Petition for Spanish Translation of Final Fantasy XIV

[Midare]

Of localazing the prices nothing...?

[Haru_Nekoi]

Apoyando!!
Espero que sea pronto teniendo en cuenta la ambientación de la próxima expansión.

[Talke]

But I do wonder. Supposing there is a go ahead and knowing how many different types of spanish there are (dialects, regions, idioms, nuances, etc) which would you use?

I appreciate your perspective as a developer, and would like to offer mine as a linguist. I will be answering in two posts because my perspective turned out a bit too long.

With regards to the text:
It's true that localization means "to make something local", which by definition is not possible when releasing a localization to a linguistic population instead of a region. With that said, whenever products are prepared to be released to a population instead of a region, something called "Universal Spanish" is used: rather than a dialect, this is a standard of writing that removes any localism and uses lexicon shared by as many countries of one linguistic group as possible, so as to be readable by as many speakers of one language as it can. This is the Spanish used for technical and scientific papers, as well as in international journalism and non-country specific software releases, because you want to cast a net as wide as possible in terms of user availability. It's likely this would be the choice for the broader UI/UX of the game, as well as business and community communications. Some more localized nods could be inserted in text such as quest descriptions and journal entries (which in English do have occasional references to American and British pop culture, among other things); I guarantee that if the entire body of written text uses Universal Spanish as a framework with an occasional nod to popular Spanish or Latino IP, it would elicit a chuckle or a double take (or sometimes just ignorance) rather than a "this version wasn't made for me" reaction.

[Talke]

Following up from the prior post...

With regards to voice acting:
Most people have said we'd rather just have the game's interface and subtitles in Spanish because the real challenge to localization (not to mention the expensive part of it) would be voice acting. You can hide dialect and accent in text but not so much in voice acting.

However, if we work under the (very unlikely) assumption that this project's localization has a cozy budget to work with, there's three distinct possibilities:
a) The "representative" dialect is chosen by sheer numbers of speakers (which would tilt it towards a central Mexican dialect, since it has the most speakers per country and tends to be the one taught as "standard" in the States), OR
b) The "representative" dialect is chosen by market share (which would tilt it towards Castillian Spanish), OR
c) Real-world representation goes out the window, and creative adjustments are made to adjust for a fantasy setting, where the dialect is referential to a character's personality or nation/allegiance instead, and not adjusted to the player.

I personally think C would be the ideal solution, and I say something akin to this in my video-letter to Yoshi-P. XIV's voiced English version isn't also entirely off British English, it has plenty of voice actors with diverse linguistic backgrounds, with the result being that Eorzea presents as a pluricultural world where the lingua franca happens to be English. (For absolute clarity though, I think this is something only the English localization does; I have not played the game in French or German, and the Japanese version displays this pluriculturality through different means.)

[GrammSix]

The truth is that it would be a great advance to see the game translated into Spanish. Currently I don't bother recommending this wonderful game to my friends as it is not only in English, but it is in a rather complex and old English.

So... please Square Enix, it would be amazing to give Spanish-speaking people the chance to immerse themselves in this world.

Much love from Spain

[Crimen]

We've been wanting this since 1.0. Please provide Spanish translations! Even if it's just the text! Voiceover would be awesome starting with whatever future patch but I also know how expensive it would be, so at the very least a text translation would be very appreciated. Signed, your Puerto Rican fans.

[faris_minamino]

A large population of two continents speak spanish. It seems ridiculous to me not to localize it to spanish. In pure numbers and financial considerations, German, a language accommodated by the game, is less valuable than spanish at 96.58 million worldwide speakers, compared to the almost 500 million spanish speakers worldwide. While it would take a lot of work, and time, it is absolutely worth the money for the vast market it opens the game up to.

And yet Spanish is a very ignored language, I saw many times video game companies ignoring our language, but adding other less spoken languages, and is something that I couldn't understand, no matter how much I try. :/

[arstoka]

I am not a Spanish speaker but I fully support this idea. Best of luck!

[VirusOnline]

I appreciate your perspective as a developer, and would like to offer mine as a linguist. I will be answering in two posts because my perspective turned out a bit too long.

