I think FFXIV should be more political actually

[Exmo]

Heck if I know, it's your job to convey your thoughts into words, not mine. So far every time I come across you, you seem to have this issue. :/

If you are consistently unable to understand me, maybe you should stop stalking me. Just a suggestion

[Dikatis]

It was weird that the JP script used him/her for the faries in the first but the western localization turned them androgynous for no reason outside of brownie points. Though the western localization has always been shaky. Wonder when we will get to see the blue blood clan that the song Rise was talking about. :^)

You're just wrong. Objectively wrong. The fae being genderless was agreed upon by the entire localization team, not just the EN team.

Now for challenging, I would say the pixies’ speech pattern. One lore point is that those creatures are agender. We used a male/neutral agreement for the Sylphs back in 2.0, but for the pixies we wanted to try something different. Since this gender-neutrality is never mentioned in the main story, we didn’t want to use special words that would warrant a reaction of surprise from the human characters. And so we thought “What if they never use gender-specific words to refer to themselves? That way, they have this speech characteristic without influencing the flow of the story.” We ended up going with this, but soon realized it could sometimes be very hard, even when using a lot of grammatical tricks and epicene words.

It's a lore point agreed upon all the writers.

While I don’t regret asking if we could remove them from the gender binary, as it was about time that we established that precedent somewhere (it’s a surprise tool that will help us later!), seeing the challenges that presented for other languages has really been eye-opening. I am extremely thankful that our localization colleagues and the event team (members in charge of world lore creation and story) were willing to work with us there.

Personally, my favorite translations are the ones where I feel a strong attachment to the story and characters, and end up with an English version that I’m confident has the same emotional resonance as the Japanese. One of my favorite sections in that respect is the healer role quests in 5.0. Though I can’t quote the lines in specific (spoilers!), there’s a scene toward the end of that questline that I found very moving, but is written to emphasize a turn of phrase that sounds beautiful and elegiac in Japanese, and...clunky and emotionless when rendered directly into English. I spent quite some time laboring over that one, and I’m pretty proud of how I eventually captured the meaning and emotion of the scene. And players have responded well to those quests too, which makes me extra happy.

It was explicitly challenging to translate this lore point into every language the game is played in. And there are plenty of lines that would just be chunky with a direct translation. So knock it off with this stupid "brownie points" talk. You're spreading misinformation and making your hatred obvious.

[Raoabolic]

You're just wrong. Objectively wrong. The fae being genderless was agreed upon by the entire localization team, not just the EN team. It's a lore point agreed upon all the writers.

Localizers are not the writers of the JP script, you know, the origin of the game? Glad to know we are on the same page that it was a purely western change for no reason, I assume.

If you are consistently unable to understand me, maybe you should stop stalking me. Just a suggestion

As dead as the forums are, of course you are bound to talk to the same people day in and day out, lmao. Besides, all you do is appeal to emotion and fold the moment people poke holes at your flimsy takes. There's not much to understand tbh. :/

[Dikatis]

Localizers are not the writers of the JP script, you know, the origin of the game? Glad to know we are on the same page that it was a purely western change for no reason, I assume.

The localizers are just as invested in the writing of the game as the scenario directors. The lore itself is written in part by the localizers. See the "Thal's Balls!" curse that's everpresent in the setting. That's written by the localization team.

And you clearly ignored the bolded part that disproves what you're saying because you don't want to admit you're wrong. So I'll isolate it for you.

One lore point is that those creatures are agender.

Stop hoisting the Japanese script as a Bible when you can't even be arsed to cite actual sources. You either have a source or you're a liar and a troll.

[Turtledeluxe]

Kate outright says in her own answer its a deviation from the source material. We knew that already since every voice except English is distinctly female.

As far as the quote from the French localizer, I do not find that statement clear. What is a "lore point" and what does "agender" mean in that context? Whose lore point? As others have said, Kate at least does strongly believe localizers are writers. Only 2 localizers comment on it so it's not unanimous. I would be interested to know what they said in full in French. In other words I am not sure if they were simply saying "we were told making them gender neutral is ok in this case". I very highly doubt Ishikawa was even thinking about something so dumb and proabably told them to just do whatever.

Put another way, Kate's answer ia redundant and even contradictory, if the French translator is accurately stating facts. So they have always been genderless, yet Kate needed to ask to portray them as gender neutral? Hence my skepticism. I think what the French translator actually said "well there was never a rule around this" and Kate said "yeah so we set the precedent in Shadowbringers by asking about it."

[Raoabolic]

The localizers are just as invested in the writing of the game as the scenario directors. The lore itself is written in part by the localizers. See the "Thal's Balls!" curse that's everpresent in the setting. That's written by the localization team.

And you clearly ignored the bolded part that disproves what you're saying because you don't want to admit you're wrong. So I'll isolate it for you.



Stop hoisting the Japanese script as a Bible when you can't even be arsed to cite actual sources. You either have a source or you're a liar and a troll.

So you are cool changing the original script? Good to know. Also, koji is well known to localize rather than translate the freakin' thing. (I get it Mr. fox, galka sasuage is very memey. Ty. :/)
Honestly, my biggest takeaway from all of this is that if Working Designs started a decade later, they would be as big as Funimation, lol.

[Underscore]

The localizers are just as invested in the writing of the game as the scenario directors. The lore itself is written in part by the localizers. See the "Thal's Balls!" curse that's everpresent in the setting. That's written by the localization team.

They don't say "Thal's Balls!" in the original Japanese, so it's not really part of the lore. Just something they invented in the localisation as you said. Much like how they invented "The Lifestream" for the sake of an epic FF7 reference, and in doing so caused mass confusion for expansions to come over the nature of the earth veins and the aetherial sea among the English-speaking playerbase.

[Iscah]

You're just wrong. Objectively wrong. The fae being genderless was agreed upon by the entire localization team, not just the EN team..

Oh, interesting side note on what is said in that quote:

We used a male/neutral agreement for the Sylphs back in 2.0

This is an accurate description of the "plant genders" that sylphs are described to have – one produces pollen only (their names have -xia suffix) and the other produces both pollen and seeds (-xio suffix) but then every bit of gendered language from other races just uses female and male and in multiple places gives the "cool fact" that it's the male that produces seeds – when seeds should be a good indicator that they are not in fact (or at least entirely) male. I've wondered whether that's meant to be an in-universe mistake or if it happened at the writing level, so it's good to know that the localisers do know what they're doing and it's the Eorzeans that got it back-to-front.

[Iscah]

They don't say "Thal's Balls!" in the original Japanese, so it's not really part of the lore. Just something they invented in the localisation as you said.

Going from memory, but I believe it did feed back into the lore planning as the reason for separating Nald'thal into two aspects so they can have the characters swearing to Thal alone.

Similarly the Eorzean "seven heavens and seven hells" concept allegedly only picked up the seventh in addition to the six elements because "seven hells!" sounds better than "six hells!" in English.

[Turtledeluxe]

I don't personally care what the localizers think about nonhuman characters with zero need for gender binary, especially not ones like pixies who are based on children. Why gender binary was ever a large concern, is kind of bizarre. From what I understand, it has moreso to do with deciding how to write they/them while trying to fit the Japanese.

And any localizer who thinks its some kind of political statement, is a weirdo.