If you are going to do a Live Letter

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

There’s a vast difference between having a discussion, and someone outright insulting another poster due to disagreeing with them on a point. There's no reason to result to insults or negative generalizations; you and I have already had this discussion in this very thread. You can easily counter points you disagree with without resorting to calling other posters names or using phrases like “close-minded” and “self-important” against them.

The discussion at present isn’t a fight until someone makes it one. Usually by opting to insult and generalize rather than actually address what’s being said. Countering arguments isn’t the same as fighting or trying to “take down” an “opponent”. It’s participating in discourse and debating.

I didn't insult anyone, people got offended by a Generalization.
Conversation could have returned to normal, and about the topic, but people made it about me and a Generalization. They focused on that and wanted to fight about it.

Your right, it wasn't a fight, until people made it one. It wasn't about trying to “take down” an “opponent” until people made it that way.
You say something someone doesn't like, you speak against the Mob, then someone gets upset, and things devolve.

[HyoMinPark]

I didn't insult anyone, people got offended by a Generalization.
Conversation could have returned to normal, and about the topic, but people made it about me and a Generalization. They focused on that and wanted to fight about it.

I wasn’t even talking about your statement, but the statement another poster made to me a few posts up. However, it is telling that your mind immediately jumped to our prior conversation. Your “generalization” was negative and still uncalled for. It was an insult; you were implying that Americans are self-important, which, as another poster explained to you, doesn’t carry positive connotations and is equatable to calling people conceited. It was perceived as rather aggressive by more than just myself—regardless of your “meeting me halfway”, that doesn’t change anything. Interpreting something as aggressive doesn’t equate to being offended, either. I wasn’t offended by your post, but I still found it aggressive; primarily because it was unprovoked—you just made it “because reasons”. I know a lot people are easily offended nowadays, but not everyone is; and calling out a statement as unnecessary doesn’t mean the person doing the calling out is offended by said statement.

Anyways, moving on from this dead horse...

Your right, it wasn't a fight, until people made it one. It wasn't about trying to “take down” an “opponent” until people made it that way.
You say something someone doesn't like, you speak against the Mob, then someone gets upset, and things devolve.

I don’t think most of this discussion was a “fight”. Enough posters are being relatively civil about it. However, there are still those who would rather resort to insults as opposed to discussion. And this doesn’t apply to just this thread—many threads on here end in this nowadays. It only seems to get worse as time goes by. I know this platform hasn’t been the best for discussions—but at least previously you could find some well-reasoned ones. Now, it’s difficult to find even those, I feel.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Anyways, moving on from this dead horse...

Thank You, that would be Lovely.

I don’t think most of this discussion was a “fight”. Enough posters are being relatively civil about it. However, there are still those who would rather resort to insults as opposed to discussion. And this doesn’t apply to just this thread—many threads on here end in this nowadays. It only seems to get worse as time goes by. I know this platform hasn’t been the best for discussions—but at least previously you could find some well-reasoned ones. Now, it’s difficult to find even those, I feel.

Sadly yes. But at least you can say these Forums are Never Boring, and sometimes actually even fun. Some of the topics that come in have fun conversation, or when people are ready to stop fighting or Arguing even for a brief moment it becomes Meme-fest and good fun jokes. And these are the most fun times to be on the forums.
Hopefully we can have more of that.
And even nice Conversations like this.

[Nalfein]

Thank you Mimilu

[DumdogsWorld]

This whole thread reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend the other day.

One of my sources for unofficially translated manga decided to shut down, and now I have to hunt for new sources. He then asked "well, couldn't you just buy the manga?" No, I can't. I can't buy the stuff even if I want to. I wouldn't resort to unofficial translations on some obscure website if I had a way to just access the stuff normally.

It's a known thing that many of the Japanese have an attitude that goes "if you want to enjoy my works, learn Japanese and come to Japan." It's no different than how many Americans and Europeans put out all their work in just English and say "English is now so big worldwide, so just learn English!"

Even though Square Enix is much more inclusive about its foreign customer base than that, something as niche as a live letter is still asking to have foreigners treated as "extras."

[Sathona]

People want easy to understand, accurate communication?

There's been more than one instance of translation issues / error.

At some point yes,just doesnt give these vibes anymore,it turned from wanting translations to > where are ppl from/hurr durr demands and more~
If thats how people provide feedback now then dunno!

[Yshnal]

I’ve met plenty of Japanese exchange students that speak in English with us even if it isn’t perfect. Foxclon still communicates in English sometimes on the streams—I recall during the ShB pre-expansion PLLs where he used quite a bit of English during the sound and video fiasco they were having. So I don’t know how much weight that comment really holds.

Japanese exchange students are an obvious exception, mostly because they want to practice their english. The same thing can be said about the japanese that go to places where foreigners meet up in japan. You can even find japanese people on the street replying to you in english, be it due to that reason or because they want to be polite. In regards to Foxclon, one thing is to use a bit of english out of need, and another one is making the whole LL using it. And much less on a live japanese event with a japanese crowd waiting in front of you.

