I'm all for clever localization but please don't just leave out important story.

[Verlyn]

You know I can't answer those questions. At this point, all I can reiterate is my support for the translators to make our story more cryptic. The top comment on the reddit post gives a good breakdown of why I think we got the better version.

You should ask the writers to make the plot more cryptic then. The translators shouldn't be making such changes.
Yes, they can make little flavor changes and make it read better for english-speakers (though most of it is horribly overwritten, as an aside, so they're not doing that right). That's one thing. Radically changing the personality of a character or the tone/content of a conversation, is something completely different. That shouldn't be allowed.

[Shougun]

Still curious why people say it is an attack on our intelligence or bias to Japanese... Ours takes more wit to read, certainly its not rocket science but the Japanese one spells it out for you - you don't even need to know about the game to understand it. If anything its the other way around, Japanese get the verbose classic anime "This is how I did everything, and my world plan" monologue and we get the cryptic role play to character speech where not everything was revealed at once.

Sure the information is easily disseminated in the Japanese version, and perhaps people prefer that - but I didn't feel troubled when I watched the cutscene and and when I read the Japanese version it didn't shock me. Just clarified some things that could have been naturally clarified through further development if I had been patient or studied further.

[Fiaryn]

I'd rather not have the Japanese version of Midgardsormr's dialogue, personally. It's ham handed and treats the player like a child. Anything not laid out explicitly in the EN version can be readily inferred with just a hair of reading comprehension.

[AlphaSonic]

That doesn't change the fact that English Midgardsormr treats you as rubbish and the Japanese/French/German does not.

[Intaki]

That doesn't change the fact that English Midgardsormr treats you as rubbish and the Japanese/French/German does not.

Because heavens forfend somebody call out the main character that's been happily dancing on strings for the entire story up til that point.

You should ask the writers to make the plot more cryptic then. The translators shouldn't be making such changes.
Yes, they can make little flavor changes and make it read better for english-speakers. That's one thing. Radically changing the personality of a character or the tone/content of a conversation, is something completely different. That shouldn't be allowed.

The translators are the writers. We've been told this already; there is no "original" script. Each language team writes their own script while working with all the others. It's a collaborative effort where, for example, the EN team may come up with new ideas that the JP team likes and uses and vice versa. And at the end of the day, every script undergoes review by the top lore guy.

There are no wicked little translators working in their own ideas without permission just because they hate you personally and want to see you suffer.

In fact I'll go so far as to turn your own advice back at you: if you do not like the output of the English team, take it up with the big JP guy at the top that gave the green light to their writing.

[Verlyn]

Because heavens forfend somebody call out the main character that's been happily dancing on strings for the entire story up til that point.

The translators are the writers. We've been told this already; there is no "original" script. Each language team writes their own script while working with all the others. It's a collaborative effort where, for example, the EN team may come up with new ideas that the JP team likes and uses and vice versa. And at the end of the day, every script undergoes review by the top lore guy.

There are no wicked little translators working in their own ideas without permission just because they hate you personally and want to see you suffer.

You're just the queen of strawman responses, aren't you?

A lot of translation work, particularly with languages that are not in the same language family, is writing. That's why it's typically called localization.

Well, they're not doing a very good job on writing certain things and maintaining consistency. I only mention it because it'd be nice if that changed.

[Delily]

You're just the queen of strawman responses, aren't you?

The only strawman there is her last quote. Her other points still stand. There is no lead lore person who writes the scripts and passes it to the translators. They develop it together. Did you read the post in the Lore forums? He created a language for the dragons, got the script from the Japanese team, and decided to improve on it. The only difference between the two translations is the sense of things working out in the end. Our version leaves us hanging.

[Intaki]

You're just the queen of strawman responses, aren't you?

I answered your question. The fact that you try to distract from that while simultaneously accusing me of straw-manning is pretty funny though.

My criticism remains that the English Localization deviates too far from every other language base, including the, yes, original Japanese text, pulled from the game client.

1) Whatever among the Japanese text is "original" you have no way of knowing.

2) The deviations were all completely approved by the top lore officials that handle such things. Arguing with what the EN localization team has produced is arguing with what the highest authorities over the matter have approved.

[Renik]

It doesn't matter if its translation or localization, the actions performed by the characters are written in the Japanese (original) text, if they keep changing the characters, personalities, intentions and information given to the players, the story will be affected later, causing inconsistency. You can't just make lore for one of the regions and adapt the story to this lore, this is bad, and it goes too far for what a localization is supposed to be, because localization must be creative, but not to this point, this kind of localization is more similar to the one made to Asian texts by the catholic scribes back in the middle ages.

snip

You are taking the lore team words too seriously, there's an original text, and yes. they said they took some ideas form the localization teams to modify and improve the original, kudos to them, team work always gives better results, and a lot of brains work better than a few, but the original is still there, and it's Japanese, don't give the EN team more merit than they deserve.

snip

A lot of words to say nothing, all i can see is cliche and repeated responses with a lot of "we" that should be changed to "i".

[Intaki]

You are taking the lore team words too seriously, there's an original text, and yes. they said they took some ideas form the localization teams to modify and improve the original, kudos to them, team work always gives better results, and a lot of brains work better than a few, but the original is still there, and it's Japanese, don't give the EN team more merit than they deserve.

Then please, enlighten me as to which lines are "original" and which are revised. Once you've sorted out the revised areas of the lore, then we can have a discussion about the originals. That sounds fair, right?