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

[Cach]

Unless there's a switcharoo, Lahabrea can't die in Pandaemonium because he alongside Emet-Selch and Elidibus escaped the Sundering.

Can't help but to think that this stage of Panda is just a excuse to explain "this is why Lahabrea was a looney tunes cartoon in ARR".

[MikkoAkure]

As for his fellow Unsundered calling him "an idiot", you'll have to refresh my memory on that. Reckless and brash, yes; burning himself out from overly enthusiastic body hopping, yes; but insulting him? Perhaps Emet-Selch did, because Emet-Selch is a grumpy jerk with a heart of gold whose thoughts tend to be kinder than what comes out of his mouth, tsundere that he is.

Emet-Selch: "Thanks to Lahabrea's crowning act of idiocy, our favorite Emissary saw it fit to bring me back"

To be fair, he also has low opinions of the other Ascians. He calls Igeyorhm impetuous before going on about how her failings changed the way they had to act (the void) and in the same breath says Mitron and Loghrif were expendable.

EN doing its own weird thing while FR and DE stick much closer to the original JP –, I'd rather trust the latter on that one.

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.

Anyway, I would much rather have a three-dimensional fallible but human jerk rather than the cardboard cutout you are making him out to be. But can I really blame you for having such a take? This is, after all, Endwalker we are talking about, where nuance goes to die and the antagonists are definitely wrong and their society a horrible cryptodystopia. You might as well be perfectly right – and I will hate it all the way.

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.

[Lauront]

Can't help but to think that this stage of Panda is just a excuse to explain "this is why Lahabrea was a looney tunes cartoon in ARR".

That'd be fine, had they not already given an explanation to differentiate him from his older self, e.g. here:

I closed my eyes, letting out a measured breath, or what passed for one in the emptiness of the rift. He was right, of course. Lahabrea's boldness had only grown with the passing of ages─segueing inevitably into recklessness. Across many vessels and many worlds he blazed his trail, each mad leap forward leaving him that much more broken. Not satisfied with having brought about the Seventh Umbral Calamity, he labored needlessly to prolong it.

Was it his affinity for concepts of flame that made him so like the fire itself? From peerless Ifrita to that hopelessly immortal bird, his creations had burned bright and beautiful─as did he.

It's also remarked on elsewhere, e.g. here:

Emet-Selch : Ce vieux Lahabrea changeait d'enveloppe en permanence et courait à droite à gauche... Comme ça devait être usant !
= "Old Lahabrea was always constantly changing his envelope and running from right to left… How exhausting it must have been!"

Emet-Selch : Autant au niveau du moral que des souvenirs, sans parler des espoirs…
= "Both in terms of morale and memories, not to mention hopes…"

So there is the strong inference that the person we met and dealt with was not always the person he was.

[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.

[Rulakir]

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".

Not spite, incompetence.

[Midareyukki]

Not spite, incompetence.

Incompetence implies that the translation is poor and by people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Either because they're amateurs or because the employees are tone-deaf and don't get what their target culture wants.

The truth, however, is far more nuanced and complex than that.

The gist of it is: this isn't a simple translation. I'd be hard-pressed to call it one. As mentioned before, Koji Fox is in charge of making the lore, he has power during the game's development. And what he essentially did was re-write the story for the EN audience. We're getting our own version of the game. We're getting the major notes of the original, but the nuance changes.

It's more than just translation, because the context and the text is being changed.
It's different from localisation, as it implies stuff is being changed for the sake of the target audience. And it's not, not always.
There's creative liberty, which is really rare in Translation.

Translators in general believe that they must work as close to the source text as possible, but rendering it comprehensible and natural to the reader. A direct translation is too artificial, a loose translation is too creative and can be dangerous in official situations. So when they make a change, normally they do it to better fit what your language and culture will be more used to. Either nuance is lost because "not everything can be translated", or the message's tone is changed a bit to convey it as much as possible, even if distorted.
You will find those changes everywhere: they are normal.

Translators don't rewrite the plot, it's not common to do that.
If there's rewriting involved, such as due to tabboo or sensitivity filter, it's either done by the editor, or the translator asks the author\publisher about it and does so with their approval.
Creative freedom doesn't go beyond that. A product is someone else's job, you're just there to change the labels and make it official in your country.

What this team did was take the game and its script and make their own version. The script is similar for the most part, but nuance, jokes and tone are entirely at their mercy. And Koji is involved in the direction the original takes, so all he has to do is tell his team and say "alright, the JP version's out, let's make this cooler for the EN version". And as he only speaks English, the DE and FR version don't go through this, and thus aren't affected.

Rewriting isn't a translator's job. Calling it "incompetence" is valid if you think "this is a bad translation" without considering that this isn't a translation at all. If this were one, yes, this isn't professional. But the way they go about it isn't the same. It's Localization + Extra steps, approved by SE itself.

So for better or for worse, this is what our localization team does, and SE agrees to it.

It might not even matter much, but as a translator, it really bothers me that the first thing people do is blame the messenger. When often there's stuff our higher ups decide and we just have to take it. It might even be fun for the localization team to write this sort of script, but at that point it's not your average translation. And stuff like this gives us a bad name, especially in the age where people accept Google Translate as a valid option, while we humans slave away for virtually zero recognition :T
So spite the process as much as you want. It's valid. But don't think this is incompetence when it comes to translation. They were given the power to do more than just translate. This isn't your average thing translators do. To me? They're pseudo-authors, copy-pasting the most of the text via translation, and then filling in the gaps on their own and adjusting the text by themselves.

[Rupertus]

What made the noise that triggered the Final Days in ancient times? Why are people turning into monsters after feeling negative emotions? Are Meteion, Hermes, Venat, and etc. still alive to possibly return in a later expansion? Sorry, if this is the wrong place to ask lore questions.

[Midareyukki]

What made the noise that triggered the Final Days in ancient times? Why are people turning into monsters after feeling negative emotions? Are Meteion, Hermes, Venat, and etc. still alive to possibly return in a later expansion? Sorry, if this is the wrong place to ask lore questions.

There is a forum dedicated to Lore, it's in the English Forums' Community tab.

That said:
1 - The Meteion band's off-pitch and depressing Evanescence song did
2 - Because souls can't stand depressing songs, which make them agree that life sucks. Their emotions start manifesting weird emotion magic and it turns them inside out. As you would after hearing Evanescence for too long.
3 - The souls of some of them are around and could possibly "come back", but they will be somewhat different than what we know them as.