This frequency of English localization issues is unacceptable

[Telkira]

I genuinely don't like how different the English 'localization' is from the Japanese source material. I don't understand why more people aren't as upset about it, it genuinely makes it difficult to enjoy the story or take things seriously or feel immersed when what I'm reading is not what the original writers wrote.

I'm tired of having to look up what the proper translations are for dialog just so I can confidently know what's actually being said. It doesn't feel like I'm reading what the original writers wrote, it feels like some hackjob fanfiction iteration trying to correct something that was never broken or 'wrong' in the first place.

My issues with the localization of this game go further than just crappy dialog, though.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that a faithful translation of everything would have been better. Not a literal translation, but a proper re-telling that tries to be as 1:1 with the source material as possible without taking any unnecessary liberties. If it were just that, the people who praise the English localization wouldn't complain.

Audiences would just accept it as it is, and would enjoy it all the same, like they do with everything they consume. It's not their job to critique or have a meaningful opinion on things, otherwise they would be more concerned about the broader cultural implications of this phenomenon as a whole. We all (hopefully) remember 4Kids and how their stated goal was to make it so that way Japanese content would be indistinguishable from something whipped up by Americans for those respective audiences, going so far as to change names and censor so much to further that end. It was horrible, and insulting to the integrity of the content they shamelessly butchered, and it certainly contributed to a corporate culture which enabled the contractual breaches that lead to their imminent legal troubles and subsequent downfall.

I'm not trolling when I say this, but Westernization of Japanese media is probably one of the most pervasive forms of cultural gentrification (and erasure) out there. Because when it's run thru that filter, it's no longer the initial vision, it's someone else's re-telling of it because they thought you'd not like it as much. People in marketing look at localization like a sure-fire method of condensing a product to be enjoyable towards a foreign market, but what a lot of these talking heads fail to realize is that Japanese content is never going to be something that fits in with these markets as seamlessly as whatever is native or 'local'.

I'm hopeful that someone will put forth the effort to developing an add-on that fixes all of what Koji Fox and his merry band of revisionists broke, or that Square will consider the grievances of this part of their audience and just release a faithful translation option for those uninterested in localized content.
They already give players the option to have Japanese dialog in cutscenes and in audio, why not go further in that regard?

Bottom line is that the initial/original content of the game is fine on its own. It doesn't need to be ran through a bunch of filters just because a bunch of Westerners hired by SE think it would. The game and its content will continue to stand on its own merits without Koji Fox's garbage.

[Jeeqbit]

I genuinely don't like how different the English 'localization' is from the Japanese source material.

They explained at one of the recent Fan Fests that it's not a direct translation because it wouldn't necessarily make sense to English speakers that way. They said that when you do this line of work you realize that localization "is the only way to do it".

Their goal is not strictly to say the same thing the original story writers wrote, but rather to produce the same emotions and feelings that the original story writers are trying to get out of the Japanese audience. Sometimes in order to do that, they have to change words, phrases, use common western sayings, or say things that westerners would be familiar with that are more likely to draw emotions from them.

Although they don't do this for sidequests and minor things necessarily, for the MSQ they sit down with the original story writers and make sure they understand the story properly and exactly what emotions or information those writers want to convey. They make sure they understand this because of the importance of the MSQ, especially Endwalker being the finale of the arc.

Audiences would just accept it as it is, and would enjoy it all the same, like they do with everything they consume.

I don't think I would mind it, based on what we get when we put it into Google Translate. But they also seem confident in what they say about localization being the only way to do it.

The game and its content will continue to stand on its own merits without Koji Fox's garbage.

Koji is no longer involved in that (although past stuff, obviously). He mostly does the vocals for the music and FF16. And as you mentioned, lots of people work on it, because they recently said that contrary to popular belief, one person can't handle all of the localization alone - and to reinforce that point they said they are recruiting.

[Telkira]

They explained at one of the recent Fan Fests that it's not a direct translation because it wouldn't necessarily make sense to English speakers that way. They said that when you do this line of work you realize that localization "is the only way to do it".

