Quote Originally Posted by Raoabolic View Post
So the "localizers" think that NA is too immature and needs "liberties" thrown into the story to make it more palatable for what the NA team thinks the NA audience can handle? If you frame it like that then the NA localizers must think the NA playerbase can't handle the story without softening it and making pop culture jokes. That worrying at best and insulting at worst, lmao.
Honestly? I REALLY wouldn't put it past them if the texts that we end up with are dumbed down and have nuance altered to cater to the reader.

Japanese is a context-heavy language, and English isn't as much, it's a lot more straightforward with minute cultural aspects changing the meaning of things.
But it is still possible to have a proper conversion into English, one just needs to clarify the text so audience can understand. Sometimes it doesn't work, but in translation there really is so much you can do.

Text in FF14 has been re-written, though. And scenes have had their emotional tone redefined. I'm not saying that DE or FR translations won't have moments that don't fully correspond to the original JP text. But neither of them are as noticeable as EN is. You still get the same meaning

And if the text does simplify scenes so the meaning is clearer, then you have to gauge what the team thinks based on occurrence. If it doesn't happen that often, then it's because it was likely tricky to translate from Japanese. If it happens often, then you have several reasons:
- Editor/Publisher's choice
- The team realized it was too nuanced and culturally heavy
- They're involved in making the product

Which they are, because:
Quote Originally Posted by Enkidoh View Post
Ferne (Michael-Christopher Koji Fox) has been part of the localization/lore writing of the game since 1.0 (he even appears briefly in the 'Making Of' video included with the collector's edition of FFXIV 1.0, although doesn't speak in it or offers any insights sadly) - many of the fundamental story aspects of the game are actually his work
The lead of the English localization team is directly involved in the creative writing aspect. He's in charge of making lore. Whether he used to be a grunt who rose to prominence doesn't exactly matter, because as it stands, he does have a hand in how things are written. And thus he can make "his own" version of the text.

I realize now that saying that "it's his version" is a bit misleading, because I don't know how the dev team really feels about the whole thing, nor do I know if it's only him doing it and bossing others around. It very likely isn't.
But the liberty IS there. And we see the consequences of it on the text.