Misleading English translation of a major story element in the 7.4 MSQ (Big Spoilers)

[GrizzlyTank]

The more important point in the 7.4 ending would be if the phrase about a certain apocalyptic voice is mentioned in all languages.

[Daralii]

"The great withering" isn't used as a proper noun. There is no evidence at current that the circumstances that Halmarut is talking about have a proper name, and I didn't take her mention of it to be as such. Calling these circumstances "the great withering" as such, by fans, is just because it's all we have to go on right now. In all languages, she uses this phrase as a colloquialism or turn of phrase.

It serves it's purpose in the given scene, to give a certain impression of events. You must remember that the English localisation is done in-house, alongside the JP script. While the English localisation has sometimes given a slightly different impression on certain elements in the past, I trust that they are aware enough of the story that the casual use of "things will soon be withering" and "we're in for a long winter" is not impacting anything of note. I'm sure we'll get a proper noun name, akin to the Final Days, at some point!

I think it's very fun to be able to see both the JP/FR/DE and EN localisations, like cool, two cakes! I like the flavours of both, and they can be enjoyed together, rather than in opposition. Nobody eating just one cake is going to be losing out on anything in this scenario, however.

The problem is that withering is a very specific kind of process, not the extremely nebulous bad thing that the other languages talk about. It isn't a horrible error, but it's definitely misleading.

[Connor]

Is withering not literally what happens in a ‘harsh winter’? Don’t they effectively mean the exact same thing semantically (‘the inevitable degradation of [old life] that gives way to the new’?) I’m confused about how the two aren’t (mostly) interchangeable outside of pedantics .

Winter is defined by the gradual cessation of growth in natural life. Which is…withering? I mean, I certainly can’t see people mistaking ‘withering’ as being a Summer phenomenon lol

[Zakuyia]

its not going to change the story or whatever is coming next, so why bother

Its about quality. Would you like and expansion full of mistranslation. Take a look over beyond the blue and orange sky between yonder elementals and beneath the skys pale moonlight <- would u want something like that over something like Look over the mountain top it should be below it. <- translations are very important they help the flow of the game story and instructions on what too do.

[eloralora]

Is withering not literally what happens in a ‘harsh winter’? Don’t they effectively mean the exact same thing semantically (‘the inevitable degradation of [old life] that gives way to the new’?) I’m confused about how the two aren’t (mostly) interchangeable outside of pedantics .

Winter is defined by the gradual cessation of growth in natural life. Which is…withering? I mean, I certainly can’t see people mistaking ‘withering’ as being a Summer phenomenon lol

Yes, these are my thoughts exactly lol. I don't really feel like there's enough of a difference between the idea of outlasting a coming winter and outlasting a coming withering (which is what happens to things during the winter). My interpretation was that the plant Ascian chose to use a word with plantier vibes to reference whatever process this is, but I can't think of a reason it would be misleading, especially because it's not presented as a proper noun in English

[Fawkes]

Is withering not literally what happens in a ‘harsh winter’? Don’t they effectively mean the exact same thing semantically (‘the inevitable degradation of [old life] that gives way to the new’?) I’m confused about how the two aren’t (mostly) interchangeable outside of pedantics .

Winter is defined by the gradual cessation of growth in natural life. Which is…withering? I mean, I certainly can’t see people mistaking ‘withering’ as being a Summer phenomenon lol

Japanese is the contextual language, not English. English is a blunt instrument that you have to beat people over the head with to be properly understood.

As a native english speaker playing the game with english text and voice, after that line I thought "What's 'the withering'?" I did not think "Oh, this is the plant obsessed ascian that I may or may not have read about in some optional lore two expansions ago, she clearly must use a lot of plant metaphors when she talks, and plants wither in extreme temperatures or with lack of water or proper soil, so clearly she must just be saying it's going to get very cold".

[CaptainLagbeard]

The localizers are just making their own story instead of translating.

[Wobi]

Machine translation of Japanese paired with a limited understanding of prose leads to these sort of bad faith arguments. The English localization is not written in a modern format which leads to some players misunderstanding certain story aspects. Narrative context is important and localization does not equate to a direct translation.

[Espon]

Just another person that doesn't understand that localization isn't simply translating things word for word from one language from another and that Google Translate is perfect. Japanese is structured in such a way that makes it impossible to directly translate to English. How you speak often depends on who is speaking to whom.

Not sure why people are so caught up on the worth "withering". It's not an object, this isn't Minecraft or Dragon Age. It's just a verb that means to decay and die, which is what things do when winter rolls around. Withering in this context can mean a coming harsh winter, but withering is a bit more poetic to say. English is a very flowery language, after all. We love to spice up sentences by using fancy words and unnecessary adjectives.

[Underscore]

they probably have a much better idea of where the story is going than we do.

You'd hope so, but this isn't the first time the English has changed things for no reason and caused problems for itself later on. Like the time they called Elidibus an emissary, claimed the echo was a gift from Hydaelyn, called the earth veins "the lifestream" and conflated it with the aetherial sea, and removed a bunch of Ascian foreshadowing from ARR. The list unfortunately goes on.

Is withering not literally what happens in a ‘harsh winter’?

This seems like a negligible change. Stuff has a tendency to wither around winter.

Right, but that's not what the original script said, and the term "withering" is not exclusive to winter. Things can wither for plenty of reasons.

I've seen people theorizing that the world and its inhabitants are decaying based on this word choice. We don't actually know what this "harsh winter" entails - it might not even be that literal, or it might encompass more than that.

The point of localization is to give people an equivalent experience in the target language, so adding this specific term (which may or may not be accurate) leads people to conclusions that a Japanese player wouldn't come to.

If you're going to trust machine translation over the fact that the context talks about multiple shards modifying すべて instead of referring to a singular 世界, I don't think you should be lecturing the devs on anything.
I really hate anyone that can't even pass a JPLT N5 trying to lecture people on "misleading" when we can't even pass the hurdle of basic context grammar being used as fuel for the "anti-localizer" culture war.
~snip~

I never claimed the machine translation was perfect, it's there to provide some context for the actual point of my post which you overlooked. I looked up the specific terms of importance to verify that my understanding of those at least was correct. You don't need to be a fluent speaker to know that "厳しい冬" doesn't mean "great withering" or that the English text is wrong.

This also isn't an anti-localizer culture war post. I'm fully aware of the necessity of localization, but many of the alterations made by this English team are straight up not that. The localization has its problems, but with stuff like this it's usually more an issue of excessive creative liberties, poor media literacy and an obsession with changing things for the sake of changing them.