Why is Final Fantasy localization/translation so hard? Does it bug anybody else when translators add random lines and commentary that were not in the original Japanese?
>>12752794>FF is plagued with reddit humor like OP pic>DQ is plagued with OI ME SPECCY tier accents for every npcsWhat's Square Enix fucking problem?
>>12752794was the original japanese much better? this whole scene came off as a gigantic shitpost and it didn't feel like it was (entirely) because of the localization.
My scriptMy gameWhat are you going to do about it?
>>12752794That's what you get for playing the pozzed barely-retro GBA demake
>>12752794The translation autistic is someone I just do not understand. If you are so bothered then learn Japanese and play the game in its mother toung.
>>12752890You didn't even learn English.
>>12752794>Does it bug anybody else when translators add random lines and commentary that were not in the original Japanese?Not even in the slightest. Japanese people are not special, and are not even good writers. The translation just needs to be good on its own.
V was the first full game fan translated, in the 90s, and that translation is still better than any official release.There are also official translations of V…
>>12752794>shit, people liked that fan translation? well FUCK them, let's do the OPPOSITE this time!!
It bugs me when you make this thread for the 10th time.
>>12752937>>12752794You're looking for a serious plot where moments before, the big bad was secretly traveling with the good guys as a splinter in the finger of the little girl in the party and gloating about it?
>>12752924True
>>12752794ffv gba translation is maximum SOVL.
>>12752818Who are you quoting?
>>12752890>Learn JapaneseI'm not spending hundreds of hours learning a language just so I can properly read a line in a video game. Translators should just do their damn job correctly to begin with.
>>12752908Hey if I can learn English you can learn Japanese!
>>12753435Dumb cope, bet your mother tongue and English share alphabets on top you had to learn English in school too, you didn't have to learn a million of nonsensical moonrunes
>>12752794FF5 translation was drafted by Ted Woosley for the cancelled SNES version. Probably why Faris speaks with a pirate accent and the other pirates don't, much like his Frog in Chrono Trigger. An american porting team tried to complete that draft, result was Y-Burn. It was meant for a PC version that never happened.The PS1 version was rushed so that Squaresoft had overseas audiences catch up on the series before it's too outdated like what ruined Dragon Quest.FF7 was a below average but decent localization accuracy wise because it was rushed. They tried to do better localizations in English but took all the wrong lessons, plus the want to appeal to western audiences as the games are getting more expensive, so everything new from FF8 onwards has for English a translation process and a complete rewrite process. So you got Squall's jerkass "Wherever" catchphrase in FF8 English that wasn't in JP, and Zidane's catchphrase was removed in EN and some Star Wars quotes were added.FF5 fan translation comes out before Square's English version and Squaresoft is mad at being outplayed. So you get weird jabs at fan patches in the FF GBA remakes.Square spams GBA remakes, and tell translators to reuse the old translations (except 1/2 which reuses the PS1 remake script rather than NES). So they did for FF4 (a frankenstein edit of the truncated US FF4 SNES with its same errors, and edits added) and FF6 (a half retranslation half port)But FF5 PS1 US's script was abject shit. So the tons of "jokes" added are just an editor trying to make you forget it's the PS1 script with buckets of pig lipstick. Many lines are identical.If that bothers you play the fantranslation, that one was "normal" and competent.The trash fanpatch was FF4 (bc of a rogue editor who brought back official FF4 US mistranslations he "liked better", beware editors)
>>12752794Doesn't bother me at all. I play in Japanese so it doesn't affect me.
>>12753785And yet you will never be Japanese
>>12753787Of course. I'm not Japanese. What do you mean?
