Various english titles..

[desufin]

Maybe I'm just one of few who find these to be done way too liberally when it comes to translations but a fair amount (by a fair I mean a lot) of the achievement titles feel really misleading or outright wrong in their english interpretations compared to JP/FR/DE.

The biggest offenders to me personally, are several of the fishing related titles but some of the grand company titles along with others either add a gender suffix where none originally was, or the other way around (all while being completely different in general).

Titles that comes to mind are:
Master Caster (Legendary Fisher in FR, reference to a legendary fisher in JP)
Meadowcaster (La Noscean Angler in other languages)
Forestcaster (Shroud Angler)
Desertcaster (You get the point..)
Having caster in these titles are grossly misleading in my opinion and something like Legendary Fisher is vastly better and direct to the point of what the title is supposed to represent. The same goes for the other * Caster titles.

Flamelord (or lady if your character is female)/Serpentlord/Stormlord are other examples of grossly changed titles as they are respectively Ul'dahn Hero/Gridanian Hero/Limsan Hero which have more impact as to what they seem to represent.

Also why are all the "the x" or "of y" capitalized as The/Of while they are not in other languages?

[Lukha]

You're definitely not alone, a lot of us disapprove of how liberal the localization team is with the localization. I've expressed my desire for a pre-localization version of the script to be made available to select alongside the various text options several times.

Sadly, I've yet to see any of these threads receive an official response from the otherwise talkative forum team...

[Fernehalwes]

Greetings.

I wanted to pop in to clear up some confusion about how a lot of in-game terminology is conceived. It is often (understandably) believed that localization has little to do with the game beyond translating what the development team creates for the Japanese version. While translation is a large part of our job, what is not known by many is that the EN localization team plays a large role in the creation of a lot of in-game terminology and lore which is then localized back into Japanese (with liberties often taken by the Japanese team so that the text might appear more appealing to their target Japanese audience).

The case with player titles is one of many aspects of this game where the localization team is called in to create content, with the Japanese then going off the English. In this case, the dev team has taken it one step further (or maybe it's actually closer?) by not translating the titles into Japanese and using English in the the Japanese version.

BUT WAIT! Why are the player titles in the Japanese version English in the first place?

There are a couple reasons behind this--one possibly being Japan's quirky fixation with the English language. English is taught in all levels of school, signs everywhere are in English, company names/restaurant names/hemorrhoid cream names are in English, fish & chips are wrapped in English newspapers, song lyrics are peppered with grammatically questionable English. Why is this game even called Final Fantasy and not 最終幻想 (saishu genso)? Because in some cases, it seems, English is the cooler option. In my two decades here in Japan (and 12 years at SQEX) I've asked many people (including creators of the FF series) this question, and it really does often come down to simply 'English is cool.' I don't know if I can ever fully understand this, EN being my native language, but I suppose I can liken it to how when I started studying Japanese, kanji seemed like the best thing since a McDLT with a side of 7up Gold. I didn't care what it meant, as long as it was kanji, it was going on my wall/my PC/my shirts. I remember having to do some calligraphy in my high school Japanese class and ended up choosing to write 水虫 (mizumushi) because really I liked how it looked...and could care less that it meant Athlete's Foot.

Ugh, but enough about me.

The other (and probably main) reason why the Japanese version has chosen to use EN titles is because in the JP version, the player names are all in English (or at least Roman characters). Aesthetically speaking, the dev team thought that having Japanese (whether katakana, hiragana, or kanji) titles coupled with Romanized player names would not look good. The solution that the dev team came up with was to use English titles (rather than Romanized spellings of Japanese words, which I was told also did not look very cool to a Japanese person). To implement this solution, it was decided that the EN Loc team would help come up with the titles.

So the next question becomes, if the JP version is using the EN titles, why the discrepancies between the two? It turns out there are a couple of answers to this one, as well...

The first is, the level of EN vocabulary an average Japanese user has. For the EN version, the Loc team pulls words from a large portion of the massive English lexicon. The problem for the average Japanese user, however, is that their knowledge of English is mostly secondary. They know the words that their textbooks have deemed important for them to know, but a lot of times, are unaware of the rest (as is the case with any second language acquisition). This ultimately translates into a smaller pool from which to select EN words if the aim is to choose an EN title that is understandable by the JP user.

One retort to this might be, why not come up with titles that sound good in BOTH English and Japanese? For the most part, that's what we try to do. However, there are times that the small pool severely limits what we can do on the EN side.

Think of it like making a pancake. Anyone can make a pancake with merely eggs, milk, baking powder, sugar, salt, flour, and oil. It will probably be a good pancake if you are a decent cook. But what happens when you and your guests have been eating pancakes for five days straight? You start thinking about adding some blueberries, or substituting applesauce for the oil, or swapping out milk for some rich, creamy buttermilk. However, one of your guests steps up and says you are not allowed to use any of those fancy ingredients because he thinks blue is the color of evil djinns, applesauce may have cyanide from stray seeds, and the calories from buttermilk are just too much for his shapely thighs. He tells you that you can use the original ingredients in any way you want, but no fanciness, fancy-pants! And...there are you and your guests back at pancake one.

There is a reason why a lot of Japanese games have attacks like "Fire Smash" and "Power Crush" and "Brave Light." They are informative, and get the point across, and to someone who only has had limited exposure to the EN language over the course of their lives may appear to be exotic; however, I (personally) believe that without an occasional 'pummel' or 'annihilate' in there every now and again, some people might start longing for a little blueberry & buttermilk.

