Hey everyone.

The few threads that have popped up about translation and 'what the Japanese players think' gave me a good idea. I'm sure many people are curious about what goes on behind the language barrier and would like to know if the official translators are making any glaring mistakes... So I present you the Translation Corner (lame name, I know, but if you can come up with a good FF sounding one, I'm open for suggestions).

I will make myself available to translate things for people, and people can ask questions about what is being said on topics in the Japanese forums.

I know I'm not the only bi-lingual person here either, so anyone else with Japanese and English skills is free and welcome to help pitch in.

To start us off, I'll just repost a small post I made regarding Death penalty. Dreamer had asked me what the Japanese seem to think about it, so here's just a short summary of reading about 10 pages of the Japanese thread:

I'm gonna try and make some translation notes as I go here:

-There are a lot of people on both sides.
-A few people suggest having a "death bonus" instead of a death penalty. The whole "positive reinforcement" thing.
-People have concerns over the "zombie attacking" (just keep throwing bodies at mobs until you kill them)
-A couple people say that SE shouldn't do everything the players say, and should make their own decisions (one of these guys was replying to a poster who was for the death penalty and specifically brought up the lack of "risk" and how that trivializes the game).
-Many players mention losing Anima upon death as an option.
-One guy says they should make a poll regarding death penalty.

Ok, so I went over about 10 pages of the 65 page thread (few at the beginning, few in middle, few at end). They seem to be just as polarized as us. There are players that want no Death penalty, some that are fine with Yoshi's idea (this group is the smallest it seems though, which I found interesting), players that want SP penalties, players that want Anima penalties.

They bring up the same reasons too: lack of "fun" of Death penalty, lack of "risk" without a penalty, the merits of having it be losing a bonus rather than losing something you already have, etc.

So yeah, that subject seems to be just as sore over there as here.