>>12753775Fundamentally, the debate about the difference between localization and translation has always been idiotic.That's just "translation". You want to write good English prose, at least as good as the original, and you want to keep the meaning and roughly the same impact. If you make up shit, or remove shit, that becomes the realm of "adaptation" or "rewrites", and you better have a good reason for that. A sane translator forced to do that will do it only sparingly, or just leave it untranslated or unexplained.A lot of the changes and tweaks that "localization" defenders cite to promote their ways are part of that "translation" process. Now your language changes to say >I could have never understood the scene if the english version didn't (rewrite) "the windy dilapidated castle in the sunset" (jp idiom) to "That old man is past his prime" or "He's a relic of former glory.">wtf i love localizationBut no, "localization" is just altering a product to make it sell better elsewhere. For what it matters, at its worst, they could delete the entire text and it still counts as a decent localization, because the publisher spent less and could rush it earlier for the holiday season. When a translator is saying that, it's either a soulless corporate drone that hates art.Or a translator who doesn't want to be held accountable for translator ethics other translators abide by.Or a parasite writer, often obsessed with cultural superiority or racism. (Lots of english book translators fit this profile, it's endemic in GB/USA for any foreign language book translation. It transcends left and right politics.)The more benign cases of localization are concerned with playability and whether censors will penalize it with a ban or production delay or a higher age rating or a bank ban.Ted Woosley was a competent translator who respected his job and source material but still did it as a localization. His cuts were over NoA censors and ROM size limits (external factors).
>>12753775>Zidane's catchphrasewhat was it?
>>12753819>do you need a reason to help peopleiirc, it was heavily featured in jp promo materials and kept popping up in important cutscenes but the english version didn't just not care about sentence consistency or the characterization, they hid that even more during the editing process
>>12753838this line? if you wait at the title screen all of the characters have a quote attributed to them and while they sound like the sort of thing they WOULD say none of them ever say them in-game. DO the other characters say the lines in JP? As a kid I remember waiting for the "moment" each quote would show up. It also bugged me that half of the images are from FMVs you see in-game, so it trained me to expect the others to appear too.
>>12753860It's frequently said ingame yeahI guess the part that makes me mad is how they could commit for the whatever "joke" but not this when it was plot relevant. And there's versions in other european languages that don't have this problem so it's not a text size limitation either
>>12753810At this point, people just want straight JP-to-ENG translation, with every Japanese idiom and joke kept totally intact regardless of whether people get it or not.
>>12752807“Square Enix” didn’t make the retro final fantasy or DQ games zoom zoom.
>>12752890>learn a new language to play a slightly more accurate version of a children’s toys or to consume slightly more accurate version of children’s cartoons
>>12753775I'm actually pretty surprised there has yet to be a re-translation effort for either FF8 or 9. You'd think clout-chasers would be all over it the way they were with FF6, but maybe it's too hard or the tools aren't there to make the process easy. Or, much more likely, no one who gives a shit knows a lick of nip so they're waiting for someone like Tomato to do their job for them.
>>12754025AI will do it better
>>12754025>You'd think clout-chasers would be all over it the way they were with FF6,What a total embarrassing mistake the RHDN administration made lowering the threshold for pretend-localizers on the technicality of "different flavor of 'Quantity-of-Loser'".
>>12753775>FF5 translation was drafted by Ted Woosley for the cancelled SNES version. Probably why Faris speaks with a pirate accent and the other pirates don't, much like his Frog in Chrono Trigger. >An american porting team tried to complete that draft, result was Y-Burn. It was meant for a PC version that never happened.You have the timeline accurate but the dots might not connect this way. We have no idea which translators had a hand in the PS1 version, as the only translators credited were in the booklet for manual translation (which are the same for FFVI's PS1 version, so obviously it's not them). Ted Woolsey suggests his SNES translation was scrapped before the implementation process. The Top Dog PC interview seemed to indicate it might've been Kaoru Moriyama who was supplying the translation that was later reused for the PS1 version, and it may or may not be related to the unused Woolsey draft. Some corners of theinternet like the unwashed otaku masses of RHDN still propagate the early rumor that FFV PSX was all Woolsey's fault though, because of course they do.>except 1/2 which reuses the PS1 remake script rather than NESFF I-II PS1 (and to a lesser extent WSC which is virtually the same but in kana) has a different Japanese script revision that's somewhere between the NES/MSX and GBA+ (including PR) builds, so it has its own English translation.
