Localization Criticism

[grinkdaboy]

I'm not a fan of localizers. I find them to be mostly useless, if not outright detrimental to any piece of work they are involved in. But in this case, they actually should have done their job and named this something else, but couldn't be bothered to do their actual job.

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/a/rw3TsRo It even has two towers. Seriously.

You pay all that money for a localization team, and they can't be bothered to do their actual job. Oh, but you better believe their gonna get their amateur friend that can't actually voice act to be in the starring role.

Edit: I tried to put a picture in HB, and it didn't work. Don't want to spoil things for anyone that cares about it.

"""localizers""" are just failed authors and resign themselves to localizing other people's works in a vain attempt to make them look like true creatives and also to own le heckin chuds

[KitiaraIornsight]

When someone is deeply affected by it, it's usually because they're a victim, not just because they watched 9/11 on TV (if it were so, even I would be a victim, since I too watched the tower crumble live). It's baffling how some people pretend to be pitied over being shocked by watching the tragedy unfold, without even being an actual victim. If having seen the terrorist attack live still affects you to this day, 23 years after, without even being a direct victim, it's your problem, and you'll need counsel to cope with that. The rest of the world, in the meanwhile, goes on.

If something like this were enough to warrant making changes, the slippery slope would never end. Do you imagine censoring the siege of Tulliyolal because it might affect the sensibilities of Ukrainians or Palestinians? Because this is where this kind of take goes.

Also, jokes about 9/11 have been prevalent since, at the very least, 10 years ago, either doing black comedy or ridiculing some of the ludicrous conspiracy theories spawned around the incident.

My response was far more in the vein of you saying that you don’t think anyone who was directly affected by it would be playing. The fact is this game itself has been advertised IN time square. And i have someone who live in NYC who was in the city as it happened. And watching a tragedy unfold on live tv does in fact affect people. While you may have zero emotions, most people are greatly affected witnessing that magnitude of death and destruction and watching people jump off the burning towers rather than burn to death.

Now back to my point, NYC is a large city, one of the LARGEST population wise in the country. To say that you don’t think someone directly affected by 9-11 is patently stupid when you consider the size of the middle age player base of this game and the size of just that one city.
I’m not offended by the numbers on the map, I didn’t even notice, but I’m not so blind as to realize a game that’s global with over a million user accounts would not have someone who was present in NYC during 9-11

[DiaDeem]

This made me laugh. Thank you lol.

I'm glad! That's always the idea with these little posts!

[Jojoya]

I'm not a fan of localizers. I find them to be mostly useless, if not outright detrimental to any piece of work they are involved in. But in this case, they actually should have done their job and named this something else, but couldn't be bothered to do their actual job.

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/a/rw3TsRo It even has two towers. Seriously.

You pay all that money for a localization team, and they can't be bothered to do their actual job. Oh, but you better believe their gonna get their amateur friend that can't actually voice act to be in the starring role.

Edit: I tried to put a picture in HB, and it didn't work. Don't want to spoil things for anyone that cares about it.

So can you tell us what that residential block is named in JP, FR and DE that makes the EN localization so terrible?

[Astrus]

So can you tell us what that residential block is named in JP, FR and DE that makes the EN localization so terrible?

In German the residential blocks are called "Wohnradius 9-14" and "Wohnradius 9-11" make of that information what you will.

When someone is deeply affected by it, it's usually because they're a victim, not just because they watched 9/11 on TV (if it were so, even I would be a victim, since I too watched the tower crumble live). It's baffling how some people pretend to be pitied over being shocked by watching the tragedy unfold, without even being an actual victim. If having seen the terrorist attack live still affects you to this day, 23 years after, without even being a direct victim, it's your problem, and you'll need counsel to cope with that. The rest of the world, in the meanwhile, goes on.

If something like this were enough to warrant making changes, the slippery slope would never end. Do you imagine censoring the siege of Tulliyolal because it might affect the sensibilities of Ukrainians or Palestinians? Because this is where this kind of take goes.

Also, jokes about 9/11 have been prevalent since, at the very least, 10 years ago, either doing black comedy or ridiculing some of the ludicrous conspiracy theories spawned around the incident.

Dismissing the impact seeing such an event happen live can have on people just because they weren't "directly" affected is a shitty take.
I've never set foot on US soil, so far at least, but I watched it happen live on TV. It shook me then, my mother watching with me cried.
Later in the day I found out I lost a friend in the attack, that certainly made matters worse.
That feeling of dread I felt while watching TV back then is going to stay with me, it comes back when my thoughts turn to the event, the loss of a friend still hurts.

