This frequency of English localization issues is unacceptable

[Floortank]

A recent topic that has sprung up regarding discussion of the writing is that certain things have been getting lost in translation, and even slight dialogue changes have been making huge differences in context.

Originally I figured this was an issue for every language, but cross references of similar scenes across all of the languages have found that English is usually the only one that's saying something different. One key example I can bring up off the top of my head is dialogue from 5.4 in which Y'shtola discusses Zodiark.
In French:

Here (thanks Teraq for the translation) she says; "Emet-Selch entrusted us with the future of this world, thus it falls to us to make sure Zodiark is not used for nefarious ends. After all, he was created to stop the Final Days..."
In Japanese (I use JP audio) what she said is much the same from what I can tell. I'm not yet fluent so maybe the egg is about to be on my face
However, in English...

...yeah. Completely different.

Another example, Y'shtola again, in Thavnair:


In French:

"Hydaelyn, or rather Venat, could perhaps help us out. After all, she was there when Zodiark was summoned to fight against the Final Days. She was also the one who kept him alive to protect us."
Once again, completely different. This is far more egregious than changing Haurchefant to be less horny, these minor differences completely change what's being said and change the story by consequence.

I understand that localization isn't just purely translating, I know it has to be made to sound good in the language it's being translated to, but localizers should NOT be taking creative liberties! There's absolutely no reason why EN players should be reading an entirely different story than everyone else, and it's really frustrating because it kneecaps discussion between people on different language clients until they figure out that they're being confused by a bad translation.

I wasn't a huge fan of the story. That said, I understood exactly what Y'shtola was talking about. I don't think the localization committed any crimes by not making the most literal, spoon-feedy translation and favoring the voice of the character over just babytalking the player.

[Necrotica]

What scene is this?

It's similar with anything involving Emet. Going through 5.0 as an EN player I thought the WoL was a random reincarnated Ancient with no particular connection to Emet. The first hint there is any is Shade!Hyth in Amaurot who tells you that you're someone Emet surely recognized which, without any other context, doesn't mean much. I remember when I got to 5.3 I thought, I needed this context of their relationship in 5.0. Why wasn't it there? Turns out it was there, explicitly, in any other language but EN.

In EN when Emet first sees the WoL he says is "with a soul such as that", there's no indication he recognizes you or that you meant anything to him. The cutscene before the Hades trial, in EN he says, "No... it can't be... Bah, a trick of the light!" In JP he says, "Impossible! You... how can you be here? No... it's not... you're not him/her." That's a huge difference in context. Going through ShB with context is basically an entirely different experience.

Is it possible the EN localization team has some kind of hidden hatred for the players? Are they purposely giving us a worse experience?

[Wanzzo]

I've seen a few threads requesting additional languages to be added to the game's localisation. I also remember it being touched upon once or twice during interviews and Live Letters - though there's so many that hunting down specific questions is rather time consuming and difficult.

Incidentally, quite recently Elder Scrolls Online expanded its localisation to account for Spanish speaking players. That'd be something that FFXIV would probably benefit from doing as well.

Sadly, I think they will never do it.

The reason is the amount of text, dialogues (with variations on answers in some) for all expansions.... And beside that, they always was focused more in bringing more things to the game than to revise old content.

And I remember all those pools and questions and mentionings by Yoshi-P about this. They always put languages in second place and now this is not even in a secondary place, but I think they forgot all about it.

All that remains for us is to use addons that make translations for us...

It feels so bad when we have to appeal to a third-party stuff when devs just throw requestings like this to the trash can... =/

[DPZ2]

Is it possible the EN localization team has some kind of hidden hatred for the players? Are they purposely giving us a worse experience?

No.

Stop being specious. "Does the EN localization team hate us?". Pfui.

If you desire nuance, go read the work in its original language. You'll have to invest upwards of three years learning Japanese in order to pick up that nuance for this game. (One year and counting here ...)