>>12753775FF5's GBA rewrite feels like a hit piece to ensure FF6 would be seen as the "bestest most epic one" and FF5 would just be "that parody joke one with the job system, lmao"
>>12754406And even then FF6 on GBA snuck in low blows like mocking the Japanese purists over Kefka's name.
>>12754340Result's the same either way- The script was very unpolished because the people who passed and ported it to the PS1 version thought it was complete and didn't vet it.Wonder if Woolsey has ever been asked on socialmedia what the deal was.>>12754558That's kind of based though, purist followers rarely know what they're talking about and distill legit info with the most exaggerated uncharitable imaginable as loud screechy online people. I wouldn't be surprised if there were serious internal conversations about how to respond to the RPGOne hack and potentially canning the entire notion of a retranslation.
>>12753926This.I want the original translated into the language I speak, not altered to be 'easier to understand' or 'more natural sounding' or any other BS excuse they have for changing what was actually written. If I'm going to read Homer's Odyssey, I want to read about Odysseus's adventure trying to get back to Greece, not Dave's adventure trying to get back to New York City.
>>12753926>with every Japanese idiom and joke kept totally intact regardless of whether people get it or not.You can't.Objectively, there will be always parts that require rewrites. There will be always parts that won't translate.For example, there's a launch year SNES platformer where one NPC wants to visit a brothel. But there's nothing explicit said or mentioned. The japanese goes "we will go and hehehe and hohoho and uhihi" (not the exact sentence) and the official english version just did "we will go there" but the scene didn't make sense. It wasn't the usual "censorship" either, just a "direct literal translation regardless of whether people got it" with a grammatical pass to "trim the fat" ("just say he's laughing. actually just delete it, the sprite is clearly laughing so it's ok we get it"). Incidentally that's what the "AI" will consider "good enough, good job let's not waste any time here".The one reason why nips know it's a brothel is because the sound effects he uses while laughing are "licking, kissing, meat flapping" sounds. How would you even go about writing the english sentence?Do you simply ignore it and omit that information? Reader is then missing on crucial info altogether.Do you keep untranslated jp sfx that doesn't make sense in an english line like "i wanna rero-rero and muri-muri and kisu-kisu?"Do you say "i wanna flap-flap, smooch-smooch, and hump-hump all night!" when it's more explicit? That's a rewrite just there, a choice YOU made that wasn't the exact wording of the original. That "all night" wasn't in the original either.Do you say "He has a flower bouquet in each hand" or "he's surrounded by two hot babes" or "he's surrounded by two beatiful flowers"? Which one makes more sense?If a character changes how polite it speaks then repeats the last sentence, do you write the same sentence twice, identically? Or do you make up a speech quirk for the character?
>>12754692>Objectively, there will be always parts that require rewrites. There will be always parts that won't translate.Too bad, because people don't want anything changed. Total transliteration or nothing is what they demand.
>>12754692>The one reason why nips know it's a brothel is because the sound effects he uses while laughing are "licking, kissing, meat flapping" sounds. How would you even go about writing the english sentence?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzsCIENC9IQ
>>12754692>The one reason why nips know it's a brothel is because the sound effects he uses while laughing are "licking, kissing, meat flapping" sounds. How would you even go about writing the english sentence?I'm convinced people who say there's no way to translate this are ESL's who don't know English well enough to make a translation.>"We will go and awooga and hubba hubba and woof"Old-school reference to scoring that is family friendly enough to make it into actual cartoons for children. But honestly, the "We will go and hehehe and hohoho and uhihi" line doesn't really need to be changed, since it gets the point across as is. If someone can't figure out what the guy is referring to, that's their fault for having the reading comprehension of a 3rd grader.
