Such translation... This was NOT my intention...

[Mikoko_Miko]

I recently heard a story from a JP player who went through dungeons with EN players. After a party member was KO'd, a healer used the in-game auto-translate function. However, it sounded unlike the original intent. When translated back into English manually (without auto-translate), it became:
Training <Character Name>

The Japanese word was {育成} (ikusei), so I looked it up in a Japanese–English dictionary and saw words such as training, cultivation, nourishment, nurture, rearing, and promotion. But I couldn't find the original English word. I could tell what was actually said from the context. The original English was:

{raising} <Character Name>

Have you ever had auto-translate give a translation you didn't expect? I found some examples in a thread from 10 years ago:
Miniguide to Autotranslate: Usage and potential pitfalls
{Take care.} was translated into "Watch out." instead of "Goodbye".
{fat chocobo} {race} was rendered as {fat chocobo} ethnic group.

[Jeeqbit]

"Let's do it!" is a common phrase that gets spammed before hunts/fates in JP but makes no sense to us. It comes across impatient but that isn't the intent.

Some non-auto translations are bad, such as:

Looking for Party (Person RecruitingWhoLiterallyHasAParty)

The tank mastery trait which says you have a bonus to damage dealt rather than an "appropriate adjustment for the tank role" as indicated in the Japanese version. Localizer assumed it was a bonus and didn't give it 1 second of thought, and ignored multiple forum posts about it.

[BlisteringFrost]

Classic "just put it into Google Translate and nobody will notice!"

SE sure got their moneys worth, huh?

[Jeeqbit]

Classic "just put it into Google Translate and nobody will notice!"

SE sure got their moneys worth, huh?

That's not actually why. What happens is they often translate by looking at it and using the first word that comes to their mind. They don't have time to double check in most cases, because there are so many things to translate: item names (including key items, gathered items, crafted items, gear, minions, mounts) and all their descriptions, place names, menus, MSQ, sidequests, lore, DF descriptions, actions, traits and tooltips. They've previously said that they would welcome more people applying to help out with it.

The example I gave of the trait from Shadowbringers was likely due to the extreme crunch they had when scrambling to get it ready for the release date. They said at the time that it was a tough date to achieve but they were going for it.

But it's another thing that, once they've made a mistake, they never ever correct it and never seem to notice it and are oblivious to any western player's experiences with said mistakes.

[BlisteringFrost]

That's not actually why. What happens is they often translate by looking at it and using the first word that comes to their mind. They don't have time to double check in most cases, because there are so many things to translate: item names (including key items, gathered items, crafted items, gear, minions, mounts) and all their descriptions, place names, menus, MSQ, sidequests, lore, DF descriptions, actions, traits and tooltips. They've previously said that they would welcome more people applying to help out with it.

The example I gave of the trait from Shadowbringers was likely due to the extreme crunch they had when scrambling to get it ready for the release date. They said at the time that it was a tough date to achieve but they were going for it.

But it's another thing that, once they've made a mistake, they never ever correct it and never seem to notice it and are oblivious to any western player's experiences with said mistakes.

It just makes me want to double down on the sarcasm. If you (the Translators) aren't going to proofread you could just CTRL+C --> CTRL+V into Google Translate and get the same result. It's exactly like I said, SE got what they paid for.

[MayuAmakura]

This is what community uses as an excuse whenever devs say that they lack cost, money and stuff. It will always be with: "Nooo it's just wrong translation!!!".

But jokes aside, they really don't bother with this. In past patches we had translation issues or even quests not being translated at all for English.

[Fawkes]

In FFXI english players would commonly use (reward) as a way of saying what they'd give you, like for a teleport or something. But it was actually a Beastmaster ability name and the Japanese meaning was more like giving a dog a treat or something and it came off as kind of offensive. They eventually added a separate auto translate entry for (reward:) with a colon to specify the english meaning.

It's usually just that a lot of the english phrases can mean multiple things and we're more frivolous about how we use auto translate. But also it's not a big deal because we have regional servers here and most english speaking players aren't going to encounter Japanese players in game ever.

[RedLolly]

*Take care* translating to *Be Careful* makes perfect sense since it's uniquely extremely normal in English to use phrasing like that for politely leaving someone.

In fact, "Be careful" said exactly as is is something people literally say in that context of goodbyes colloquially. I hear it often enough that I don't even flinch. Have a nice day, Take Care, Later, and Farewell are all synonyms for Good-Bye, but directly translating the context, personality, and usage of which one to other languages is extremely messy.

Later is very casual. Farewell has a "ye olde" fashion sound to it. Have a Nice Day is very business-like. Be careful is common with rednecks. They all still mean Good-Bye.



Translation and localization is a VERY FUCKING DIFFICULT job.

[Mikoko_Miko]

As for {Let's do it!}, that's certainly true. I always see it in Elemental DC, but it's rarely seen in Gaia. Elemental is located in Japan, but there are many English speakers. So auto-translation is commonly used there.

Auto-translation is often used not for translation, but simply to save typing effort. On the JP DC, you will sometimes see {Doma Castle} or {Domakin} used in response to an apology. They don't make sense in other languages. In Japanese, "Don't mind" is used with a nuance similar to "Never mind" or "Don't worry about it". This changed into "Doma". I think it is similar to how {Ok'Zundu} is sometimes used in place of OK.

[Minali]

I feel the need to point out that it's incredibly common in professional translations that translators get zero context or only a bare minimum. As RedLolly said, "take care" can indeed mean "be careful", not "bye". In fact, if a translator gets this piece of text and the context that it's likely going to be used in battle duties where players meet and have to communicate quickly in dangerous situations, translating it as "be careful" actually makes way more sense, especially when "Goodbye" already exists as its own thing. Using it for anything else but "be careful" is a cultural linguistic development in English speaking countries, and when it comes down to it, it still means "please take care of yourself until next we meet" with less words. Meaning "Goodbye!" is kind of implied, and needs to be taken into account, yes, but I can absolutely see how the person translating it didn't though of this in this moment, given the circumstances, even with some context. Especially when they don't live in an English speaking country anymore. (And also considering they have thousands of things to translate at once.)