English translation lacks charecter compared to other translations

[MicahZerrshia]

snip.

idk, if you went to school in NA and you paid any amount of attn in high school English and even middle school English classes you should be able to understand things clearly. They don't really change it up too much, they just tend not to use a lot of modern slang or shorthand. Urianger is also not Shakespeare on steroids lol he is much easier to understand for the layman. As someone who has a degree in Literary Criticism I do have a bias as I can read anything from Chaucer to Rowling with ease, but I have never been asked what a word means nor have I met anyone who has struggled with the dialog. It's just more formal than anything which is to be expected when dealing with dignitaries as we do in game.

I honestly think I speak in a more complicated fashion irl than the characters do in the game due to my education, as with those in the circles I run. Even in my guilds, I am far more likely to be asked what a word I used means, than one Y'shtola used. They do use uncommon words but definitely not ones that are undecipherable, especially when in context, unless you are not a native speaker.

But at what the OP is getting at is that the dialog is flat compared to others. And it is, quite. They did address this, especially in the case of Haurchefant because they did get tons of flak for it. And while they did say there is much lost in translation, they would not drastically change a character again. If memory serves Koji got into quite a spot of trouble after the changes in Haurchy were brought to Yoshida's attn.

I also think a lot of it has to do with the voice actors they hire. You can most definitely tell they are just there to collect a paycheck. It is really flat and lacking. Idk if the pay or working conditions are bad, but they seem to mostly phone it in.

[Mikayuki]

idk, if you went to school in NA and you paid any amount of attn in high school English and even middle school English classes you should be able to understand things clearly.

One thing I forgot to add in my previous post is that in my opinion, the EN version is the international version and not only the "NA" version. We can see this as the official website even has different EN versions tailored to different english speaking countries. I remember when I was in middle school I'd use FFX to improve my English, so the spoken dialogue in FFX was a lot 'simpler' (since I wasn't even fluent in EN back then). FFXIV is very text heavy, especially ARR which has less voiced cutscenes in the msq than the 2 expacs. It's not that people cannot understand it per se, it's more that the swollen language gets 'annoying', so you'd rather skip those cutscenes. This can get rather frustrating later on when there's some gap in the story because of a skipped scene.

So all in all I think being the international version of the game, the EN should be a bit more modern and easier accessable for everyone. Just because the setting of FFXIV is slightly old fashioned doesn't mean that the language has to be over archaic. FFXII has a similiar setting, yet the EN there is modern and easy enough to understand.