With that said, I agree that the naming of that residential block isn't a huge issue.
Until this thread I didn't even make the connection and I have been personally affected by the event in question, even if indirectly, so it's not just me being a stupid foreigner who doesn't care.
If two numbers and a very vague resemblance cause issues you're dealing with full blown PTSD, anyone who has to deal with that has my heartfelt sympathy and I sincerely hope they have the specialist support they need to deal with it. The human brain is scarily good at pattern recognition so I'm not surprised people pick up references where there were none intended but I don't find chewing the localization team out for this particular coincidence is warranted.

[Nebelheim]

Are we suppose to remove the numbers 9 and 11 from everything and not count them as numbers anymore because people want to automatically assume it will be a reference to something that happened 23 years ago.

[ReynTime]

That's not a worldwide widespread issue.

It's been pretty heavily documented that the EN localization in XIV takes "liberties" with the script while literally all the others stick closer to the JP direction. This in spite of SE insisting that every localization team works closely to the writers.

That's usually BS since the vast majority of japanese game studio reps don't have enough grasp of English and just assume the localization managers know best.

Koji Fox deserved the benefit of the doubt in spite of some of the backlash he got during the ARR patches since he was also directly helping with the game's lore during the 1.0 -> 2.0 transition and beyond. Kate however pushes some kind of weird personal agenda with her characterization changes.

[Dovaah]

Kate however pushes some kind of weird personal agenda with her characterization changes.

What are you talking about ? I didn't see anything out of the ordinary in the MSQ beside maybe weirdly timed jokes ?

Also the OP sure be from the US cause they gonna be upset about something that nobody cares about in the rest of the world.

[Alchemii]

Are we suppose to remove the numbers 9 and 11 from everything and not count them as numbers anymore because people want to automatically assume it will be a reference to something that happened 23 years ago.

Your a Johnny Somali fan aren't you? Probably laughed long and hard when he was in Japan.

"World War 2 happened 85 years ago, are we not suppose to say the names of the Cities" That what you sound like. A disrespectful child, wanting to make sure everyone is full aware of how disappointed their parents are in them.

In German the residential blocks are called "Wohnradius 9-14" and "Wohnradius 9-11" make of that information what you will.



Dismissing the impact seeing such an event happen live can have on people just because they weren't "directly" affected is a shitty take.
I've never set foot on US soil, so far at least, but I watched it happen live on TV. It shook me then, my mother watching with me cried.
Later in the day I found out I lost a friend in the attack, that certainly made matters worse.
That feeling of dread I felt while watching TV back then is going to stay with me, it comes back when my thoughts turn to the event, the loss of a friend still hurts.

With that said, I agree that the naming of that residential block isn't a huge issue.
Until this thread I didn't even make the connection and I have been personally affected by the event in question, even if indirectly, so it's not just me being a stupid foreigner who doesn't care.
If two numbers and a very vague resemblance cause issues you're dealing with full blown PTSD, anyone who has to deal with that has my heartfelt sympathy and I sincerely hope they have the specialist support they need to deal with it. The human brain is scarily good at pattern recognition so I'm not surprised people pick up references where there were none intended but I don't find chewing the localization team out for this particular coincidence is warranted.

I was gonna go back and get screenshots of this, but after a certain event the NPCs are no longer there. But right outside laying on the grass were 2 NPCs one saying "What a lovely morning isn't it?" and the other responding with "Yea, the breeze feels great". I'm still certain the devs didn't mean anything by this and it's all just a coincidence, but stuff like this is the actual reason you have Localization Teams. This is their actual jobs, they aren't translators. What their suppose to do is catch stuff like this and edit it so as to not touch sensitive or taboo topics for different regions.

[Nebelheim]

Your a Johnny Somali fan aren't you? Probably laughed long and hard when he was in Japan.

"World War 2 happened 85 years ago, are we not suppose to say the names of the Cities" That what you sound like. A disrespectful child, wanting to make sure everyone is full aware of how disappointed their parents are in them.

I don't know who that person is but people are looking way too deep into solution 9 and having 11 residential districts claiming the devs did it on purpose to hurt people intentionally or reference something when it's not the case. They didn't make solution 9 and having 11 districts to reference a terrorist attack as op was claiming in the thread and it's a stretch to believe they did that intentionally people need to really stop reaching and reading too much into things and making up some conspiracies.