This frequency of English localization issues is unacceptable

[ArslanMalqir]

There is no reason to look at this mountain of evidence and come to the conclusion that they are victims of cruel trickery that they are not just unaware of, but incapable of noticing—they don't understand nuance, you see. They're not native speakers. The team is hiding it from them, and they never get a chance to hear it from anyone else. Poor Yoshi-P's close friends are pulling the wool over his eyes while writing the scripts with him. Poor Ishikawa thinks that the scripts are 1:1 and would be devastated to learn the truth. There's just nothing they can do but be taken advantage of.

I don't understand how people don't see how insulting that is—it's an argument rooted in the idea that the native Japanese speaking producers and writers of the game are fundamentally incapable of understanding they are being tricked, incapable of understanding the words on the screen in front of them even when they can speak and write and read English, incapable of even listening to fans when they say that there are clear issues that need to be taken care of. I don't understand why people would rather argue that the entire Japanese side of the development of this game is just so woefully incompetent that they don't even realise when their pride and joy is bastardized in the localization for its widest audience and that every native English speaking worker is malicious and out to change the game to suit their whims than just accept that maybe the team is just happy with the product the EN localization team delivered, and doesn't feel the need to change it.

[Lauront]

There is no reason to look at this mountain of evidence and come to the conclusion that they are victims of cruel trickery that they are not just unaware of, but incapable of noticing—they don't understand nuance, you see. They're not native speakers. The team is hiding it from them, and they never get a chance to hear it from anyone else. Poor Yoshi-P's close friends are pulling the wool over his eyes while writing the scripts with him. Poor Ishikawa thinks that the scripts are 1:1 and would be devastated to learn the truth. There's just nothing they can do but be taken advantage of.

I don't understand how people don't see how insulting that is—it's an argument rooted in the idea that the native Japanese speaking producers and writers of the game are fundamentally incapable of understanding they are being tricked, incapable of understanding the words on the screen in front of them even when they can speak and write and read English, incapable of even listening to fans when they say that there are clear issues that need to be taken care of. I don't understand why people would rather argue that the entire Japanese side of the development of this game is just so woefully incompetent that they don't even realise when their pride and joy is bastardized in the localization for its widest audience and that every native English speaking worker is malicious and out to change the game to suit their whims than just accept that maybe the team is just happy with the product the EN localization team delivered, and doesn't feel the need to change it.

You can keep going with your "would haves", "should haves, "uhhhmagerd it's so insulting", "you must be insinuating the localisers are satan/the devs are dumb", I couldn't care less. The differences are there. It is not necessarily due to incompetence, but merely the fact that fairly subtle omissions can be easy to miss if you are not at a high proficiency in a language. But the reasons are of lesser import than the fact that there is some loss of/difference in meaning. It may be due to writer/dev intent, in which case I'd ask "why?", but in my mind that's little more than an assumption at this point.

Like, I don't get it, a root of this particular argument as far as I can get is over the depictions of particular characters in Endwalker and how they obviously differ from the original intent, but to use a live letter that had an entire section to Q&As about it:



you got that general sentiment of "She's not a bad person but she was also still an Ancient with all the flaws that came with it" which is pretty clear throughout the English localization, the game just doesn't go "see she was secretly evil against you the whole time", which would fit with the localization also generally being sympathetic towards Emet and Hermes?

I mean I got kinda baffled reading some of the earlier posts saying how nearly nobody on the English side likes the Ancients/Ascian characters and how they're unfairly maligned because man that is not my experience at all with the more active FFXIV places on the internet.

Sorry, but what's this got to do with localisation? We're aware of that Q&A that casts her in an even worse light. But it's rather besides the point of ostensible differences in meaning in the localisation that go beyond mere "cultural differences".

[KariTheFox]

merely the fact that fairly subtle omissions can be easy to miss if you are not at a high proficiency in a language.

Congratulations, you have identified the central dilemmna at the heart of all efforts to translate something from one language to another. A translation will never be perfect, and a choice somewhere will always be made to leave something out or translate in a way that emphasizes one aspect of the original text over another. It's normal, it happens with every localization and translation.

If it bothers you, I'd suggest looking into multiple different translations to get a fuller picture, or become fluent in the original language. That's what I try to do. It's a lot more satisfying than deranged conspiracy theories.

[Lauront]

Can it with the gaslighting. No one is demanding a "perfect" translation - what we are disputing is that the differences identified are at all necessary. As should be evident from my posts, I do tend to check the FR localisation. I understand that for your diet of deranged conspiracy theories, you prefer consuming a particular subsection of the forum.