I will have to fact-check you on whether they actually said that, it just sounds so wrong, but I guarantee you that taking the source material and warping it to such an egregious degree that this game's localizers have done is not "the only way to do things".

Arguing that is just so wrong that things like subtitled anime and fan-translations of manga/anime content wouldn't be watchable or enjoyable by foreign audiences.

Their goal is not strictly to say the same thing the original story writers wrote, but rather to produce the same emotions and feelings that the original story writers are trying to get out of the Japanese audience. Sometimes in order to do that, they have to change words, phrases, use common western sayings, or say things that westerners would be familiar with that are more likely to draw emotions from them.

They're playing a Japanese game, a game that's conceived and produced with Japanese audiences in mind, from things like visual appearances and aesthetics, to the names and roles of characters and places within the game's story. Localization apologists like to rebut this by arguing that the Localization team is all in-house and that Westerners help write and conceive things, but I guarantee you that their roles are severely diminished compared to that of the native Japanese staff members, otherwise they wouldn't have had to go over the heads of the higher-ups to censor Haurchefant. Trying to re-create and elicit those types of feelings in foreign audiences isn't going to work in the long-run because, at the end of the day, it's still a fundamentally foreign product.

I don't think I would mind it, based on what we get when we put it into Google Translate. But they also seem confident in what they say about localization being the only way to do it.

People seem to think that machine-translation jobs are what people have in mind when they complain about the discrepancies and deviations with the Western localizations of the game. That would be stupid. Translating things from one language to another is about communication, and condensing what is being expressed or communicated into another language, hence why things may be 'lost in translation'.
But what a lot of people don't know is that things being lost in translation or not being properly communicated is a fault on the person doing the translation and their ability to act as a medium in this regard. I've seen enough complaints from users who are fluent in both Japanese and English to know that it can be done, hence why I keep using the phrase "faithful translation".

[Fawkes]

I will have to fact-check you on whether they actually said that, it just sounds so wrong, but I guarantee you that taking the source material and warping it to such an egregious degree that this game's localizers have done is not "the only way to do things".

Arguing that is just so wrong that things like subtitled anime and fan-translations of manga/anime content wouldn't be watchable or enjoyable by foreign audiences.

[Jeeqbit]

I will have to fact-check you on whether they actually said that, it just sounds so wrong, but I guarantee you that taking the source material and warping it to such an egregious degree that this game's localizers have done is not "the only way to do things".

Watch the hour-long segment of the Las Vegas Fanfest with the new lead of localization https://www.youtube.com/live/YozopuVW8Mo?t=24529

[Telkira]

Watch the hour-long segment of the Las Vegas Fanfest with the new lead of localization https://www.youtube.com/live/YozopuVW8Mo?t=24529

I skimmed through it, it really doesn't say that this is 'the only way to do it'. Do you have a time-code where they explicitly state this?

The only people getting *so* bent out of shape about this are pedants and the artless. Pick your poison.

A faithful translation doesn't disrespect the source material by assuming that the audience wouldn't be as entertained.
Trying to dismiss people who take issue with this as 'pedants' who know full-well that what they're reading isn't what was initially written, or what was canon, or what was censored outright (as is the case with the Haurchefant debacle) is nothing but an insult.

People want to know that what they're reading is faithful to and in-line with what it actually is, because things like artistic and literary integrity ultimately are what ground the product in its entirety. Calling them 'artless' is just baseless.

[MikkoAkure]

I skimmed through it, it really doesn't say that this is 'the only way to do it'. Do you have a time-code where they explicitly state this?


A faithful translation doesn't disrespect the source material by assuming that the audience wouldn't be as entertained.
Trying to dismiss people who take issue with this as 'pedants' who know full-well that what they're reading isn't what was initially written, or what was canon, or what was censored outright (as is the case with the Haurchefant debacle) is nothing but an insult.

People want to know that what they're reading is faithful to and in-line with what it actually is, because things like artistic and literary integrity ultimately are what ground the product in its entirety. Calling them 'artless' is just baseless.

