This frequency of English localization issues is unacceptable

[Slatersev]

The topic is localization issues, not debating what the EN "translation" is supposed to mean especially when it's not even remotely the same as the original dialog.

We have been told a million times the scripts for both English and Japanese are written alongside each other. Koji has actively come up with lore and written lore and dialogue for both versions. How much there even is an "original" is something they have gotten annoyed about many times because that's not how they have operated.

[MeeDeggiThePunisher]

We have been told a million times the scripts for both English and Japanese are written alongside each other. Koji has actively come up with lore and written lore and dialogue for both versions. How much there even is an "original" is something they have gotten annoyed about many times because that's not how they have operated.

If I co-write a novel with someone in English and decide to translate it in a language I understand but my co-writer doesn't, that would give carte blanche to change, add and omit things as I see fit. Which would be the original? Our English novel, or my translated hackjob?

[ArslanMalqir]

If I co-write a novel with someone in English and decide to translate it in a language I understand but my co-writer doesn't, that would give carte blanche to change, add and omit things as I see fit. Which would be the original? Our English novel, or my translated hackjob?

Do you genuinely think there's no oversight on the localization, and that the localization team is actually able to just write whatever they like and change things as much as they like without it being looked at, especially given there are vastly more English speaking players than there are any other offered language?

[Lauront]

Do you genuinely think there's no oversight on the localization, and that the localization team is actually able to just write whatever they like and change things as much as they like without it being looked at, especially given there are vastly more English speaking players than there are any other offered language?

Unless they are performing comparisons between versions, as is the case here, what difference would that make, pray tell? How would they even know? The same even goes for the lead writers in a different sense - if they are not fluent in the target language, and are reliant to some degree on what the localisers are telling them is the case ("yes it lands better this way in English"), how would they even really know that the differences are causing either (subtle) omissions or tonal/characterisation differences? So the question is, what does this oversight even amount to?

They convey the exact same message in your examples....

EN
Yet I daresay Fandaniel still wanders the aetherial sea. As do ancients who gave rise to Zodiark, setting in motion so many cataclysmic events...
If there is a justice or morality at work that governs our fates, I do not know it. Nor do I think any man ever will.

Near as I can tell, the translation of this dialog is:

JP
On the other hand, the souls of Fandaniel and the the souls of the ancients who made up Zodiark he hijacked have drifted to the sea of stars.
I'm not trying to argue about whether it's good or bad. I'm just trying to argue the facts.

The bolded is not the same, particularly due to this: "setting in motion so many cataclysmic events...". In fact, the subsequent phrase does not even read the same way with the insertion of that phrase. The intention here appears to be to set up a contrast between the two (Fandaniel the hijacker vs the ancients who tried to save their world through Zodiark) but it's phrased very awkwardly (whether by intention or not) and instead seems to be blaming them for said "cataclysmic events", when really, they preceded Zodiark. If you want to pretend it's the same, go ahead, but it really isn't.

It does seem the English localization team takes more creative liberty than the French / German localizations with the argument that "localization is not literal translation, and the importance is to attune the content to what fits local tastes."
As one who is fluent in Japanese and English, I always just play in Japanese text / voice acting because the issue is beyond simple "tuning of content" and clearly seems to be influenced by erroneous interpretation by the localization team.
I have done some localization in the past, but it is clear there doesn't seem to be any effort to correlate information between the different localizations -- we may as well call these different games. Different plot, different spell names, silly equipment names, etc.

It's a shame, because Ishikawa seems to think they are the same but it's clearly not the case, to varying degrees of subtlety.

[ArslanMalqir]

Unless they are performing comparisons between versions, as is the case here, what difference would that make, pray tell? The same even goes for the lead writers - if they are not fluent in the target language, and are reliant to some degree on what the localisers are telling them is the case ("yes it lands better this way in English"), how would they even really know that the differences are causing either (subtle) omissions or tonal/characterisation differences? So the question is, what does this oversight even amount to?

I mean, I suppose Koji Fox and the localization team might just be taking advantage of their positions and changing things around and lying to their superiors and close personal friends whom they write the script with together and deviously trying to change around a few words to subtly program the English speaking players to hate Zodiark and love Venat by offering slight reminders of canon events that happened when the original didn't, and that this is all done intentionally because I guess the localization team hate nuance and just want everyone to become Venat simps.

It's possible.

I'd just consider it less likely than the localization team working closely with the script-writers on the Japanese side and that oversight existing in such a way that they don't have a repeat of Haurchefant which was explicitly noted and called out as having been done without proper approval which they would change going forward, and that Yoshi-P and the writers are fine with the localization we get and don't consider it misleading or untrue to their vision.

[Tsukino]

We have been told a million times the scripts for both English and Japanese are written alongside each other. Koji has actively come up with lore and written lore and dialogue for both versions. How much there even is an "original" is something they have gotten annoyed about many times because that's not how they have operated.

This is very wrong. Many years ago Koji said something about how they get asked to make things that can be used across all versions, citing the English team as having created the dragons' language and a large amount of player titles (they're in English in the Japanese version of the game, though not always the same). People kept repeating it without quoting it, playing some weird game of telephone until it became "they somehow write the game in English and Japanese simultaneously." They don't, it would be difficult to impossible to even do something like that.

That's not to say that the English team doesn't have much more input than any other localization team for pretty much any other game does - Koji does indeed write background or "lore" for a bunch of stuff, and he's worked out of the Japanese offices and been able to directly bounce ideas around with Yoshida and Ishikawa and the other writers, which is obviously way more involvement than just being the head of a localization team. But this doesn't somehow make the English version co-original, however you think that would work. The script is written in Japanese by native Japanese speakers, and it has an English localization team that has some input, that's it.