[GrizzlyTank]

Congratulations, you have identified the central dilemmna at the heart of all efforts to translate something from one language to another. A translation will never be perfect, and a choice somewhere will always be made to leave something out or translate in a way that emphasizes one aspect of the original text over another. It's normal, it happens with every localization and translation.

If it bothers you, I'd suggest looking into multiple different translations to get a fuller picture, or become fluent in the original language. That's what I try to do. It's a lot more satisfying than deranged conspiracy theories.

And even if he were to learn japanese he would still get the issue of "Death of the Author"! : D

Edit: In hindsight, we are all victims of that.

[ArslanMalqir]

With incompetence ruled out, the only solution left is malice. Kate and the rest of the EN team work in lockstep to ensure that their twisted hackjob is pushed to the English speaking world, with the specific intent of twisting what the game says and means for whatever reason they do it. Despite this going out to millions of players and multiple languages freely available, and despite constant pointing out of the differences in localization between languages, not a word ever gets back to anyone working at Square Enix, or anyone who could possibly tell anyone in Square Enix anything. The EN localization team get away with their crime and trick millions of fans into thinking that Venat was fundamentally good-natured and well-intentioned, and that Zodiark and the Ancients were flawed—statements that the developers never intended to give, despite interviews with Yoshi-P and Ishikawa saying them outright. Presumably the EN localization team got to those too.

Or situation 2: No such conspiracy exists, the team exhibits basic communication and competency, and Yoshi-P and Ishikawa are satisfied with the EN localization despite the tiny ways it differs from the original Japanese text.

I'm going to be blunt—the solution is Situation 2. No conspiracy exists, and whatever goes out to the game, the team is happy with it. Yoshi-P is a man who willingly delayed Endwalker two weeks for bug-fixing and cried on stream about it because of how crushed he was that his own mistakes lead to them having to delay it with barely any warning—he is quite simply not a man who would turn a blind eye to it if his own team were actively changing the meaning of the game, which he has directly called his life's work. None of these changes are actually meaningful unless you think that an ambiguous phrasing about how Venat's actions helped forestall the Final Days (by sealing Zodiark rather than killing him, as context makes obvious) makes the difference between someone thinking Venat did something wrong and someone thinking that Venat was the real villain.

Furthermore, the whole argument is rooted in baffling, honestly sort of offensive assumptions about Yoshi-P and the scenario team. We know that Yoshi-P does speak and read English, the same can be assumed of many of the people working on writing and translating the game, which we know he works directly with and oversees every script produced. We have interview evidence of Ishikawa and a localizer talking about the process, where they say that they literally sat in the same office not too far away from each other during the script-writing process. We know from interviews how Yoshi-P and Ishikawa felt about the Ancients and Venat and all of that, and it all checks out with what is told to us in the EN localization, and every other version.

[Boblawblah]

I grew up in the days of "all your base are belong to us", so I guess I'm biased, and willing to put up with a lot of jank, but I don't find anything off with the localization at all. The meaning is clear, I can follow the story, I'm happy.

[Tsumdere]

When I read the English version and then the Japanese version, they are almost always more or less saying the exact same thing in different verbage. They may take a few more sentences to say the same thing, but they do. The only thing that is drastically different from JP to EN is Haurchefaunt's personality (which some might argue was for the better).

The story we get is the same as the story JP gets.

What seems to be the issue is that EN speaking players interpret the EN translation in wildly different ways due to more fanciful EN wording.

[Rulakir]

I feel the need to point out again that FR and DE aren't having these same problems with the JP script. Pointing out side-by-side dialog examples where EN is the outlier among 3 different languages isn't conspiratorial. Whoever is doing the translating/localization for EN, they seem to be struggling with it if I'm being generous and hopefully (especially with the increased activity this thread is receiving) someone can address it so they can either do a better job next time or be replaced by someone else who can.

"Fanciful wording" also isn't an excuse for the discrepancies that have been documented in this thread either.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

When I read the English version and then the Japanese version, they are almost always more or less saying the exact same thing in different verbage. They may take a few more sentences to say the same thing, but they do. The only thing that is drastically different from JP to EN is Haurchefaunt's personality (which some might argue was for the better).

The story we get is the same as the story JP gets.

What seems to be the issue is that EN speaking players interpret the EN translation in wildly different ways due to more fanciful EN wording.

I think part of the problem is many making this comparison also aren't natively English speaking. They keep referring to the French translation, which leads me to believe French is their native language