This hasn't been explicity pointed out by the English devs, but the German localisation team talked a bit about it recently. I ran a translation here.

To sum it up, each localisation team has a degree of artistic license available to them. There are discrepancies between the different language versions and this is entirely intentional, so as to maintain coherency within the versions - there are some things that just do not translate well or make sense in the relevant cultures.

For example, in the English localisation, the structure of the Garlean Empire is made to resemble the Roman Empire - this is simply not apparent in the Japanese version. The German's go one further and build the Immortal Flames instead as an "Immortal Legion" and have adjusted the descriptors of what the Garlean Legatus are called and what they command. (They get called Praetor, which is a combined military/political position in ancient Rome, exceedingly influential.) Titles also get tweaked to sound more relevant in the language. For example, the Germans went with calling Darnus the "Silver Wing" rather than the "White Raven".

I imagine the Maelstrom is just another example of this. When building the lore into English, they can't just directly translate everything, because it would look like an illogical mess in many respects for someone coming from a Western perspective. Rather, they need to Localize it (funny that job name...), which can be a big challenge given they can't afford to contradict base lore either.

And in my opinion they are doing a bloody good job of it.