Famitsu interview with Yoshi

[Kosmos992k]

How much is the difference? Differences between other languages too?

The german version did take the romantic route.

The only real differences were between the EN Localized version and every other version, just as it was with Midgardsormr (and others).

Based on the research I've been able to do (lots of reading forums) including posts and comments team members and Yoshi-P, as well as comments from players that are bilingual and can therefore discuss the differences, the production process appears to be something like this... The original script is finalized in Japanese. It's translated into English, just a straight and faithful translation without localization. This becomes the reference copy of the script for translation to other languages such as French, German, etc...So the French, German, and other language versions are very much faithful to the Japanese original script.

The Korean and Chinese may be translated directly from the Japanese original, or the English reference version, I'm not 100% sure, I suspect it may be easier to translate those from Japanese, but either way all these other languages are based very closely on the Japanese original script. The English version of the game released doesn't use the faithful translation, it goes through extensive localization first.

The English version is fully localized, so they take the English reference translation and tinker with it to replace various idioms, jokes and other culture specific references with things considered to be more suitable to the English audience. With Midgardsormr and Haurchefant, and other instances, the localization team has actually altered dialog, cut scenes and characterization.

There is input from the EN localization team to the original or master script/story/lore, in order to ensure consistency with naming of places, monsters, skills and NPCs, and even the lore, because we have a EN lore team as well. All of that feedback happens before the final script is completed in Japanese and translated to English for reference. That ensures that there is consistency across the different languages the game is published in, which is what makes it slightly odd, and quite annoying, when the localized EN version actually diverges from how all the other versions handle something.