Quote Originally Posted by Telkira View Post
I've seen this already. It certainly is interesting to watch and might even justify the practice to those who prefer the localization over a proper, faithful translation.
But to those who would prefer something more in-line with the source material and have that be translated, with very little (if any) deviation or revision and a commitment to consistency above all else, it does very little to convince them.

Rather, I'd argue that it supports my position, in that it underscores just how feasible it would be to implement, assuming that their transparency here is proper.

Most of their work - especially the work that Kate and Koji-Fox are describing here - is just coming up with how they go about revising the content and then adapting it. The task of directly translating it from Japanese into English is already done. They have the materials, notes, etc. and it would just require implementation and QV work, but ironically with less in the way of steps.
Maybe you should rewatch that localization panel, because the process that Kate and Koji-Fox describes should make it clear that there is not some "directly translated" version of the entire script that exists early in the localization process that could just be used "instead", the English translation/localization is only able to be implemented after all the revision and checks are done.

When something like an anime has separate subtitle and dubtitle/closed-caption options that's because those two scripts were written at different points and in separate processes, dubtitle scripts aren't created by directly modifying an existing subtitle script, they are two separate scripting processes that are made from scratch and translating from the source language, with the resulting differences being due to the additional considerations and objectives that translators have to take into account when creating a dub script.

FFXIV is game where they only have the time and resources to do the "dubtitle" process (for all languages not just English). The FFXIV French and German localizations are going through the same MSQ scripting processes (minus the lore name stuff English has to do) as the English localization does. If they seem more "faithful" than the English localization, that's because the personal "balance" of a what the German or French translators consider and find is simply different than the "balance" the English translators consider and find.