Well, which of these FF games had the shoddiest translation? I'll let you decide the qualifications for "worst translation" for yourself, just give your opinion!
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Well, which of these FF games had the shoddiest translation? I'll let you decide the qualifications for "worst translation" for yourself, just give your opinion!
Man, a lot of those are bad. I'll go with FFIV.
"Where are you frum?"
Plus they took so much outta that game...
Let's see now...
FF1 NES: "No one touches my Princess!! LIGHT WARRIORS?? You impertinent fools. I, Garland, will knock you all down!!" Okay, there are a few... unique lines like that, but since there isn't all that much story or dialogue in the game, the translation isn't all that bad. Although some censorship with spell and enemy names annoyed me a bit.
FF1 PSX: "I am Arylon, the Dancer!" line is missing!! Blarg. Some town names also sound a bit stupid, IMHO, like Elfheim and Onlak. And I hate the "Rally-ho!" translation. Lali-Ho or evene Hi-Ho was a lot better. Don't rally your ho when you see these dwarves.
FF1 WSC (fan translation): Not bad. It's like FF1 NES, except with some of the censoring removed. Too bad it's not fully translated.
FF2j (fan translation): I like it. Pretty well done, and I can't remember many bad translations.
FF2 PSX: For Guy's sake, I hate the names in this translation! Firion, Gus, Leon, Pavel, Gareth, Borghen, Gottos, Altair, Gatrea, Fynn... yuck. Besides, they never explained why Gus speaks like a caveman and yet he can still talk with "Beavers".
FF2 WSC (fan translation): Is this game really so hard to translate that only the fan translation for NES can do it right!? I once made a list of all the translation errors they made, and here are some: "Inside was 10 Gil", "I m scared. Its so cold", Bafsk/Bafusk confusions (the same town named many different things), Princess Hilda messing up with Airship and Warship key words, some removed dialogue (like the Princess not telling about the Dark Knight), shops having zb/bbd choices rather than yes/no, Mythril sword called "Mith(image of poison)il??? (image of sword)", "Destory the Guradian", stuff about Josef's suicide watered down and censored. I think some parts were also left in Japanese. This tlansration is really bad.
FF3j (fan translation): Another great fan translation. If Square Enix ever brings this game available for US and European audiences, they might have a hard time keeping or surpassing the quality of the fan translation. My favorite lines are "Are you the Light Warriors that saved our town? You kick ass!" and "Don't be so dull! I want to be with you a little while longer! / Why are you blushing? Come on, let's go back to Ur!"
FF"2" SNES: The original English version of FF4. Be careful! Playing when this game will freeze you with tlansration. But don't worry, it would be happy to be used by one of us. Oh man, these translations really rival those of Zero Wing, so somebody set these tlansrators up the bomb. And remember, you, the man of darkness, using it doesn't mean anything to me, you fools! The language is also very primitive with very short sentences, and Nintendo has watered the translation down pretty much everywhere. Out of the official Square translations, I'd vote this as the worst.
FF4 J2e: It took me a while to get used to this, but I like it. The translation is very detailed, and there are many funny moments with Edge and Rydia. And other characters too. If there's something to complain, I don't like reading Golbeze. I would have preferred Golbez or Golbeza.
FF4 PSX: This translation is, just like the one by J2e, very good. The language is rich, and there are funny moments in this game too. I also like it how they still kept some of those bizarre translations that have become classics, such as Spoony Bard. When (SPOILER)Tellah went to beat up Edward at Damcyan Castle, I started to ROFL when he opened up the battle by yelling in caps, "YOU SPOONY BARD!"
FF5 PSX: The official translation by Square. Once again, the names suck. Big-time. I won't comment about Butz/Bartz, but let's face it: Reina, Krile, Salsa, X-Death and other things like that are simply bad. Otherwise, the overall translation isn't too bad. The language could be a bit more advanced, but it does its job.
FF5 RPGe: A fan translation. It's well done, just like Square's own translation, but with slightly better English. And the name translations are fine this time.
FF"3" SNES and FF6 PSX: This is something you can either love or hate, or something from between. :D There's a lot of Woolsey-ism there, and I think some parts are clever whereas some are stupid attempts to make the events funny, failing most of the time. I prefer Tina and Cayanne (they could have fit Cayane there) to Terra and Cyan, but I'm glad Woolsey got rid of Mash, Cefca and Ghastra. Nintendo's censorship also strikes somewhere, making (IMHO) really stupid lines, such as "Son of a submariner!" And Pearl is such a pathetic name for Holy.
FF6j (fan translation): I don't really like this one. They mostly try to take Woolsey's lines and improve them, and while they get some parts nicely enhanced, most of the time you'll hardly notice the difference. Oh, and since these translators aren't restricted by Nintendo's censorship, they can make the characters swear. And they swear. A lot. Just go to Floating Continent to see 17 F-words on a row, and about 10 other cusswords too.
