An Introduction to Dragonspeak

[Spellbinder]

But the fact remains that the original writers did not consider this setting while writing Midgardsormr's dialogue.

Then maybe, just maybe, instead of lambasting the localization department for their characterization of Midgardsormr, someone should ask why the original writers failed to consider character setting and history they asked him to make?

You don't just ask someone to create an entire language and stuff it in a drawer to collect dust, and I think it's great that they took the time to incorporate this into the dialogue.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

Then maybe, just maybe, instead of lambasting the localization department for their characterization of Midgardsormr, someone should ask why the original writers failed to consider character setting and history they asked him to make?

You don't just ask someone to create an entire language and stuff it in a drawer to collect dust, and I think it's great that they took the time to incorporate this into the dialogue.

Maybe? I'm not here to point fingers at people.

[Balipu]

Maybe? I'm not here to point fingers at people.

Well you did kinda imply that the localization team left out some meaning from the original on purpose in order to make room for an idea not in the original. That's some serious finger pointing right there. As a fellow translator I think the localization did an excellent job with the dragons. Yes, their version is better than the original, so what? It happens.
I think they are right about this, and right about the astrologian(no it is not completely different from astrologer). I know you didn't claim the latter, but many did.

[Tiggy]

This is all an poor excuse not to give us a proper translation. We are not a dragon. We are players. We don't have the familiarity. We need explanations or we don't clearly understand what's going on. It's unjustified by the sole fact we must go to the fan Japanese translations just to clearly understand what was happening. We should not have a different experience than Japanese players. Our version of the story should not be more ambiguous than theirs.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

Well you did kinda imply that the localization team left out some meaning from the original on purpose in order to make room for an idea not in the original. That's some serious finger pointing right there. As a fellow translator I think the localization did an excellent job with the dragons. Yes, their version is better than the original, so what? It happens.
I think they are right about this, and right about the astrologian(no it is not completely different from astrologer). I know you didn't claim the latter, but many did.

Because they did.
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ersus_english/

[Grayve]

Because they did.
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ersus_english/

I read it. The English version is superior. All the points are in the English version, save mention of the 'Shadow'.

Midgardsormr sounds, well.. like a mysterious ancient dragon should, in English. In the Japanese, its like... he's flat.

[Balipu]

I read it. The English version is superior. All the points are in the English version, save mention of the 'Shadow'.

Midgardsormr sounds, well.. like a mysterious ancient dragon should, in English. In the Japanese, its like... he's flat.

Yeah. Like how all the Kefka fans forget that in the original he was simply an irritating nutjob that everyone hated, characters and players alike, and only in the english dub did he become the Joker 2.0 he is now. Reading the word to word translation, I didn't understand more. I just noticed that Midgardsormr didn't have a personality in the original.

[lololink]

Yeah. Like how all the Kefka fans forget that in the original he was simply an irritating nutjob that everyone hated, characters and players alike, and only in the english dub did he become the Joker 2.0 he is now. Reading the word to word translation, I didn't understand more. I just noticed that Midgardsormr didn't have a personality in the original.

In the english version he only looks like he hasn't practiced english since hundreds of years, Midgardsormr seems like a sadist that likes torturing you and criticizes all you do and hates mens more than anything else, while the japanese one seems to be wiser, consider that Hydealyn chose you and that it might mean that men aren't all as bad as the Ishgardians that still occupy the lands they stole to the dragons and want to test you to see if there is still hope for our kind or if we are all sinners.

[BreathlessTao]

First things first: thank you for the lore chunks about dragonspeak in ARR.

Moving on...

When the EN Localization team received the relatively wordy Japanese lines for this scene, we felt that it would fit the character and his native language better if we localized it in a manner that seemed a natural fit with the dragon language I had created—that being something that was far more compact, but still contained the main core that was in the Japanese.

With respect, this is just unprofessional. The fact that one of the English translators happens to be the one responsible for an imaginary language involved in here should be disregarded and not at all relevant, it should not come into the picture when doing the translation at all. Why? Because this is not usually the case. The translator is usually given a bunch of text that they need to translate, to the best of their abilities, making it sound and feel natural (in context) in the target language, but without altering any of the literary features of the original work. That is all. I understand that your background knowledge gave you an advantage, but if you felt that your own ideas were not in sync with how the writers implemented them in the first place... you should have brought it up to the writers themselves and found some kind of common ground with them. The actual raw translation of the Japanese text and the localised in-game English version are kind of worlds apart, and frankly, it's noticeable if someone listens to the Japanese audio and reads the English text, even without actually being able to speak/understand Japanese. Also, you specifically mention the EN team, so are we also to understand that such a discrepancy doesn't even exist between the Japanese and the other localised versions? Because if that's the case, it's just even less right, in my opinion. Obviously, we don't know what kind of communication went on about all this, before it was greenlit. But at the end of the day, the point is, it was, and it doesn't feel like a wise choice.

So, again, thank you for the lore, but please... next time, don't have the literary parts changed so much.

[Viridiana]

In the english version he only looks like he hasn't practiced english since hundreds of years, Midgardsormr seems like a sadist that likes torturing you and criticizes all you do and hates mens more than anything else, while the japanese one seems to be wiser, consider that Hydealyn chose you and that it might mean that men aren't all as bad as the Ishgardians that still occupy the lands they stole to the dragons and want to test you to see if there is still hope for our kind or if we are all sinners.

I didn't get the impressions you got, and did get almost everything you said was only in the Japanese. All out of the English scenes and voice. Having compared the two, very little was changed. Things were made less explicit, yes, but very little information was completely dropped. The only thing I can think of that was dropped was that he only sealed the blessing in JP versus stripping it in EN.