With regards to the text:
It's true that localization means "to make something local", which by definition is not possible when releasing a localization to a linguistic population instead of a region. With that said, whenever products are prepared to be released to a population instead of a region, something called "Universal Spanish" is used: rather than a dialect, this is a standard of writing that removes any localism and uses lexicon shared by as many countries of one linguistic group as possible, so as to be readable by as many speakers of one language as it can. This is the Spanish used for technical and scientific papers, as well as in international journalism and non-country specific software releases, because you want to cast a net as wide as possible in terms of user availability. It's likely this would be the choice for the broader UI/UX of the game, as well as business and community communications. Some more localized nods could be inserted in text such as quest descriptions and journal entries (which in English do have occasional references to American and British pop culture, among other things); I guarantee that if the entire body of written text uses Universal Spanish as a framework with an occasional nod to popular Spanish or Latino IP, it would elicit a chuckle or a double take (or sometimes just ignorance) rather than a "this version wasn't made for me" reaction.

Following up from the prior post...

With regards to voice acting:
Most people have said we'd rather just have the game's interface and subtitles in Spanish because the real challenge to localization (not to mention the expensive part of it) would be voice acting. You can hide dialect and accent in text but not so much in voice acting.

However, if we work under the (very unlikely) assumption that this project's localization has a cozy budget to work with, there's three distinct possibilities:
a) The "representative" dialect is chosen by sheer numbers of speakers (which would tilt it towards a central Mexican dialect, since it has the most speakers per country and tends to be the one taught as "standard" in the States), OR
b) The "representative" dialect is chosen by market share (which would tilt it towards Castillian Spanish), OR
c) Real-world representation goes out the window, and creative adjustments are made to adjust for a fantasy setting, where the dialect is referential to a character's personality or nation/allegiance instead, and not adjusted to the player.

I personally think C would be the ideal solution, and I say something akin to this in my video-letter to Yoshi-P. XIV's voiced English version isn't also entirely off British English, it has plenty of voice actors with diverse linguistic backgrounds, with the result being that Eorzea presents as a pluricultural world where the lingua franca happens to be English. (For absolute clarity though, I think this is something only the English localization does; I have not played the game in French or German, and the Japanese version displays this pluriculturality through different means.)

Wow, thanks for the explanations. They make a lot of sense. I'd agree that C sounds like the best result as well and in my experience it exists only for English localization. I don't think I've ever "read" or heard a Canadian French accent in the French version, but it's been quite a long time since I've switched to English. But I definitely see where you guys are coming from, though if I'm being honest, I would love a voice option. And I think SE can afford it haha.

What a great and heartfelt video. I really hope someone at SE, if not YoshiP himself, has watched it. It really makes me wonder why statistics show that spanish speaking countries do not bring in comparable revenue, especially considering population and the fact that spanish is a major global language. Now that I think of it, I don't even see a lot of games these days having a spanish option and I wonder if this is a huge factor into that. Lack of accessibility would certainly affect revenue and make companies make certain decisions away from certain markets as a result. But I'm pondering here lol.

Thanks again for the explanation and good luck guys!

[faris_minamino]

Wow, thanks for the explanations. They make a lot of sense. I'd agree that C sounds like the best result as well and in my experience it exists only for English localization. I don't think I've ever "read" or heard a Canadian French accent in the French version, but it's been quite a long time since I've switched to English. But I definitely see where you guys are coming from, though if I'm being honest, I would love a voice option. And I think SE can afford it haha.

What a great and heartfelt video. I really hope someone at SE, if not YoshiP himself, has watched it. It really makes me wonder why statistics show that spanish speaking countries do not bring in comparable revenue, especially considering population and the fact that spanish is a major global language. Now that I think of it, I don't even see a lot of games these days having a spanish option and I wonder if this is a huge factor into that. Lack of accessibility would certainly affect revenue and make companies make certain decisions away from certain markets as a result. But I'm pondering here lol.

Thanks again for the explanation and good luck guys!

99% of the AAA games, have Spanish option, and a big chunk of indie games too. (The only indie games I didn't see a Spanish translation are the ones that are only in English because, very very small company) is true that most of the games doesn't have Spanish dub, but text is always a thing. Is just Square Enix who did this to us many times: Kingdom Hearts 3D for example, wasn't in Spanish when the rest of the tittles had an Spanish translation, also the Star Ocean saga, I think I only saw one of the games with a Spanish translation. (The ps3 one) and that's all.
Even Atlus, and Sega who usually hasn't Spanish, now are releasing all their games, with our translation: Persona 5 Royal, Yakuza saga... etc..