The second answer to the question comes down to how some terms have already been translated in each version. The Serpent/Flame/Storm vs Gridanian/Ul'dahn/Lominsan example is a good one. Way back in 1.0, localization decided (with the blessings of the JP lore team) that we were going to use the Serpent/Flame/Storm prefixes for the Grand Companies. The JP decided it wasn't. This mainly had to do with the fact that the JP names for the GCs could all be compacted into 3-kanji terms with 1-kanji abbreviations. The EN needed something that was compact as well (or we'd have "Order of the Twin Adder private second class" showing up in dialogue boxes everywhere). SO, LONG STORY SHORT(er), this meant when we suggested "Stormlord" for a title, the dev team was afraid that the JP players would not understand what 'storm' was doing in the title as the word 'storm' is not used in the Japanese version's abbreviation of the Maelstrom. Hence the change to "Lominsan." "Lominsan Lord" then became problematic for the JP version because it might imply a Lominsan noble, hence the change to "hero" (an English word common enough in Japan to be understandable by most users). Basically, the Japanese devs localized the EN term into something that they felt would be better received by their target audience. It is the same thing that happened with the 'caster' series you also mentioned. In EN, 'caster' can mean a caster of spells, as well as a 'caster' of (fishing)lines. We came up with the title Meadowcaster to represent one who cast their fishing lines in the ponds located on the meadows of La Noscea. We felt a slightly abstract title would feel more 'title-y' than simply La Noscean Angler. The dev team believed that the EN might be too abstract for the Japanese user, and instead decided to go with something more direct. They both mean the same thing (more or less), with the EN one being a bit more flashy.

In the end, this results in some of the names being slightly different across the board. That's ultimately what localization is. We aren't making direct copies, we are making versions which all have the same core, but are presented in ways that are adapted to the regions we are selling them in. It is the direction we have decided to take the game (with Yoshi-P's blessing, of course).

Is it the only direction we could have taken the game in? No. Is it a direction that all users will approve of? Probably not. Is it the direction we've decided is best for us at the current moment? Yes. We try our best make decisions that will be found cool or clever by you guys, though I realize that sometimes stuff just doesn't work for somebody, because, like everything it ultimately comes down to a matter of taste. Some decisions are accepted, some are criticized. We try to please most people, but realize that at the end of the day, pleasing everyone is impossible.

Localization is a complex field, and every decision we make has weight, which is why we try not to take the decisions we make lightly. I apologize if any of those decisions we make displease you, but know that we listen, and take everyone's comments and feedback seriously. We may not always reply by turning the ship around, but know that we are constantly making small adjustments to our overall course, hoping to someday arrive at that mysterious land known as 'everybody's happy.'

- Fernehalwes


PS:

The reason why the "of"s are capped in titles in EN was 100% my call. I felt that with the recent implementation of the on-screen display and those pointy brackets surrounding them, the titles now felt more like separate entities than continuations of the player's name.

When it's...

Roy Biv of the Glorious Brotherhood of Rainbow Kittens

...I'd definitely want that "of" lower-cased.

However, when the text over the player-character shows...

Roy Biv
≪of the Glorious Brotherhood of Rainbow Kittens≫

...I scratch my head. Japanese has really no standardized rules about English capping, so they decided to leave it uncapped. I, on the other hand, simply felt it looked better between those brackets with that "o" capped, and therefore made it:

Roy Biv
≪Of the Glorious Brotherhood of Rainbow Kittens≫

Cheers!

[Zofis]

How has Koji's post gone well over an hour without a single comment?

That was an absolutely fantastic explanation. I guessed that vocabulary limitations and "cool English" were the reasoning behind a lot of the title "changes," but I still loved every word of your post. It was very insightful and quite enjoyable to read.

Thanks for taking the time out for that explanation!

[QuinceTaru]

Thank you for the caps of the "Of" if this wasnt capitalized i would lose my mind and become a smelly roe! THANK YOU!

[Hestern_Nestern]

What he said.

P.S.: I am also of the opinion that within brackets, the O and such should be capitalized. It'd drive me crazy otherwise.

[LatisFarsight]

tbh at this point I already lost hope in the EN localizing team... so meh...

[seida]

Thanks for the explanation!! I was recently wondering about this, as I was watching my bf play and he uses the JP client. I saw a character with the title "Cloud Controller", which I thought sounded really cool and hoped to get it myself. But... when I checked, turned out it's just the JP version for "of the silver lining".

I am curious as to why "Cupid" became "Observer of Love", in this case it seems the JP became more complex than the English?

Thanks for the post!

[QuinceTaru]

Thanks for the explanation!! I was recently wondering about this, as I was watching my bf play and he uses the JP client. I saw a character with the title "Cloud Controller", which I thought sounded really cool and hoped to get it myself. But... when I checked, turned out it's just the JP version for "of the silver lining".

I am curious as to why "Cupid" became "Observer of Love", in this case it seems the JP became more complex than the English?

Thanks for the post!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day#Japan

If you look they have a different story so the title "Cupid" would prolly not mean alot to most Japanese players. That would be my guess at least im not expert on Japanese culture or anything just what i read on wiki!

[Sesuadra]

Greetings.

I wanted to..

woah, thank you for that. In a year I'm finally finished with japanese studies and want to work as a translator, so your post is really interesting for me ^_^!

nice to see how you think about translations and how you work on problems. my favorite class at university is translating japanese -> german