>>12754692(cont.)As a translator and even outside of localization you'll be forced to make decisions like that. The route where "details don't matter" is a decision too, that's AI but that's also the localizations that remove all of the original characterization because it's "unimportant details"The route where you don't bother writing decent english prose is a decision. You could write caveman speak like "Me, book, rike." and that would be a direct translation, but it's as if you're taking the piss of the original work, the language, the culture, and the very people who want normal translations, when you don't write "I like books." Or "I like this book." And yeah another decision time because it's your job to read the text and make sense of it to choose either one.That's what translations are about, and what "translators will always be traitors" is about. Translation is always a compromise.Now you could whine that you're a ptsd survivor too traumatized by translations after some american translator from california raped you.For example it could be a translator who said: that girl with the polite speech? I'm guving her a texan accent! But then I need to set the game in california and change her friends lines so that they talk about her texas ranch. But it's unthinkable not to talk about elections in that setting so i need to make that guy black and gay, and...But who are you directing that whining at? At the american translator from california? At translators? At the abstract concept of translation? At your impotent self too lazy and weak to learn Japanese or to use those OCR tools to help him learn Japanese and then never again have to deal with californian translators or vietnam pokemon english bootleg ESL translators given computers and ai and unleashed on the internet like locusts or a space shuttle of call center scammers unleashed from india's space program?
>>12752794No, nobody fucking cares except autistic EOPsGo learn Japanese and take your low effort bait with youReplaying this boring ass culture war thread is exhausting
>>12754709>Old-school referenceThat wasn't in the original text, you made it up, and the reference is a stupid boomer/zoomer meme you injected in the text instead of a total translitteration.There's no "sound word that means hug" in the english language. It's a limitation of English. You (the translator) chose to rewrite that part to approximate an equivalent.Those rewrites are tools of the trade, they're linguistic devices, those are inevitable, they can be benign if the translator and the reader's best interests align and if the translator doesn't let that power go to his head. It's incredibly stupid to blame the device instead of not using it for good.
>>12754730>I'm just going to ignore the 2nd half of your post which completely blows out my retarded argumentHave fun with that. Again, people just want the original line. And those who can't understand the original line need to go back to school.
>>12754025>FF I-II PS1 (and to a lesser extent WSC which is virtually the same but in kana) has a different Japanese script revision that's somewhere between the NES/MSX and GBAI mean I guess that's not technically untrue but as far as I know all story dialogue is completely the same in MSX, it's just some message windows and repeating lines (eg. shopkeepers) that have changed where the game system did. While GBA pretty much rewrites everything.
>>12754340All I know is that PS1 FF1 removed Garland's memey "knock you all down" line and GBA onward put it right back.
>>12753810>His cuts were over NoA censors and ROM size limits (external factors).To this day, I have yet to see any actual proof for either claim. It's obvious text limitations exist and certain sprites had to be censored, but I've yet to see any proof of that in the actual script. If anything, he actively increased the line count with jokes and pop culture references.
>>12755767Have you ever had to replace Japanese script with English alphabet?
>>12755784I'm aware of the limitations, but I've yet to see proof of it in his script is what I'm saying.
>>12752848make threads on 4chan about how much i hate youbet u didn't see that comin
>>12752794>Does it bug anybody else when translators add random lines and commentary that were not in the original Japanese?No, I love it.>>12752812>this whole scene came off as a gigantic shitpostSo you've never played a final fantasy game, huh?>>12753952If you're going to bitch about it so consistently, yes. Eventually, the responsibility to solve the problem that only you perceive becomes exclusively yours. If I loved JRPGs but had a stick up my ass about every localization that wasn't 100% accurate, I would learn Japanese. But I don't, so I won't. Simple as.Such entitlement.
>>12756091>he likes his story told incorrectly
>>12756091>that only you perceiveI also perceive it.
>>12752794You would have to have both played the original Japanese version of the game as well as be able to read Japanese in order to know that the localizer messed with the translation when playing the localized version.It wasn't until I saw some threads on this forum, where people posted examples of original Japanese in-game text, how it was supposed to be translated, and then finally, how localizers butchered the translation by doing their own thing.But yeah, it does bother me to know that there are people out there, in the gaming industry, who purposely ruin the translation of games like this. I'm always going to wonder if the Japanese game that I'm playing is accurately translated from now on.
>>12756193>I'm always going to wonder if the Japanese game that I'm playing is accurately translated from now on.it's pretty often blatantly obvious anyway.
