This frequency of English localization issues is unacceptable

[icemage]

This is hardly an issue. "She was also the one who kept him alive to protect us" means Venat kept Zodiark alive somehow... which is explained by the story saying that it's because she bind Zodiark in his cage. Stop making a fuzz out of nothing. The localization team is better at writing than most AAA games right now.

[Xirean]

Thank you for breaking a lot of this down.

1 - Nael van Darnus's gender was unknown in Japanese. They never referred to Nael with a gendered part of grammar, since Japan can keep gender vague. English cannot, and they assumed Nael to be male. Come Coils and she's a woman. So the English team had to rush to Koji Fox about this, and he had to make up on the spot a bit of canon to justify the change. That the Nael we see is Eula van Darnus, his sister who took over his position when the real, male Nael died.

This is honestly really stupid imo. English already has a way to make gender vague and that's with neutral pronouns. If they messed that up then I would ask "Why didn't they clarify the gender of the character instead of assuming?" But to realize they made a mistake and create new lore to avoid admitting the mistake is really bizarre to me. I would have apprecated more if they just said "Yeah we messed that up when we first translated/localized it so we'll try to fix it."

[Lauront]

Unfortunately, the English language isn't as rich conceptually as French, or Spanish for that matter (my native language). One example would be the fact that until recently you didn't have a way to refer to a human being in a gender neutral way. In other languages there was always a way to omit gender information, or keep it neutral.

Some of these bigger mistakes were made during the early days of ff14. Some of these are honestly very small differences, and some even share the same meaning but you are complaining of them not being literal translations. Which could be attributed to western storytelling.

If it was translated literally, I'm sure we would still have these threads. Because as I said, this is all down to preference. I am fine with it because it's not like it said Venat summoned Zodiark, while the 13 opposed her. Or like we got a completely different story from the original. It's just told in a different way.

At this point I am afraid I am simply going to disagree. These issues have nothing to do with how conceptually rich English is or not (as evidenced from the fact that they can be readily translated from French to English without any real loss of meaning), and the ones in this case are specific to SHB and EW. I am not sure where you are getting that info about referring to humans in an gender-neutral manner, as English has pronouns which have been geared to this and used in that way for quite some time (several centuries now), but it is neither here nor there. Once more, I am not faulting them for being non-literal - it is because they are omitting information or context present in the original, and in some cases like Y'shtola's comment in the OP, are flat out wrong.

A further example is this in the JP version, where it is made clearer that Zodiark was seeding new life with the second round of sacrifices, which you would think is relevant given what we learnt in 6.0 about how the ancients accomplished this via creation magicks:

[Teraq]

A further example is this in the JP version, where it is made clearer that Zodiark was seeding new life with the second round of sacrifices, which you would think is relevant given what we learnt in 6.0 about how the ancients accomplished this via creation magicks:

(snip)

Please don't tell me the "myriad tiny lives" bit is where some people got into their mind that Ancients were about to feed babies to their Blood God lmao

[Iscah]

I am struggling to see the difference you are trying to point out amid so many words. It all seems to say the same things in a slightly different way.

[Xirean]

I am struggling to see the difference you are trying to point out amid so many words. It all seems to say the same things in a slightly different way.

If you're referring to the OP's post. The EN line falsely attributes the forestalling of the final days to Venat/Hydaelyn and makes Zodiark sound bad or as though he directly caused destruction. The other line gives the credit of forestalling the final days to Zodiark and communicates concern over the misuse of Zodiark's power in the wrong hands.

[Avidria]

Well, one example that comes to mind for me is the Japanese vs English translations of the dialog between WoL and Midgardsormr after the Keeper of the Lake dungeon...



I definitely would've preferred the direct translation because it explained things to me better. Especially the part where in the English localization he says he won't harm us and then shoots that light into our chest lol, it makes more sense that he said he would test us. The phrase "I remember and I consent" was just too vague for me, compared to what he actually said which definitely sheds more light on things. It seems to me that the localization team is trying shorten things and make things sound cooler or more poetic at the cost of leaving important context out. These are things that I would've appreciated knowing.

This cutscene is the one that always comes to mind for me when I hear about changes (other than the Haurchefaunt changes ofc )
Like I spent a long time being very confused about what Midgardsormr's actual motivations were and what on earth he was talking about here because it just didn't seem clear at all to me. Then I read the more direct translation and it made infinitely more sense to me.

Please don't tell me the "myriad tiny lives" bit is where some people got into their mind that Ancients were about to feed babies to their Blood God lmao

It was more the "lives newly born" bit actually. And I don't think that's the only place it came up - I definitely don't remember a point where it was ever made clear what the nature of the life they intended to sacrifice actually was, but the framing of it in those two screenshots you quoted is definitely different... The English version focuses more on giving over the world to new life, and the Japanese version emphasizes it being "time for the sacrifices to stop."

It is fascinating to see the differences and interpretations across languages, but there are definitely some cases where it seems the changes just muddy the waters.

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

I speak both English and Japanese, but I always play this game in Japanese because so much is lost in translation. It is clear the localizers take liberties with the English version possibly because they think it is funny -- as I see some puns added (such as "Tanlkless Job", etc). Unfortunately, I don't think Yoshida-san has caught onto this, as he thinks the localization is fabulous when the actual story is different as a result.

[Catwho]

One example would be the fact that until recently you didn't have a way to refer to a human being in a gender neutral way.

They/them for an unknown gender has been in use for centuries. It was just stupid language purists who argued otherwise.

English makes up for some of the problems in its base grammatical structure by begging, borrowing, stealing, or inventing new words whenever it finds a concept it can't properly express with the existing ones. This seems to be the issue that many of those fussing over the localization do not like; letting the English localization team tap into the deep well of weird words to attempt to convey a mood, instead of doing a literal translation, which would be very plain and limited.

It is unfortunate that the French and German teams aren't allowed the same liberties, because German especially is about as good as flavor compound words as English is (to the point where English routinely steals German words for stuff they're already describing that we don't yet have a word for.)

[Neoyoshi]

Has anyone here actually worked in localization/translating in some form of media?

I have, and this is a pretty frustrating topic to read whiteout me having one of these moments: