The First Great and Accurate Translation

Apparently this is a common sentiment. FFIX was when Square started making both witty and textually faithful localizations.

Well yeah, with FFVII they started developing an in-house team, and by FFIX that was rolling along.

Part of it was that Square just didn't take the foreign market seriously until FFVII, so they didn't really give a trout about localization until the world went mad over that one game.

In several ways FFVII was the beginning of the transition even though it wasn't the game that benefited from the changes at Square.

What'shisname, Honeydewmelon or whatever, started the in-house trend, him and the other dude, and then it grew from there. I think they were just finally getting a real team together by the time FFIX hit, and away they went. Also, at some point they added a team of editors which really really helped the process. I don't know if that happened with FFIX or if that came later though.

But looking back you can see there was a progression. FFIX didn't just come out of nowhere.

Also, they took a big leap backward with FFXIII. I'm hoping the new system they implemented will fix that newest issue, though.

Well to be fair, while IX is remarkable in it's translation and localization compared to its predecessors and the turn around time from the Japanese to English release, I've heard it still misses a lot of nuances which became more apparent with Dissidia, apparently Kuja had a more "lyrical or poetic" dialogue and liked using music and theater puns in his speeches and the English toned it down. I've heard there were some other issues with the translation but I can't remember what sections it was in but considering the game had a six-month translation/localization window compared to its PS1 brethren and even though FFIV and VI had similar or shorter time frames they didn't have the sheer volume of text that IX had; the fact it had few mistakes and made sense is a testament to the localization team's effort and hard work.