Tina or Terra?

[Spooniest]

To me,

"Terra" makes her seem otherworldly, ethereal, and inaccessible.

"Tina" humanizes the character. It'd be like having a male character named "Joe."

So "Tina" is my preference.

[The Man]

But she's supposed to be otherworldly and ethereal. She's half-Esper.

[Jiro]

I can't imagine part of the creative team saying "let's do x because it will make more money!" Maybe I'm just ignorant and optimistic, but from interviews with Square Enix employees who work on the games, they seem to love their product and try to create the most enjoyable experiences they can. Not everybody wants to be rich at all cost.

[Mirage]

Her real name is Tina. In Japan.
Her real name is Terra. In Ameuropa.

I'm just going to have to go with the localization crowd here. It sucks when something is just translated, instead of localized.

Let's take a more extreme example: What if a character was named Urdumb in Japanese (let's pretend no one in Japan realizes what this sounds like in English). This character is a strong and reasonable character who the rest of the cast looks up to, should the name be kept in the English translation, even if it is the name the author decided on?

[DownDiagonalLeftA]

She doesn't even look like a Tina.

Terra >

[Greatermaximus]

Don't wear my name out.

How 'bout "The girl who pilots the magictec armor."

Sounds cooler than many other things.

[Mirage]

Is that almost the same as magitek?

[*Laurelindo*]

ティナ・ブランフォード = "Tina Buranfo-do" = "Tina Branford".

Personally I think "Tina" sounds more timid and innocent, while "Terra" sounds more confident and warrior-like.
I guess "Terra" sounds better for the English language.

the US release is notorious for its mistranslations

That depends on what you mean by "mistranslations".
I appreciate translators who can improvise and reword things for a cooler effect, and Ted Woolsey has some really funny one-liners in his translations, for example the classics "Son of a submariner!" and "'Wait!', he says - do I look like a waiter?".
Translating a script is not just about literally transcribing each single phrase, it is also about creating a tone and style of speech that actually sounds good and natural in that language.

[J.D]

snip

Yes, but we now have the advanced version which proves that the translating could have been done way better than it was. Every dialogue in the advanced version actually makes sense, while there are some confusing ones in the original release.

[*Laurelindo*]

snip

Yes, but we now have the advanced version which proves that the translating could have been done way better than it was. Every dialogue in the advanced version actually makes sense, while there are some confusing ones in the original release.

Sure, some parts in Ted Woolsey's translation felt a little off; I always thought Locke's "The brothers are reunited!" reaction on Mt. Koltz sounded a little too cheerful and nonchalant - in the original Japanese version his reaction was more like "Your brother...?!", which felt like a much more realistic reaction.

[Wolf Kanno]

To be fair to Ted Woosely, the SNES/Super Famicom versions did have alphabet character limitations. Japanese is pretty compact writing system so they could get more dialogue in minimal space whereas English... is a bit long winded, so a lot of the dialogue alterations in FFVI are due to Woosely having to figure out how to cut down three sentences of dialogue into one. I'll agree that in the hindsight of the GBA versions which allowed for a greater usage of characters in text and thus a more accurate translation, that Woosely did lose a bit of characterization (Setzer kind of does a 180...) with his translations but considering what he had to work with, he did a pretty up standing job. The fact so much of his version of the script has become so popular that Square-Enix recognizes it and has pretty much sanctioned it, since they didn't change too much of the more popular lines in ports, or even retcon some of them into Dissidia (Kefka's "Hate Hate hate..." speech anyone?) pretty much shows that as far as SE is concerned, some of these changes are canon now. It's like the Spoony Bard line and if VII ever got a decent re-translation, I'm sure a few of its clumsy but memorable lines will probably remain.

As I mentioned, Square has had no less than five chances to change Terra back into Tina (FFVI PSX, FFVIAdvances, Dissidia 1 and 2, and TheatreRhythm) but they've stuck with Terra, so I'm pretty sure that SE pretty much considers her name to be Terra as canon outside of Japan.

[Mirage]

Isn't the PC version of FF7 already pretty decently translated?

I know they fixed the "this guy are sick" line, at least.

[maybee]

I know they fixed the "this guy are sick" line, at least.

Boooooo.

smurf you Square-Enix.

[Wolf Kanno]

From what I heard, it was more like the translation fixes in the PSX version of VI where they changed a few obvious issues but largely left the translation the same as long as it wasn't a glaring error. I've never played the PC version so I can't really say beyond hearsay.

[Loony BoB]

It was Terra in the English game I played, which was the offiicial English game, therefore her name is Terra in the English game.

If I were to play the Japanese game, it would be Tina for similar reasons.

Simple.