Then read Koji's interview when he talks about localization:
https://we-are-vanadiel.finalfantasyxi.com/post/?id=632

For the most part, non-Japanese players will never see the original story that was written in Japanese; in other words, whether or not the Japanese version of the story is interesting is irrelevant to them. Their evaluation will be based on the translated version, so there’s no point in having a translation if it isn’t entertaining. Most importantly, the scenes that left an impression in the Japanese version have to be translated to impress the players who are playing the English version instead.
[...]
When I was first hired, my translations were very faithful to the original, so if someone were to translate my English back into Japanese, they would end up with original Japanese text. But when a translation has phrases that aren’t used in English, the players won’t understand what you’re trying to convey. Translators need to consider the intentions behind the words, or the emotions won’t be conveyed to the players at all.
[...]
I’d like to believe that our translations managed to preserve the message behind the stories, and that they’re just as dramatic and emotional as the original Japanese. When I was translating for FFXI, I tried to convey emotions and the true message as naturally as possible, even if I ended up ignoring the grammar or sentence structure of the original text to some extent. I’ve maintained that outlook on translation since then, even after moving on to other projects.

If the text not being 1-to-1 bothers you, nothing's stopping you from learning Japanese.

[Telkira]

Then read Koji's interview when he talks about localization:

Their evaluation will be based on the translated version, so there’s no point in having a translation if it isn’t entertaining.

See, this right here is exactly why I feel like FFXIV would have been a better game without his implementation of this philosophy, and is why so many discrepancies have been identified and called out with regard to the English script of this game.

He deliberately casts aside the role of a translator/localizer, which is to adapt the content of something in a foreign language as faithfully as possible, to becoming an outright revisionist (and censor), while robbing players of their right to determine for themselves what is valid and entertaining.
It represents a disheartening and annoying lack of faith in the source material's quality and ability to impress/entertain an audience, while insulting the player by assuming they would view it with the same lack of interest that he may have.

None of this would be an issue if they just gave players a second set of text to go off of which would exist in the form of a faithful translation. It's not his place to deviate so harshly from the original script with the intention of entertaining a Western audience.
Preserving what was initially intended for the Japanese audience would have left just as much of a favorable impression as the English one but with fewer issues.

I’d like to believe that our translations managed to preserve the message behind the stories, and that they’re just as dramatic and emotional as the original Japanese. When I was translating for FFXI, I tried to convey emotions and the true message as naturally as possible, even if I ended up ignoring the grammar or sentence structure of the original text to some extent. I’ve maintained that outlook on translation since then, even after moving on to other projects.

I think accuracy goes hand-in-hand with preserving things like emotion, tone, sentiment, etc. Liberties are best taken in situations where certain things literally will not translate at all, then the use of linguistic analogs and other devices can be justified by the plain and apparent context. This is literally translation 101, because you're not just preserving the communication of what's being said, but the utterance of who is saying it.
There are heaps of nuance and subjectivity to be felt/observed when that is maintained, regardless of what language is being spoken, and of course some (or a lot) of that nuance will be lost in translation, but that's not an excuse to substitute that nuance for what someone believes would be more entertaining just because they think it would be familiar to that audience. That feels like pandering, especially when there are mood and tonal discrepancies between what's being said/spoken and what's going on in the game world. It's palpable.

[Jeeqbit]

I skimmed through it, it really doesn't say that this is 'the only way to do it'. Do you have a time-code where they explicitly state this?

https://www.youtube.com/live/YozopuVW8Mo?t=25974

There is a lot of stuff before that timepoint that is relevant, but she repeats a lot of it after that timepoint too.

[Frizze]

I was wondering why this 9-month old thread was back up front.

I think I speak for everyone

I stopped reading right there. You dont. Anyone who thinks they speak for everyone is naive at best. People who say it? Usually have their head shoved so far up their own backside that they can see boogers and smell mouthwash.

World
Balmung

Ok, that checks out.