What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Rulakir]

All of the game's versions are made at the same time. There's no "original JP". One game's language version does not trump the others and the EN localizers are on the lore team. All of the translations are worked out together and this isn't a case where the Japanese version is first made and then all others separately copy it in different ways.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/003334.html

Pamela: Many people are under the impression that the German team translates from the English localized text, but the truth is that we indeed translate directly from the source Japanese. Thus, the lion's share of our work begins as soon as we receive the first batch of text from the development teams.

There was a translation inconsistencies thread active for a while that had numerous examples of where EN has left out information the other language versions had often to the detriment of fully understanding the characters/story.

[MikkoAkure]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/003334.html



There was a translation inconsistencies thread active for a while that had numerous examples of where EN has left out information the other language versions had often to the detriment of fully understanding the characters/story.

I don't think I was fully clear in my original post. This isn't a case where a product is fully released in Japanese and then left to Ted Woolsey to figure out later for an English release. The writers from all the languages work together on the product before its released and localizations are checked. You act as though the EN writers are deliberately obfuscating parts of the story in order to spite the players and they're sneaking it in without anyone knowing and perverting the "original Japanese holy text". Considering Koji himself created a lot of the lore for the game for all languages since 1.0, it's a lot more interconnected than "Japanese writer makes the game and everyone else copies it".

For most of my time here at Square Enix, I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with development teams that trusted my judgement when it came to localization calls. This added freedom makes my job a lot easier, and will sometimes result in slight deviations from the original Japanese for the purpose of maintaining a natural feel in the English.

While this will affect “grammatical authenticity” (as I will often tweak grammar, word choice, word order), we will do our best to maintain the text’s intended message, as well as the overall feeling the writer wishes to invoke—something that we can achieve due to our proximity to the writers.

Having a seat literally next to the person who wrote the quest means I can turn to him/her and confirm what they want their readers to get out of a line. This is especially important considering how vague and context-heavy the Japanese language can be (there is no plural, no articles, both the subject and the object of a sentence can be omitted, gender pronouns exist but are rarely used, etc.). Having the writer within arm’s reach means that context can be clarified without having to guess at things (something that can happen a lot when translating blind).

We translators are very fortunate to have an ongoing dialogue with the devs regarding the lore, UI, cutscenes, and more. This allows us to spot potential localization pitfalls, but also helps us have a more sound understanding of what we’re translating, and allows the dev team to ask us questions in turn.

The English team is actively involved in naming of skills and location names, etc. and the wider localization team is invited to provide ideas and concepts for new creatures from their various cultures. Then there are situations where we do culture checks and flag potential issues in the story to avoid misunderstandings or to cater to contemporary cultural developments.

We’re not put in the position of delivering work that we know is going to disappoint English speakers, because if there is anything that really will not translate well, we can always consult with the devs about changing it in one or all languages.

For specific content like raids, we sometimes work closely with the other languages to make sure that our translations don’t differ too much. Most people are probably defaulting to English when teaming up, so German tends to look closely at the English terms when it comes to specific mechanics that are key to win.
While the meaning will be mostly the same in all three languages, the way the meaning is conveyed might largely differ as Japanese is not a language that you can always transport 1:1 into a Latin language. Furthermore, we try to work very creatively with the language and sometimes that means diverging from the source text to highlight a certain aspect of a characterization or story element better for our target audience.

[Teraq]

You act as though the EN writers are deliberately obfuscating parts of the story in order to spite the players and they're sneaking it in without anyone knowing and perverting the "original Japanese holy text".

Personally, no, I wouldn't believe in that particular conspiracy theory of the Evil Pro-Venat, Anti-Ancient English Localisers. I am simply saying that if people are getting different conclusions from the English text vs the other three localisations, then there is a failure in their stated goal. I'm super happy for them getting to name locations and skills in English, but this does not matter here: we're talking about the text, the characters and the tone conveyed. Koji came up with the name Ascian? Cool story Broski. It is all well and good for them to talk up how in touch they are with the actually Japanese story writers, script writers and developers, but the results are here, and they're inconsistent at best, outright invention at worst. Meanwhile, the entire development team and story writers continue to be Japanese, and there will only ever be one Final Fantasy XIV, the one intended by the writers. If the English text gives a different impression from the three other versions, then there is a problem in how it's doing its job.

My point is that both Emet and Elidibus come across as more insulting in English (thank you for providing the quote by the way) while it is not as much the case in other languages. This is relevant because you brought up your own negative perception of Lahabrea from the text, and how it might influence his portrayal in Pandaemonium.

(Also, tangentially relevant to Pandaemonium things and theories: both Japanese and French have Emet-Selch explicitly refer to Lahabrea as "old", which he still could say of an Erichthonios-Lahabrea in absolute terms, mind you, but it seems more natural to me to interpret it as "older than Emet-Selch", which would point to Lahabrea not being Erichthonios.)

I'd like for Lahabrea and all characters to have more nuance. But Lahabrea's 2-dimensional portrayal goes further back than Endwalker so I wouldn't exactly get your hopes up.

But Shadowbringers was a start in giving him more dimension than "cackling evil wizard". Him having an important position within the literal highest governmental authority on the planet and being a respected researcher is very much intended to be surprising, hence the surprised response you can pick when you hear about his work in Akademia Anyder, and the overall awkwardness at the start of the Pandaemonium storyline when your character looks embarrassed to know him – or rather, the future him.

The seeds for a better, three dimensional portrayal of Lahabrea as a human being are there. Let's not burn him down along with the rest of the Ancient populace of strawmen just yet.