to the eras that inspired his epics in many ways, dialogue especially included, XIV's localization does the same. You are in a medieval fantasy world? expect medieval sounding dialogue, not chanspeak, memes and esoteric abbreviations (well except in the chat itself)
• At one point a man worked for localizing game for SE, Ted Woolsy. He was not exactly known for accurate translations, leading to things like "You Spoony Bard!" The fans liked his work and thus his legacy lives on to this day in many areas (And you can consider Fernehawnes to be his direct successor in this regard)
• Shakespeare wasn't even Shakespeare, his many works, while great, consist of various innuendos, double entrendes and sexual puns, that became obscured by linguistics drift (To quote the late Terry Pratchett "The Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without saying three of them")