A word from the italian community about social media posts

[DrWho2010]

Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world and we have no official translation.

Pure logic about this company.

the question is not a matter of translation, it is a matter of being able to keep up with the amount of material to be constantly updated and worked on.

so far there is no company or third party service that is willing to meet the standards the devs have of keeping up with amount of work involved at an acceptable pace.

[tdb]

yet Spanish is the 4th most spoken language in the world.

And Mandarin is the most spoken, but isn't an official language either. The number of speakers does not necessarily correlate with the language's representation in the target audience of a game. Most speakers of Spanish live in relatively poor countries and are less likely to be able to afford a monthly subscription. There may be cultural differences with the acceptance of entertainment in foreign languages as well, though I don't have quantitative data on this. I do recall hearing that the German in particular prefer to have their movies dubbed, and the French have gone so far as to officially banning English words. So perhaps those countries see a better return for investment in localization.

[DrWho2010]

Hi, i'm an italian player, and yes, i know very well that this game has no support for the italian language and it will probably never have one, like a lot of other languages in the world (spanish over all)
Anyway, i want to report on an unprofessional way of handling the comunications on social media like the official facebook page for Final Fantasy XIV.
I imagine that the posts on that page are show based on your country since here we see post translated into italian. The sad part about that is that those post are full of grammatical errors, (probably like this post, but hey, i'm no international pr of a international company so maybe you can forgive my errors ) it seems they are translated using google translate and i don't think that's professional.
For example, Crystal Exarc translated into Crystal EXAM or stream (twitch stream) translated litteraly into the word we use to describe a river stream...
Have any other player from different countries noticed something like this? And how can i report this situation to someone that can look into it?

i believe that's facebook's auto translate kicking in. there is no official italian XIV facebook page that is run by Square Enix.

[Omymy]

And Mandarin is the most spoken, but isn't an official language either. The number of speakers does not necessarily correlate with the language's representation in the target audience of a game. Most speakers of Spanish live in relatively poor countries and are less likely to be able to afford a monthly subscription. There may be cultural differences with the acceptance of entertainment in foreign languages as well, though I don't have quantitative data on this. I do recall hearing that the German in particular prefer to have their movies dubbed, and the French have gone so far as to officially banning English words. So perhaps those countries see a better return for investment in localization.

Yeah, thats why WoW is translated in spanish.

[tdb]

Yeah, thats why WoW is translated in spanish.

You'll notice that WoW is available in more languages than FFXIV, and includes German and French. So that proves nothing - it could still be that German and French are more profitable than Spanish, but Blizzard considered Spanish to be profitable enough while Square Enix did not.

[Omymy]

You'll notice that WoW is available in more languages than FFXIV, and includes German and French. So that proves nothing - it could still be that German and French are more profitable than Spanish, but Blizzard considered Spanish to be profitable enough while Square Enix did not.

First of all, I would like to inform you that in most countries where Spanish is spoken we can afford to pay 11 euros per month. We even eat more than twice a day. Unbelievable, right?

If the translation was not profitable, I imagine it would be the same with the rest of the games in the franchise. Ah no, all Final Fantasy, KH, etc. are translated into Spanish... Wow, the speech seems to be deflating at times.

In a game where the strong point - supposedly - is the story, not translating it to a potential audience as it is one of the most spoken languages in the world, seems to me, at least, disrespectful.

You should learn a little more. Just a little bit.

[MrKusakabe]

If the translation was not profitable, I imagine it would be the same with the rest of the games in the franchise. Ah no, all Final Fantasy, KH, etc. are translated into Spanish... Wow, the speech seems to be deflating at times.
You should learn a little more. Just a little bit.

You apparently have access to their sensible business data. Mind sharing or just making up things? I guess you won't come up with something useful anyways, but keep berating others about "learning more".

[...] seems to me, at least, disrespectful.

[Omymy]

Im looking for attention again.

From FFVII to XV to the KH saga are all the games translated. Does that give you any clues or do you need me to take out the crayons?

[Mhaeric]

https://www.facebook.com/FinalFantas...epa=SEARCH_BOX this is the page i'm referring to, but probably it will redirect you to the one in your language

Yeah, that redirects me to the English version of the official page. I don't currently have a vpn so I can't mask my dns to view what you're seeing. Screenshot it maybe?

also with the title not translated i was only showing you that is not an auto translate function, or the title of the product will be translated too

Again, just because you see the title of the products in English doesn't mean that the post wasn't auto-translated. If you a translating from a French or German post then any English words will remain in English while the rest of the French or German in the post will get translated to Italian. This happens because auto-translate only translates from one specific language to another specific language and doesn't change anything it doesn't recognize as part of the language it is translating from.

[AkaeiNox]

If you include L2 speakers English is spoken more than Mandarin, Spanish is 4th and French ranks 5th.
German and Japanese are 12th and 13th.