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Final Fantasy VII Remake - Localization Team Interview
- Thread starter DiipuSurotu
- Start date
OP
OP
Great stuff in here. The first part stood out to me:
I feel like they could have done a whole longform interview about this single question. This is a really excellent answer from all three translators to a deceptively heavy question.
The original translation for FF7 is absolutely abysmal. As somebody who only just played the game for the first time this month and never played text-heavy video games like this in their own time, it was truly shocking how bad the English was. Frequently it was incomprehensible, just as often the text was understandable at face value but the content of the scene was not, and it shocked me that games were ever released in this kind of condition. I understand this is probably a silly revelation to have about JRPGs, whose early history of translation hack jobs is well documented, but this was the first time I ever experienced it for myself. It was the hardest I ever had to work for a good story.
And yet, throughout the game, there are small flashes of excellence. It's hard to say what makes these scenes standout so much in my mind. But certain moments — like Barret lamenting his history of violence and unclean hands, Tifa telling Cloud that Aerith never intended to be a sacrifice and her death was not noble, Cloud admitting that nobody lives in poverty by choice — are perfect. These conversations are so good and so impactful that I imagine if I played this game and heard such dialog in 1998 I would forget every other problem the script had. In 2020 it's not as easy to forget, but I can still see where the game manages to shine.
This comes to the fact that certain scenes are always going to stick differently to different people. The dialog I mentioned above were my own favorites, but somebody else might have other random favorites completely different from mine. It stands to reason that with a game like FF7, every scene might be somebody's favorite scene. Knowing that and still taking on such a Herculean effort to adapt this script again in 2020 is brave.
It is the right mindset to have to know you cannot please everybody in this scenario. You cannot possibly represent what is most important to every single player. The original English text is an absolute failure, something that should have never been acceptable for release, but it's also one of the most important scripts in gaming. You must make changes. You must adjust how people speak, what they say, and why. Trying to do best by the story instead of fan expectations is the right thing to do.
Edit: Probably my favorite line from the entire original game, where Cloud says nobody lives in the slums because they want to, is not present or adapted in the remake. This bummed me out because that scene meant a lot to me in its original form. But like I said above, you can't please everybody. I accept that adaptations must change.
I feel like they could have done a whole longform interview about this single question. This is a really excellent answer from all three translators to a deceptively heavy question.
The original translation for FF7 is absolutely abysmal. As somebody who only just played the game for the first time this month and never played text-heavy video games like this in their own time, it was truly shocking how bad the English was. Frequently it was incomprehensible, just as often the text was understandable at face value but the content of the scene was not, and it shocked me that games were ever released in this kind of condition. I understand this is probably a silly revelation to have about JRPGs, whose early history of translation hack jobs is well documented, but this was the first time I ever experienced it for myself. It was the hardest I ever had to work for a good story.
And yet, throughout the game, there are small flashes of excellence. It's hard to say what makes these scenes standout so much in my mind. But certain moments — like Barret lamenting his history of violence and unclean hands, Tifa telling Cloud that Aerith never intended to be a sacrifice and her death was not noble, Cloud admitting that nobody lives in poverty by choice — are perfect. These conversations are so good and so impactful that I imagine if I played this game and heard such dialog in 1998 I would forget every other problem the script had. In 2020 it's not as easy to forget, but I can still see where the game manages to shine.
This comes to the fact that certain scenes are always going to stick differently to different people. The dialog I mentioned above were my own favorites, but somebody else might have other random favorites completely different from mine. It stands to reason that with a game like FF7, every scene might be somebody's favorite scene. Knowing that and still taking on such a Herculean effort to adapt this script again in 2020 is brave.
It is the right mindset to have to know you cannot please everybody in this scenario. You cannot possibly represent what is most important to every single player. The original English text is an absolute failure, something that should have never been acceptable for release, but it's also one of the most important scripts in gaming. You must make changes. You must adjust how people speak, what they say, and why. Trying to do best by the story instead of fan expectations is the right thing to do.
Edit: Probably my favorite line from the entire original game, where Cloud says nobody lives in the slums because they want to, is not present or adapted in the remake. This bummed me out because that scene meant a lot to me in its original form. But like I said above, you can't please everybody. I accept that adaptations must change.
"The insatiable drive for unending profits by the bourgeoisie through a system of exploitation and reduction of the proletariat has irreversibly poisoned society and has uppended the individuals' relationship with each other and with nature. The root cause of the ills plaguing everyone and everything lies not in inefficient or misguided policies or lack thereof, but in the very system itself.
We need to seize the means of production, Cloud."
Any spoilers? My impression is that translations other than the english one are usually more literal takes nowadays, but I doubt that they talked about that.
I'm currently playing the remake and loving the localisation. Lots of replies in that twitter thread really don't understand what localisation involves, apparently. "It's not exact translations of the Japanese script!" Yikes.
OP
OP