[Suggestion - more like begging] Time for Translations!

[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...