[Coulvre]

I like that the English localisation is different. It's not that I consider it to be better or worse than the other languages, but for me, it is an enjoyable experience taken by itself, and studying the differences in how certain characters are written or portrayed between languages is extremely interesting. Writing, including translation and localisation, is an art, and one which there are no simple facts about. If you ask multiple people to translate a text, the end result will be slightly different each time and I actually think that's really cool in how it reflects factors like culture and personal experience. I've never felt that the English localisation left me hard done by or strayed too far from the original in a way that fundamentally altered the story or message to an objectionable point.

We all have our opinions, though - perhaps I'm biased as a linguistics/literature nerd, but there it is

[Lauront]

And? It doesn't mean other people get to decide what my life is and what I think of it.
Funny thing is, you say other instances doesn't give the player agency, yet you seem to have a problem with this line that actually lets them decide their viewpoint on their own life.

You have no direct input on that scene, if memory serves, one way or another. However, Zenos is offering his viewpoint there. One does not need to agree with it, however it is phrased. Theodric has asked for more options in reactions to actions performed by other characters, for which the Omega quest served as a good starting point - that's a separate thing. I don't believe he's ever asked for every character's views to be turned into a customer feedback survey. Otherwise I could start objecting the minute he says "mirror". The German version is already better to me by virtue of that omission.

[Ransu]

The translations have been like this as far back as HW because of how the english script is written. Its spoken in an old english style while JP and other languages are translated more straightforward. IMO we get the better experience and the scripts are still the same overall, just spoken slightly different due to the old english style.

[Necrotica]

No.

Stop being specious. "Does the EN localization team hate us?". Pfui.

If you desire nuance, go read the work in its original language. You'll have to invest upwards of three years learning Japanese in order to pick up that nuance for this game. (One year and counting here ...)

There are people who work for the company and do that already. Think they are called loco...lalizoros? Can't fully remember. Course for that much time invested and being paid to do it I would hope they would do it accurately and not abuse that position to put their own personal spin on another person's writing.

Heck. Gonna localize your comment.

No.

It is up for much discussion. "That those in power would seek to spite us for their own personal reasons? That they would allow power and glory go to their heads and abuse it?" I pray not.

The original texts hold the truth of the matter The tongue of the Islanders is not learned in a single moon. It takes a fortitude of will to achieve it. Will I believe that you have, my friend. I myself have devoted many moons of study to this, but still the secret of the texts evade me.

[GrizzlyTank]

Those are not completely different...

1: Both says the ancients made Zodiark to save the world and they must prevent Zodiark from being used for bad things.

2: Both says Hydaelyn bound zodiark and that she knows stuff.

[GrizzlyTank]

I like that the English localisation is different. It's not that I consider it to be better or worse than the other languages, but for me, it is an enjoyable experience taken by itself, and studying the differences in how certain characters are written or portrayed between languages is extremely interesting. Writing, including translation and localisation, is an art, and one which there are no simple facts about. If you ask multiple people to translate a text, the end result will be slightly different each time and I actually think that's really cool in how it reflects factors like culture and personal experience. I've never felt that the English localisation left me hard done by or strayed too far from the original in a way that fundamentally altered the story or message to an objectionable point.

We all have our opinions, though - perhaps I'm biased as a linguistics/literature nerd, but there it is

Having studies, a funny thing is that a reference no longer counts as a "direct citation" if it's translated. Even if both languages are from the same language family with near similar sentence structure. Because as you said translations will always be up for interpretation.

Can't recall the name of an article, but it went into depth of how to properly translate a product and why the end result often ends up being "technically" a rewrite for the script. So yes the translators could translate the script directly but often the end result of doing that is that the translated script will either sound incredibly boring with a poor pacing (might not be much of an issue for scientific articles), contain nonsensical euphemism (can't recall a more appropriate word at the moment) or cultural references/memes that are going to be unknown and make little sense for the vast majority of those who read the translation.

So a translation ends up being a multi-step process to make it as engaging as possible even if some nuance in the source text is lost, while some has been added.

Prime example is Urianger who seems to have a different quirk in each translation, in Japanese he speaks in poetry, English/French it's archaic and for German he's... somewhat normal (from what i read).