Board 8 > Today is the twentieth anniversary of Final Fantasty Tactics

(+) Yeah! (+)

As far as the topic goes


Monk
Either Item or Knight Skills
Blade Grasp
Two Hands
and Teleport


I'm a simple man. Also in a world with Swords and Magic and monsters, I always find it funny when a dude just walks up to someone else and punches them twice in the ribs or kidneys and kills them

also I like the Design of the monks
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I did a Geomancer SCC the last time I played FFT, and that was a lot of fun.

but I will also probably never do another one
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Geomancer is always a fun job, especially when the status effects keep triggering for you
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Geomancer is the only SCC I ever finished. Tried a lot of em but get bored before they resolve.
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You practically need status effects to trigger often to survive a couple of them, particularly Golgorand and the second Balk fight. Those took me forever to win.
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That second Balk fight is the part where almost every SCC needs to rely on some combination of luck and AI manipulation to realistically win
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I made a topic about it when it happened but me and a friend of mine did a playthrough of FFT (took about a month and a half to finish on and off) where we each both get 2 generic units and we raise them however we want. We can't give any kind of input to each other in and out of battle except for Ramza, we take turns on him. and you can only use your own characters

we can't grind or purposely initiate random battles....but to even things out, we could use the JP glitch

if anything else, it forced us to use alot of classes on Story battles that we never have before, like I never use archers except for opening up other classes. but here I had to rely on them to win for me

i was pretty fun. Even by end game when we had the classes and set ups we wanted, we still struggled because we were still pretty underleveled.

Ramza was a priest with guts as his secondary, neither of us had him as a priest before
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Lopen posted...

Well, if you sum up the lines that don't feel like real dialogue in the original, add to them double the number of lines that are poorly translated, you're probably at about 10% of the lines in WotL that don't sound like real dialogue or so.

This. Let's just play a fun game here and quote memorable dialog that ISN'T a silly meme.

Miluda: Who do you think you are!? We're not animals! We're human, just like you! There's no difference among us other than our families! You ever been hungry? With only soup to eat for months? Why do we have to suffer? Because you nobles deprive us our right to live!

Algus: Human? Hmph, ridiculous! From the minute you were born you had to obey us! From the second you were born you were our animals!!

Miluda: Says who!? That's nonsense! Who decided all this?!

Algus: It's the Will of Heaven!

Miluda: Heaven? God would never say such things! In his eyes, all are equal! He'd never let this happen! Never!

Algus: Animals have no God!!

Why is this dialog good? Because it's snappy. It's punchy. The translation is shoddy because it overuses exclamation point spam (!!!!!!!) but that's already present in the script and dialog translation itself only has minor flaws ('from the second you were born you were our animals' should probably be 'you were our animals from the moment you were born', 'you ever been hungry' is overmodern and probably should be 'have you ever been hungry?', etc.) and it's impactful. It's well written because it has a sense of speed and pacing, of real conversation. Meanwhile, let's take the same scene from WotL.

Milleuda: How can you nobles live as you do and yet hold your heads so high? We are not chattel! We are humans, no less than you! What flaw do you hold there to be in us? That we were born between a different set of walls? Do you know what it means to hunger? To sup for months on naught but broth of bean? Why must we be made to starve that you might grow fat? You call us thieves, but it is you who steal from us the right to live!

Argath: You, no less human than we? Ha! Now there's a beastly thought. You've been less than we from the moment your baseborn father fell upon your mother in whatever gutter saw you sired! You've been chattel since you came into the world drenched in common blood!

Milleuda: By whose decree!? Who decides such foul and absurd things?

Argath: 'Tis heaven's will!

Milleuda: Heaven's will? You would pin your bigotry on the gods? No god would fain forgive such sin, much less embrace it! All men are equal in the eyes of the gods!

Argath: Men, yes. But the gods have no eyes for chattel.

This is dull. Compare the final lines here - 'Animals have no god' is a strong punchline to the whole exchange, whereas 'the gods have no eyes for chattel' (note that I am shrinking it because ARGATH'S entire line is overlong and less powerful than a briefer version) is empty. Open up something like a Song of Ice and Fire book - you'll notice that while people say things like 'he drank milk of the poppy' (to use a random example), which is archaic, it's not 'to sup for months on naught but broth of bean' or 'no god would fain forgive such sin'. In fact, it's so dull that I am positive I could retranslate this exchange using both these texts as a guideline for just how much of a failure WotL is in a minute and have something much more palatable. And you know what? I will.

