Quote Originally Posted by Raistlin View Post
Despite the fact that I still often say "Aeris," I don't think it's up to reasonable dispute that "Aerith" is closer to the original intent of the developers. How often are the names of major characters changed in later appearances?
Intent of the developers, yes. Intent of the translaters, no. I firmly believe the person who wrote down 'Aeris' did it with the intention of the name being 'Aeris', not as a result of bad knowledge of grammar or a typo.
Daniel, you seem incredibly confused by how game development works, and your repeated insistence that "Aeris" was not a mistake is either ridiculously pedantic or delusional. You admit that "this guy are sick" was a mistake, making your insistence that one particular name was not a mistake entirely arbitrary. The localization team can and frequently do mess up, in a variety of games. They can mess up in big ways and small ways (I mean, have you even played FFT? That translation was abysmal). The name is not, in fact, "plastered" all over the game, but appears once when you first name her, and then it's a variable for the rest of the game.
Actually, it also appears in the manual. And I'm pretty confident that they had to type it out in at least two different areas within the game because there are different variables for each character's name before and after the name change box comes up, and Aeris is actuallyed called Aeris before you name her (Cloud is called Ex-Soldier). I would be surprised if it doesn't appear in more places than these key areas, but that's enough for me.

The member of the localization team that translated the Japanese to "Aeris" made a mistake, in that they differed from the original intent of the developers who named her.
The name was intentionally listed as Aeris. Did any of the developers tell this guy they intended for her to be called Aerith? Did anyone correct it? Guess not.

The mistake was so obvious that many Western players still referred to her as "Aerith" even before SE officially revised her English name. It was not caught because the localization wasn't checked over with a fine tooth comb in those days; you can find plenty of contemporary games riddled with translation errors.
A fine tooth and comb!? IT'S THE NAME OF A PLAYABLE CHARACTER. You can bet your life that if Tifa was called Tiaf they would have fixed it in a second. The only assumption that would work is if you revised your statement to say "at all" instead of "with a fine tooth and comb". AT. ALL. In which case I would simply say "Well, who's bloody fault is that?" If you put this kind of responsibility with the localisation team, they will name it what they bloody like and that will ship and it's your own smurfing fault if it's "not what you intended." It is, at that point, officially her name (in that localisation - in this case, English). I'll use the Moskva/Moscow reference again - Russia probably didn't intend on Moscow being the English translation of Москва (Moskva). But it is, despite that, the official English translation of Москва (Moskva).

And most importantly, this was a mistake that was admitted by SE, who officially revised the name the character's future appearances. That should really settle the debate.
Only, they didn't. PC release, Steam release - all still say Aeris despite other things being fixed. Why would they fix untold amounts of grammar and spelling and leave the name as it is? They accepted that in that game, it's her official name, and they can't change that.

If you want to keep calling her "Aeris" because that's what you got used to, that's fine. Nobody would take issue with that,
You'd be surprised, then. >=]

and I still do sometimes as well. Hell, you can still argue it's her "original" English name, because that just seems like a pointless semantic dispute that will vary depending on how you define "original" in that context. But "Aeris" was indisputably a mistranslation.
The only way it was a mistranslation is if they actually explicitly told the head of the team translating the game that it should be Aerith and he ignored them completely over and over again. My belief? Nobody told anyone. When everyone checked over the translation, and I am assuming they look at character names, nobody complained. Or perhaps it was Aerith originally and they did complain? You can't mistranslate when you're the person that Square-Enix put in charge of inventing the translation and don't have any instruction on how to translate certain names. I would not be suprised if, one year down the line, someone like Nomura or whatever said "Oh, Aeris? Did you guys know I intended on it being Aerith when I created that character? You know, like Air-Earth? This really bugs me. I want that changed."

And I agree, Skyblade, it's very unsettling that people get this agitated over something that should be extremely easy to debate without resorting to being hostile. Unlike Raistlin, I won't resort to personal attacks just because someone disagrees with me. I expect better from you, dude. It's a bloody character name in a video game, don't go around calling people delusional over it. It's common knowledge that Aerith is what was intended by someone high up but clearly the rest of SE were never informed, and that for me is not the fault of the translation team. If the rest of SE were officially and reasonably informed, someone would have spotted it as a mistake.

Of course, regardless of all of the above: Aeris is her name in the original game, it still is her name in the name of re-releases despite other things being changed (including spelling and grammar). Intended or not, translation error or not, for me it is her name because it is her name in the most canon of all places and all appearances: THE ORIGINAL GAME.