[Suggestion - more like begging] Time for Translations!

[Wanzzo]

Hi

I'm sure there are older threads about more localizations and localization issues and in the early stages of this forum we could probably find threads about more languages ​​to translate this game.

Well, as I couldn't find anything recent for this last subject, I decided to make this one.

The thing is:

It's 2022 and this is an MMO. Many games since early 2010 are released in a myriad of languages. The first question is: why not FFXIV?

I really think it's passing time for more languages ​​this game is translated into. I don't mean full localization with voice overs, but only limited localization like texts.

I can imagine that new full localizations after so much content released over the years would be painful and expensive to make. But, the same cannot be said for just texts. UI translations, text from all sources in game like books, dialogues, quests... This can be done very easily, in my opinion.

And for which languages?
Probably for spanish at least. But ideally also for portuguese, italian, russian, korean, etc...

I would really appreciate it if the Yoshi-P team work on this sometime in the near future.

In Brazil, I know a lot of people interested in playing this game, but they lack the basics of english language, making them afraid to try it and opt for other MMO games (released with portuguese option from the beginning).

It's very annoying to see one of the most famous and successful MMO like FFXIV with only a few languages ​​to play in forcing some to rely on translation prohibited addons...

So what do you guys think? Is it worth trying to have this topic in 2022? Am I being naive?
Can we assume that SE doesn't give a *crap* about other languages??
How would you feel if your language wasn't inside a top-notch MMO on the market, while many others do??

[HanWenqing]

Like every time with SE it's a question of saving money, since the fans don't say anything and even protect Yoshi and SE against any negative opinion like good pets why would they change?

I'm German and personally it really pissed me off back then when SE had the brilliant idea to remove all languages from FF11 except English when the game was 99% translated into German and the other languages they just don't care about us and they are right since we keep paying full price without saying anything

[Wanzzo]

Like every time with SE it's a question of saving money, since the fans don't say anything and even protect Yoshi and SE against any negative opinion like good pets why would they change?

I'm German and personally it really pissed me off back then when SE had the brilliant idea to remove all languages from FF11 except English when the game was 99% translated into German and the other languages they just don't care about us and they are right since we keep paying full price without saying anything

Well, if they will treat this like what you are exposing, then better to keep using addons for this game...

This is just a shame. So few companies these days have such a small mentality like this...
If you want to spread and keep all parts of the world consuming your services the minimum to do is talking the same language as the people in each place.
Maybe, they think we aren't paying enough? '-'

Anyway. I'll keep dreaming about it, but I will keep rellying on things they do not want me to use instead of solving their end of the problem. Maybe, I'll decide to give my money to another company that respect South Americans more... it's a thing to consider

Thanks for the answer. It is very revealing.

[Deveryn]

They actually do a Korean translation and even modify the story content to suit their needs. It's gotta be worthwhile to invest in it.


There are plenty of Portuguese speakers out there. I've seen them on Primal. Just do a search on communities in FFXIV speaking whatever language and they'll surely help out and welcome more people.

[Wanzzo]

They actually do a Korean translation and even modify the story content to suit their needs. It's gotta be worthwhile to invest in it.


There are plenty of Portuguese speakers out there. I've seen them on Primal. Just do a search on communities in FFXIV speaking whatever language and they'll surely help out and welcome more people.

I played on Behemoth, where the majority of brazilians are (it's our unnofficial brazilian server). But, since my ping is worse on NA worlds than EU after the change of cities for the NA Data Centers (from Montreal to somewhere close to the moon right now), so i decided to go for EU servers. But this is not the question.

Just find more like me inside the game isn't what we need. We need the game to be accessible to more people no matter the countries of actual players are, see?
More languages means more people willing to try the game, to create more communities inside game and to play this amazing FF enjoying it in it's entirety with or without more people from the same spot.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

They actually do a Korean translation and even modify the story content to suit their needs. It's gotta be worthwhile to invest in it.


There are plenty of Portuguese speakers out there. I've seen them on Primal. Just do a search on communities in FFXIV speaking whatever language and they'll surely help out and welcome more people.

The Chinese & Korean versions & their localization are actually handled by companies located in said countries that are licensing FF14 from Square Enix; the FF14 dev team has little, if any interaction with them, so its easy to make language versions for them when you're not the one doing it.

As for the topic, its simply a matter of perceived demand vs costs incurred. FF14 has effectively 5 entire RPG's worth of text at the absolute minimum when you count up everything across every expansion. In order to translate it all, they'd need to hire entire teams of expert translators and have them working for months for each individual language they'd want it translated to. Coupled with the fact that even with everything translated, they'd then have to hire a team of translators for each and every subsequent content drop or line of dialogue added to the game, means they're incurring a large upfront cost and a continued maintenance cost afterward. For them to deem it an investment, the demand for that language would have to be immense.

Then there's also alternate language literacy in countries where the game is being sold - many EU countries already have one of the game's languages taught in schools, so why bother with a translation when one of the language options in-game covers a good demographic of people from a country they might want to target? Like, Spanish people in the USA would not even remotely factor into their equations and target demographics, since English is the expected standard language of the nation and is known by about 80% of residents. So if they'd look into translating to Spanish, they'd be looking into demographics like South America & Spain, and the Spanish speakers in the USA would effectively be an irrelevant statistic.

Then there's also points like ACE mentioned, where the culture of a country might be more desired towards free-to-play models and microtransactions rather than subscription service games, making FF14 a bad fit and nullifying that country from their equations of profits vs costs.

If Square hasn't bothered with a Portuguese or Spanish translation by now, then it's likely they don't view it as profitable. Whether they're correct or not, its the decision they arrived at likely through tons of analytics and statistics.

[Wanzzo]

-good and nice answer edited to fit my reply-.

Thanks for this answer. I think it covers pretty much everything about my concerns (and inner desires) on this subject.
Now I understand better why there are so few threads about this kind of request lately.

So addon it is!

It's the only way to deal with the issue on our side, unfortunately. At least we have nice people within our community focusing on meeting our wants and needs in subjects that aren't profitable for the SE team to implement inside game and making these addons/mods. It's a shame to depend on them, but...

They should definitely consider easing punishments and violations for players who are just trying to cover up language difficulties and making the game more enjoyable without having any advantage in pvp or any other in-game mechanics. They should allow certain types of addons/mods like those related to unofficial translations.

But, I understand if they don't. Anyway, for people who don't speak English/French/German/Japanese, they leave no other choice. It's like living in a grey area without no sign of colors on the horizon...

[ACE135]

It's 2022 and this is an MMO. Many games since early 2010 are released in a myriad of languages. The first question is: why not FFXIV?

I guess that these MMOs are mostly free to play? Maybe the players in that regions are more willing to pay for micro transactions than to pay a monthly subscription, even if they pay way more with micro transactions per month than in a subscription game. So to localize or just translate the game for that regions wouldn't pay out for SE. While I think doing just a simple translation wouldn't meet the quality standards of neither SE nor the developers. At the end it's all a matter of money.

[znushu]

I don't understand.
I mean the only way to really play the game is by playing it in the developers native language.

[Syln]

I must admit that this is kind of weird for me that we have a localization for France and not for Spain since i would assume that there is a much larger part of the playerbase that would speak Spanish or a language close to it.