(Retranslation in my next post)
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Now compare this five-minute retranslation to the second one, which it was primarily based on (with two exceptions).

(TN: Miluda's name was kept as in the original translation for the sake of readability and simplicity. She's a commoner, she's not supposed to have a fancy name, which 'Milleuda' certainly qualifies as. Algus/Argath's name was retranslated as 'Argus', which is technically not a proper translation of the japanese 'Arugasu' [as the romanization of 'Argus' is 'Arugosu' instead], but it's an actual name that exists in english and close enough to make sense as a change. This is a 'taste' decision, not something I would argue as canonically correct. Localization, ho! I'll have a further set of notes afterward explaining what was kept and thrown away.)

Miluda: You nobles...how can you live with yourselves when you act like this? We're not animals! We're human, just like you! What makes us lesser besides the families we were born into? Do you know what it's like to go hungry? To go months without anything more than bean soup to eat? Why should we starve while you feast? We might be thieves in your eyes, but all we're doing is taking our lives back!

Argus: You, human? Hmph. You were born to serve us. You delude yourself about your role in this world, you worthless beast.

Miluda: Who made that law!? Who decided that we should only live to be your slaves?

Argus: It is God's will.

Miluda: God? The God I believe in would never say something like that! In his eyes, all men are equal!

Argus: Animals have no God!

This exchange was reconstructed mostly from the ground up, with two exceptions:

-Miluda's 'Human, just like you!' line is kept, because Delita uses it later on at Zirekile Falls, in response to a question from Ovelia. It's a subtle and powerful callback, that shows his philosophy was impacted by his encounters with the Death Corps.

-Algus' 'Animals have no God!' retort was kept, but the wording of everything else he says was tweaked to make him sound haughtier until the end, where he loses his composure, as befits his status as a conceited, power-mad petty nobleman. (By contrast, Miluda's vocabulary was kept simple and her diction direct, to emphasize her relative innocence as Wiegraf's younger sister fighting for what she considers to be a noble cause.)

This isn't even remotely a good translation effort ( @dowolf could tear it to pieces, his translation game is much better than mine) and yet it's considerably clearer and better than the WotL one. Sometimes, translators are just shitty. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that. WotL's translation is hackwork of the highest caliber.
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KanzarisKelshen posted...

Why is this dialog good? Because it's snappy. It's punchy. The translation is shoddy because it overuses exclamation point spam (!!!!!!!) but that's already present in the script and dialog translation itself only has minor flaws ('from the second you were born you were our animals' should probably be 'you were our animals from the moment you were born', 'you ever been hungry' is overmodern and probably should be 'have you ever been hungry?', etc.) and it's impactful. It's well written because it has a sense of speed and pacing, of real conversation. Meanwhile, let's take the same scene from WotL.

I think I actually like "you ever been hungry," simply because it evokes a lower-class vibe, which I think is more important there than worrying about whether or not someone in this middle ages kingdom that doesn't exist would use modern-day speech. Heck, I'm not even sure just how "modern" dropping auxiliary verbs is, but I digress.

The comment about exclamation points is more interesting to me, as a translator. On the one hand, literal obedience to the original punctuation is one of those fun amateurish things that I enjoy making fun of. On the other hand, when people are genuinely angry and shouting at each other during fight scenes (which happens disproportionately often in video games relative to traditional literature), it feels right, I guess? I dunno.
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Personally, multiple exclamation marks/question marks never feels right to me under any circumstances. It's happened a spare handful of times in The Wheel of Time series and it always evokes a sense of amateurishness in the author.
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Oh, I'm not talking about multiples in the same sentence (though I'll use them occasionally, if I'm trying to go for a "This person gets excessively louder and more angry with each passing sentence!" sort of vibe), but rather ~10 sentences in a row getting exclamation points.

Where I'm coming from is also more manga and VNs, where you never and rarely, respectively, have narrative in which to write those things.
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The comment about exclamation points is more interesting to me, as a translator. On the one hand, literal obedience to the original punctuation is one of those fun amateurish things that I enjoy making fun of. On the other hand, when people are genuinely angry and shouting at each other during fight scenes (which happens disproportionately often in video games relative to traditional literature), it feels right, I guess? I dunno.