I certainly hope you aren’t prefacing your arguments with calling me close-minded and self-important—since I don’t see your “general ‘you’” disclaimer included with that statement. Uncalled for ad hominem is not how you lead a productive discussion. Look no further than the derailment between Zanarkand-Ronso and other posters: people ignored what they had to say all because they chose to “call out” another poster as being a “self-important American”. Said poster wasn’t even an American, so their generalization had no basis to even stand on—aside from the fact that it was irrelevant to the discussion and completely uncalled for; your comments about how “close-minded and self-important” I am are similar in nature.

I was talking in general all the time, even though you seem to insist on proving my point. Regardless, I should have clarified it earlier I guess. We're living in the "perpetually offended" culture nowadays, after all. Also, there's more subtle ways to attack someone's opinion, which you all seem to insist on using. But talking about that will take us nowhere, so I can just apologise and close this.

You do realize that real-time translations can occur without a translator being on the scene, yes? The PLL was already being streamed to FFXIV’s global audiences—a translator could be embedded into the stream from a separate location and still translate in real-time. They don’t always have to be face-to-face with those that they are translating for or interpreting for. With technology the way it is, they could be across the globe performing this. This solves two major issues: your concern with the experience being hampered by an on-site English translator, and the global market’s desire for information to be given to them in a language they can understand.

You demand for us to respect their circumstances, but you don’t expect them to respect ours? Like how we don’t understand their language? Like how we also pay to play this game, and would love to receive information in a far more timely manner directly from the source as opposed to relying on third parties? Isn’t that a bit of a double standard you’re defending here?

Did you even watch the LL? There's no way that a translator (nor a full team of them) can translate the 4-way conversation that they were having most of the time. At least not in a proper way. Japanese is not english, nor even similar to it, and it's really hard to be able to translate it live without missing more than half of the stuff that they keep talking about while you do it (that's why they always wait for their translator when they do it live, and why it looks way more scripted than when they don't do it). And before someone says it again: the LL is scripted, but just to a point. All they can do is making a summary beforehand... like the slideshow that they showed us during the first part of the LL (which had plenty of english).

Wait once a year? How many PLLs do you think the developers do? They do at least two per new patch—generally split into a “Part 1” and “Part 2”. With patch cycles generally being slightly over 3 months in length, that means we usually see 2 or 3 patches a year. Meaning 4 to 6 PLLs. The number is actually a bit higher, since sometimes in-between patches will have PLLs associated with them. Only Fanfests and Expansion PLLs tend to have real-time translators—the rest we have to rely on third parties; or we wait and twiddle our thumbs until they release a Digest a couple weeks later because not everyone is aware that some sites (like FFXIV’s Subreddit) do fan translations. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Almost every LL done during the year has been translated, even live by either Aimi-san or Koji. Only special events such as this one aren't. So, yes, probably 1 or 2 (if you count the japanese FanFest, which I forgot about).

People are allowed to request that a global company provide its global audience with more readily accessible news with regards to PLLs and Patch content—and even the additional “fluff” stuff, like the interaction with Yoshida and Yoko Taro. Just because you’re of the opinion that that makes us “close-minded” and “self-important” doesn’t make it so.

The only thing that I agree with is with the fact that, even though their translators are not just sitting on their hands waiting for a LL to happen, they shouldn't need several weeks to post the LL digest. The rest, meaning people demanding a live translation on a live japanese event that was even announced as having japanese-only audio, or even some saying that they should just record it beforehand (really? and screw the TGS attendants just because of you? can you see why I said what I said?) is just something that I can't agree with, and I explained why already.

[Anvaire]

I think the approach from the JP fan fest would solve this. Translations of the original by commentators. The issue with translating on the fly is that it takes so long so the LL takes much longer to convey the same information. Having commentators translating over the top of the other broadcast is the middle ground.

During HSW there were specific community streams to summarise the LL but unfortunately, they didn't really advertise them very well.

That said, they are a Japanese company and I think there is a prevalent arrogance from English speaking nations (I'm from the UK and I see this quite a lot) where e expect things to be translated to English. I think though, that at the end of the day, the game is Japanese, its development team are Japanese and the outreach they do to give us translations already should be commended. Sure improvements can be made, but equally, they could also give us nothing. While I haven't got very far, i have started trying to learn Japanese for this reason. I simply think they shouldn't be expected to provide translations outside of the games native tongue. We as non-japanese speakers should instead take the effort to get translations or learn Japanese. The community on Reddit already do this. TDLR: It's our issue not theirs.

[Nora_of_Mira]

Then provide translation. This live letter was an atrocity for a lot of people, and while they provided a little bit of english on the screen, we missed a lot.

This was really just... silly and disappointing.

it was at the Tokyo Game Show...Do you honestly expect full english support?

[Driavna]

it was at the Tokyo Game Show...Do you honestly expect full english support?

Meanwhile in EU/NA shows Yoshida speaks and we have to wait for someone else to translate (which is no problem). However, asking for the same in Tokio, at least the important stuff about the upcoming patch, is a sign of arrogance and entitlement. Ok.

To the usual "WoW bad, FFXIV good!" we have to add "EU/NA bad, Japan good!"