FF7: Off course, beacause you are a puppet, this guy are sick in Knowlespole. Actually, FF7's translation isn't too bad because it's the first major translation work by Square, and it's fine 99% of the time. The script is one of the biggest in the series. It was about 570 pages in my WordPad with the dialogues only (compare to some other FFs: FF"2" SNES was about 80 pages and FF6 was about 130 pages). Besides, the PC version fixes those typos, grammar errors and confusing parts that were in the PSX version. For example, "CLOUD: Hmm, that's how you'll fool them. / AERIS: Hmm, so that's how you fooled them." has been changed to "CLOUD: Looks like I have to go inside to complete my disguise. / AERIS: Hmm... sure, good excuse..."
FF8: I think this translation was also very good. There isn't much typos or grammar errors, and although not as wide as FF7's translation, the language is still polished and there's a lot of text (worth about 520 pages). Even the translation doesn't make Squall's major personality change seem logical, but since that was more like a flaw in the character development section, you can't really blame the translators for that, can you?
FF9: My favorite translation so far. Very rich language, and I haven't seen a typo or a grammar error in this game during the two times I've played the game. It's also nice to see some old English and dwarf language during I Want to Be Your Canary and Conde Petie visits. The only complaint I have is using the "Rally-ho!" line for dwarves, but that's only for Conde Petie. It's also good how the translation stays loyal to the old-school so that the many cameos in the game are perfectly recognizable.
FFX: A step back from FF9, I'd say. With most of the lines being spoken, the dialogues have got shorter and less detailed, IMHO. I remember one error, "I want to be a blitzball when I grow up", and some references to Tidus were extremely awkward since they never say his name. While the overall voice acting was decent, it was a shame that many of the very important characters (especially Tidus, Yuna and Seymour) had lousy voice actors. Not a bad translation, but nothing to brag about, either.
FFX-2: The translation is better than FFX's, but still not even close to FF9's. It still does well with portraying the characters and making lots of funny moments. Voice acting is done very well this time, and I don't think there's anyone whose acting I didn't like. Yuna's voice is a lot better this time, Rikku's is as good as always and Paine also has a good actor.
FFT: I'd like to say a few things about this too. This game is very dark and has a lot of tragic stuff, and the text and dialogues in the game support that well. It's not a bad translation, but there are some major problems here and there. I remember one scene which was translated in such a confusing way that the story didn't make sense there. Sometimes mission objectives are also a bit mis-leading and may cost you the battle because you don't know what you're supposed to do. There are some weird lines too, like "Defeat Dycedarg's eldest brother" (when your mission is to defeat Dycedarg), "I had a good feeling!" and "Oughta try sellin' your body instead of flowers." I guess FF7 and FFT were both made during a period when Square was starting to figure out how to properly translate games, but they still had a few things to learn.
After all that analysis, I've decided that FF"2" SNES is the worst among Square's translations. FF2 WSC is probably even worse, but it's fan-translated, so I'll let it be this time. *votes for FFIV/2US*
Very informative post, Sephiroth1999AD. Let's me know a lot about the translations of different games :)
Seymour had a lousy voice actor? I thought Fernandez was perfect.
He was my favorite voice in the game. With lines like "Then pretend you didn't see it" "Then pretend I didn't say it" "Your hope ends here...and your meaningless existence with it!" "And there is no salvation for the damned. Rest in peace in eternal darkness." "Let darkness take you!" He was awesome.
I've got to give the worst translation award to FFI not because of Garland, but because of those blasted Sages in that one town. Even the almighty Seanbaby has decreed that these guys are just completely worthless. Really, they're about as useful as anyone from Castlevania 2.
After reading Seph'99's post I wanted to add my own thoughts.
FFI (NES) - Yeah, that circle of sages was terrible. Not only were they not very helpful, but when they attempted to tell you about important plot points, they couldn't find a way to do it that made any sense whatsoever. As if that wasn't bad enough, the ending just worsens things by attempting to resolve the logical nightmare caused by said plot points.
FFII (PSX) - The translation was very well done for the most part (ignoring name changes which don't matter too much since you can re-name a few of 'em anyway), but it IS kinda weird that they gave Gus/Guy a speech impediment.
FFIV (IIUS) - Wow. Just WOW. In addition to the line I already gave, there's also the classic "Attacking while mist will freeze with breath!". I won't touch the dumbed down gameplay, since this thread is about the translation, but yes, indeed, this was a thoroughly badly done work.
FFV (PSX) - Didn't really get the chance to play this one on the PSX, but I've seen quite a few funny name changes.
FFVI (IIIUS) - Well it made sense and the English wasn't bad, but a lot of enemy names got changed and censorship was even more prevalent here than in any other FF game. Things were generally made more family friendly.
FFVII (PSX) - You can figure out what's going on, but you might get a headache trying. It's not that incorrect information was given (well, okay, the scorpion boss thing WAS misleading, and there IS no such place as the "knowlespole"), it's just that the grammar was so awkwardly done that it can be hard to tell what's being discussed at times. I'm not even talking about "This man are sick", I'm talking about the general conversation, such as Barret's "That's it! You're comin' with me from now on!"
FFVIII (PSX) - From what I remember, this game had the same weird grammar as FFVII, but without all the terrible glaring errors, such as "Off course!/ No, way!"
As far as the games I didn't list, FFIX-X2 are not games I have completed, so I feel like maybe I shouldn't comment. However, FFIII hasn't even been released here yet *cries*.