Yeah, I took a look at it in my attempt at 'remaking' the scene to read a bit better and I pretty quickly realized that at least in that first textdump from Miluda, it's...really not possible to cut very much at all without drastically changing what she's saying. She's super pissed off and shouting, it fits. Algus/Argath's stuff, by contrast, could easily have its exclamation marks cut out while still maintaining pretty much the same core vibe, so they went flying out the window for the most part, and I think it does make it read better, since it helps convey his dismissiveness if he's not being shouty from the get-go.
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dowolf posted...

Oh, I'm not talking about multiples in the same sentence (though I'll use them occasionally, if I'm trying to go for a "This person gets excessively louder and more angry with each passing sentence!" sort of vibe), but rather ~10 sentences in a row getting exclamation points.

Where I'm coming from is more manga and VNs, where you never and rarely, respectively, have narrative in which to write those things.

Ohh. Gotcha. I sorta hopped into the conversation mid-shift, so I probably missed context.
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The problem with the WotL translation is exactly what has already been said. Certain exchanges lose all their snappiness and no longer evoke the emotion they should.

I had a lecturer that once drilled it into us that 'You might be a literary genius but your characters are not'. It makes sense for the upper class to speak as they do in WotL (although it should be toned down), it does not make sense for every single character regardless of background to speak like that.

Also, in the midst of battle you are hardly going to have those type of conversations. It should be short and snappy because they are about to run a sword through a bitch. They are not discussing the intricacies of the social system over a nice meal.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Algus/Argath's name was retranslated as 'Argus', which is technically not a proper translation of the japanese 'Arugasu' [as the romanization of 'Argus' is 'Arugosu' instead]

also, because this was bothering me, I quickly checked into it. Long story short, the standard Japanese transliteration of "Argus" is "Aagas"; "Arugosu" is used for the equivalent Greek term, "Algos." I have no idea if the original Japanese writers were trying to split the difference, screwed up themselves, or if this whole thing is just a giant coincidence.

(see https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AC%E3%82%B9_(%E6%9B%96%E6%98%A7%E3%81%95%E5%9B%9E%E9%81%BF) )
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Huh, now that's interesting! I figured something funky was going on there. Out of curiosity, is Ramza actually like, supposed to be Ramza? Or was that a translation screwup? The name is kinda oddly easterny in a game where nobody else has a name like that in either version of the translation.
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The kana there is "Ramuza"; as far as I can tell, it's not a real word.

Though there is a "Ramuza tower" in Saitama that predates the game, I can't find any official English name for the tower.
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Kan, you forgot the actual last line of that exchange, Miluda's, "!!!!" I know, I know, literal exclamation point spam, but it works here. Maybe it's just me, but there seems no better way to convey Miluda's wordless expression of horror and disgust as she realizes the true depth of the depravity she fights against. It's just as important to that exchange as Algus's final line!
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I don't think I've played a single AAA title that had a translation I'd consider "bad." And I was an English major so I generally care about dialogue.

I really don't understand the hate tactics, VII, and Xenogears get. The subtext is rarely if ever lost.
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I love the game and it, along with Saiyuuki: Journey West kickstarted my appreciation for the SRPG genre. It's just so much fun and quite challenging at parts. TBH I didn't really pay attention to the story lol. And that PSX JP glitch/abuse is something I fondly remember. x)

I didn't quite finish it. Perhaps I should one day...
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redrocket_pub posted...

Kan, you forgot the actual last line of that exchange, Miluda's, "!!!!" I know, I know, literal exclamation point spam, but it works here. Maybe it's just me, but there seems no better way to convey Miluda's wordless expression of horror and disgust as she realizes the true depth of the depravity she fights against. It's just as important to that exchange as Algus's final line!

Yeah, it's not a terrible instance for exclamation spam. I didn't include it because I felt like Algus' line was a good stopping point but it's definitely a neat touch. Sometimes taknig advantage of the fact that a game is a game is a good idea - like in instances such as that one, where the text is a speech bubble and so '!!!!!' is actually permissible and works.
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

I really don't understand the hate tactics, VII, and Xenogears get. The subtext is rarely if ever lost.

As a former English major, I don't hate them either!

Like I said, there's a difference between "so bad" and "so bad it's good."
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Straight-up lists three of my top ten games, including my two favorites.

