Live Letters Really Need To Start Being Translated

[DrForester]

There's really no excuse for the live letter to continue to offer no translation outside incredibly brief English translations on the slides. Even tonight's live letter isn't going to get a real translation. Just the usual ""Please note that the presentation slides will include both Japanese and English text, but the presentation audio will be in Japanese only." crumbs.

If it means live letters are no longer live but pre-recorded so there can be a translation, so be it. There's no advantage to live letters when they're just streamed online anyways.

They don't even have to go all out like Nintendo does with their Smash videos and dub it. Just give us subtitles. Would let the community feel more in sync and not have most the players relying on possibly faulty fan translations on the fly during the live letters.

[TaleraRistain]

Absolutely agree. The confusion over the relic has made that clear. We can't be expected to rely on unofficial translations that can't agree on the exact wording. We need something definitive and official from SE.

[Risvertasashi]

While not quite as fast as subtitles, there was a point where they provided official translations just a few minute behind. Personally, I felt it was very welcomed - while I appreciate the efforts of fan translators, sometimes those fan translations are weird, unreliable, and missing important details (because, yeah, translation is hard, especially untrained). It would be great if we got even that back.

Although from what I've heard, at least the announcement stream will have official translation?

[Shougun]

The FINAL FANTASY XIV Announcement Showcase is set for Friday, February 5! The broadcast will include live interpretation from Japanese to English so come enjoy the live announcements with Warriors of Light around the world!

Source: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...0e2873ec19fab3

I think it is safe to say you'll get more than just some slides, for this announcement. So that's good.

Not that I am opposed to other streams getting more English support lol, live translations of those Live Letters would be neat. I am curious if BlizzCon's free access event will have the live subtitles I've seen for other events. For SELECT events they have live subtitles in multiple languages, which I always thought was neat. To be fair Blizzcon isn't as often as a live letter though, and at least we'll have live English translations.

I'm sure there is some sort of special pain and cost involved, but.. certainly would be a "would be nice" concept lol.

[van_arn]

Absolutely agree. The confusion over the relic has made that clear. We can't be expected to rely on unofficial translations that can't agree on the exact wording. We need something definitive and official from SE.

People will still argue over the wording Square officially releases. I’m all for proper translations, but don’t kid yourself by thinking the relic situation would’ve been any different if Square had an official “you must do the bozja storyline” comment. Which they did.

[TaleraRistain]

While not quite as fast as subtitles, there was a point where they provided official translations just a few minute behind. Personally, I felt it was very welcomed - while I appreciate the efforts of fan translators, sometimes those fan translations are weird, unreliable, and missing important details (because, yeah, translation is hard, especially untrained). It would be great if we got even that back.

Although from what I've heard, at least the announcement stream will have official translation?

I thought they had done official translations before but then thought I was crazy when I didn't see anything now. They used to post them on a special place here on the forums, right? It's been some time so my memory could be faulty.

[Shougun]

I thought they had done official translations before but then thought I was crazy when I didn't see anything now. They used to post them on a special place here on the forums, right? It's been some time so my memory could be faulty.

You're looking for:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Producer-LIVE
&
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...m-the-Producer

[TaleraRistain]

People will still argue over the wording Square officially releases. I’m all for proper translations, but don’t kid yourself by thinking the relic situation would’ve been any different if Square had an official “you must do the bozja storyline” comment. Which they did.

Not in English that I could find. Just unofficial stuff. If I missed a link in a Google search, please, I'd love to have it. That will help me refine my search parameters in the future.

[TaleraRistain]

You're looking for:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Producer-LIVE
&
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...m-the-Producer

Aha, thank you! I knew I remembered something.

[Packetdancer]

People will still argue over the wording Square officially releases. I’m all for proper translations, but don’t kid yourself by thinking the relic situation would’ve been any different if Square had an official “you must do the bozja storyline” comment. Which they did.

Yes, but in English people were not clear on what 'the Bozja storyline' was; I know a lot of people who thought the Bozjan Southern Front questline was just a side-quest to give people an alternate path to grinding the relic materials, and that the Bozja storyline would just be continued on separate from it, the way the relic questline started. (And while it's fairly obvious by the time you reach Castrum Lacus Litore that the Southern Front storyline is very closely tied to the storyline that began with Cid and the others and led to the first relic stage, those who never went into the Southern Front and never made it to Castrum never had the very obvious storyline clue there.)

And some of that is that Square-Enix's English summary after the fact was unclear, and that's 100% on Square-Enix.

But some of it is also that translating things from one language to another requires awareness of intent; that the English summary was vague enough to be misunderstood is on Square-Enix, but that the actual running commentary of the live letter was unclear is on the fan translators. (Not that they're at fault; they are always stuck translating without knowing what Square-Enix's intention is, and also trying to do so while keeping up a running live translation in real-time. Even if you get context for one unclear bit within the live letter, trying to do live translations is frazzling and bits like that can be overlooked.)

With Square-Enix translating the actual presentations and preparing the translators ahead of time, the translator would not have had to wonder "what do they mean by this particular bit? I could interpret it as meaning <A> or <B>..." and take a guess on-the-spot; they'd be able to ask someone else "hey, do you know if they mean <A> or <B> for this bit here?" and have a more clearly-phrased translated summary ahead-of-time.