Quote Originally Posted by Telkira View Post
I genuinely don't like how different the English 'localization' is from the Japanese source material.
They explained at one of the recent Fan Fests that it's not a direct translation because it wouldn't necessarily make sense to English speakers that way. They said that when you do this line of work you realize that localization "is the only way to do it".

Their goal is not strictly to say the same thing the original story writers wrote, but rather to produce the same emotions and feelings that the original story writers are trying to get out of the Japanese audience. Sometimes in order to do that, they have to change words, phrases, use common western sayings, or say things that westerners would be familiar with that are more likely to draw emotions from them.

Although they don't do this for sidequests and minor things necessarily, for the MSQ they sit down with the original story writers and make sure they understand the story properly and exactly what emotions or information those writers want to convey. They make sure they understand this because of the importance of the MSQ, especially Endwalker being the finale of the arc.

Audiences would just accept it as it is, and would enjoy it all the same, like they do with everything they consume.
I don't think I would mind it, based on what we get when we put it into Google Translate. But they also seem confident in what they say about localization being the only way to do it.

The game and its content will continue to stand on its own merits without Koji Fox's garbage.
Koji is no longer involved in that (although past stuff, obviously). He mostly does the vocals for the music and FF16. And as you mentioned, lots of people work on it, because they recently said that contrary to popular belief, one person can't handle all of the localization alone - and to reinforce that point they said they are recruiting.