I don't get the hate, either!
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Reis
Arithmeticks

Screw TGC, this woman was the real monster of my team
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I've replayed FFT at least ten times now and it's crazy how much the errors get overblown.
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"I didn't think that God made holy stones but...more evil...Well... Lucavi made them to land in this world..."
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Yeah, people sure do post that one line every time!
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LapisLazuli posted...

Yeah, people sure do post that one line every time!

"I guess it means whoever uses it will have to deal with the 'problem'..."
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I'll admit that one's a first.
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I'm saving Agrias! Geronimo!

Then I guess we must fight! Eargghhhhhhhhhhhh!
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LeonhartFour posted...

"but...more evil...Well..."

like

what is even happening here
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Defeat Dycedarg's elder brother.

LOL.

I hated the new translation. Especially the random words ending in "k" like Magick. Ugh.
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Jeff Zero posted...

LeonhartFour posted...

"but...more evil...Well..."

like

what is even happening here

ya well
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LeonhartFour posted...

"I didn't think that God made holy stones but...more evil...Well... Lucavi made them to land in this world..."

This line is a little unclear but it's not hard to parse if you spend a few seconds thinking. Ramza didn't think the Zodiac stones were made by god, but rather by something more evil - namely, he thinks Lucavi made them so he could manifest himself in the world.
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I'd rather spend two decades complaining
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I'm not saying you can't parse the meaning, just that it's a mess of a line.
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Like plate mail, but reinforced with
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

I really don't understand the hate tactics, VII, and Xenogears get. The subtext is rarely if ever lost.

Wait, Xenogears, really? That one's decidedly above average for a PSX translation. It's not flawless but there are far fewer gaffes than FF7 or FFT (and, as you said, rarely if ever is meaning lost, and that's no small feat considering the volume of plot/text Xenogears contains).

Both PSX Wild Arms games and both PSX Suikodens would be other examples of badly translated RPGs on that system, though of course they're not Square.
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*shoots Glacier Gun*

*fire comes out*
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Not everyone can be localization gods like Working Designs.
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NeoElfboy posted...

Nelson_Mandela posted...

I really don't understand the hate tactics, VII, and Xenogears get. The subtext is rarely if ever lost.

Wait, Xenogears, really? That one's decidedly above average for a PSX translation. It's not flawless but there are far fewer gaffes than FF7 or FFT (and, as you said, rarely if ever is meaning lost, and that's no small feat considering the volume of plot/text Xenogears contains).

Both PSX Wild Arms games and both PSX Suikodens would be other examples of badly translated RPGs on that system, though of course they're not Square.

Xenogears' errors are subtle but not unimportant. For example, Miang being Elly's antithesis is foreshadowed by their names in the JP version, because they're mirrors of each other (Myyah vs Elhayym - remove the 'el' prefix that is being used to indicate 'of god' as in hebrew names and you get a perfect mirror). Urobolus should obviously be Ouroboros. Kahran Ramsus is Carlin Ramses. Citan Uzuki is actually Shitan (which is why you get Shion in Xenosaga). Etc. etc. etc. Subtle things that slipped past Richard Honeywood because the project was fucking immense and no challenge a single translator should ever handle, but they're there.
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I mean it's pretty obvious why they would change Citan's name for the English localization there so that may not even be a mistake
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Now Kanz is talking about the Honeywood localization process, so I'm genuinely invested in the flow of conversation. Sadly for me, he's covered it pretty soundly in a single paragraph.

Uroboros Ring... what the heck.
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Jeff Zero posted...

Now Kanz is talking about the Honeywood localization process, so I'm genuinely invested in the flow of conversation. Sadly for me, he's covered it pretty soundly in a single paragraph.

Uroboros Ring... what the heck.

FWIW, there's more errors to cover but really...Xenogears is a project that kinda changed how Square approached localizations outright since IIRC it almost drove Richard Honeywood to suicide and they went like 'dudes, this is too much. We need to stop cheaping out on translations' off that. A lot is forgivable when you consider that Xenogears has an amount of text that could probably compete with one of the Trails in the Sky games and one man did all of it. I forget but I think the text is like...multiple novels long. Long ones. That he did it at all on a brutal deadline is a miracle, never mind that it was as good as it was.
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Yeah. It's a remarkably large script and Honeywood went into a tremendous depression. I'm not saying such suffering is ever "worth it", but I am glad something good came out of it. Square woke up to the reality of the localization nightmares it had been inflicting and we started seeing real progress on the matter.
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This moll's a mole!
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