u/KokuyokaGameLit

The Dark of Night is up!

If there's one spot to really read here, it's this one: Cid’s Motivations for Saving Bearers. Cid's motivations and his goal got a pretty major re-write between Japanese and English. This rewrite links up to the differences between Japanese and English at Benedikta & Cid’s Confrontation in Norvant Fortress. ...Which will link up to someone else's motivation and goal differences later down the line...

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Quinten is one of those characters where his Japanese and English personalities differ, especially once his Japanese VA delivery style is taken into account. There's this sense of amusement to him in Japanese that is lacking in English. Particularly whenever he talks about doing things that go against the grain while getting away with it...

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One of my favorite general "Japanese vs English" examples of what differences between them tend to be like is Cid's response to Clive after Quinten gives Clive his brooch/seal.

>(Japanese)
The 《brooch》 you received
is a sign its master has approved of you.
If a master has put in a good word for you,
they’ll listen, even if you’re a Bearer.

>(English)
You don’t need to worry about that just yet. Trust me.
Everyone in Lostwing knows what that seal means…and what it means if they don’t take note.

Japanese Cid just explains what is going on right then and there. English Cid puts it off and then never explains it...which leaves it up to the Thousand Tomes to do it instead. And even then the Thousand Tomes entries mention slightly different things about how this works...

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One of the Japanese NPC lines here is really interesting and is foreshadowing about a topic FFXVI will go into a lot more later!

>Steely-Nerved Woman (Japanese)
The village residents gathered here have the same “thoughts” as the Master.
We will absolutely not allow it to be invaded by outsiders.

>Hard-bitten Villager
Most of us came to Lostwing to get away from the kind of thing that happened last night.
Which only makes it worse…

The "thoughts" used here are the same type of "thoughts" that Clive will spend a lot of time talking about in Act 3 with Barnabas and Ultima. And this NPC is talking about how the Lostwing villagers are sharing thoughts in the same way as Clive will later on!

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2, u/CinderLord456, u/CajitoCatKing, u/Ill-Bookkeeper-6230, u/emimillly
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Disquieting Silence is now up!

Most of this is pretty much the same. Probably the most interesting difference in terms of characterization is Clive’s Thoughts on What Comes After He Gets Revenge and what Cid's reaction to that is. All the Hanged Man conversations are a great look at general vibes differences between Japanese and English though.

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2, u/CinderLord456, u/CajitoCatKing, u/Ill-Bookkeeper-6230, u/emimillly
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The People Living in the Hideaway (Food for Thought) and Living Surrounded by Ruins (Make Do and Mend) are now up!

Yep, I'm translating the side quests... Clive's got some really good lines in some of them in Japanese...

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2, u/CinderLord456, u/CajitoCatKing, u/Ill-Bookkeeper-6230, u/emimillly, u/noct76
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The Man Named Cid (The Hideaway) is now up!

And welcome to the Hideaway!

The most interesting line to me in this whole thing is this line of Cid's: "Nothing at all. I just want her to live by her own volition." vs "Do with her? Why nothing. Her life is her own now."

The phrase "to live by/of one's own volition" is the closest I've seen the Japanese FFXVI script get to the "live on our own terms" concept in English FFXVI. We'll see a few other people say it and all of them connected to the Hideaway from before Clive ever got there. "Volition" is actually 意志 "ishi", which is usually what is translated as "will" in English, but Japanese has "volition" and "will" be the same concept. That and "will/volition" is almost never used without being attached to "by/of one's own" in FFXVI.

The kicker here is, in Japanese FFXVI, this is something Cid is thinking of long before he ever comes in contact with Clive. And it'll be something Clive learns directly from Cid rather than from what he'll see in Rosaria. There's something very interesting going on between English FFXVI and Japanese FFXVI where English Cid doesn't have Japanese Cid's goals and motives. Rather, English Clive comes up with those same motives and goals himself and English Cid had never thought of them before. There's a sense where English Clive is more like Japanese Cid than he is Japanese Clive (both in motives and personality type).

So you've got the same general concept of "to live by/on one's own volition/terms", but which character is coming up with it at what point in the story is different between the two continuities. Which means what role that concept will play in the story as whole will be different as well.

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Generally speaking though, this is a point in the story where FFXVI is at it's most similar between English and Japanese in terms of subject matter. It's more in the VA delivery where the emotional vibes go in rather different directions.

That and the NPC dialogue. NPC dialogue is a really good place to go looking for what the different writers and localizers like putting emphasis on when the main story isn't dictating what they have to write. It's very interesting comparing the overall emotional vibes the NPC dialogue brings to a given area.

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2, u/CinderLord456, u/CajitoCatKing, u/Ill-Bookkeeper-6230, u/emimillly
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A Chance Encounter is now up!

And back to 873 CC it is! Time to get the crew together!

Nothing too crazy different is happening yet, although Tiamat Turns on Clive and Tiamat Boss Fight introduce some things about being a Bearer that will be gone more into later on.

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Starting from Cid Identifies Clive, there's going to be a noticeable pattern of the general emotional vibes of English and Japanese being very different depending on who Clive and Cid's VAs are. The actual text in this specific scene is about as close as it gets between English and Japanese in FFXVI. But hearing how the same ideas are said by the VAs reveals that how the characters are reacting to the situation they are in is not the same between English and Japanese. This difference is going to be... very consistent... going forwards.

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2, u/CinderLord456, u/CajitoCatKing, u/Ill-Bookkeeper-6230
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Phoenix Fledgling is now up!

Yep... We're at the Phoenix Gate Assault...

First place to stop at is Elwin’s Thoughts on the Dominant’s Duty. The explanation for how Japanese sees what the Dominants actually do here is pretty interesting. The vocabulary is taken from driving cars (really, any vehicle) at high speeds. This links up to the verb used to describe a Dominant going "out-of-control" which is used to describe a vehicle or car that has gone... out of control... while someone is driving it.

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Clive and Joshua's conversation (starting with Joshua Meets Up with Clive) is a place where a lot of future aspects of their character arcs get established. The difference here tend to be small, but when putting them all together (and especially taking what they'll later be doing into account and how they talk about it), the effect is noticeable. A note about Clive here is that whenever he mentions "Knight", he is always talking about himself as the Phoenix Knight (the title) rather than the regular job of knight that a bunch of other Rosaria characters are. And uh... yeah... this whole section is filled with ironic foreshadowing in general... The Rosfields totally have a Savior Complex going on...

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Skipping ahead to Phoenix vs Ifrit Boss Fight Phase 1. This has a fascinating thing going on in it in the Japanese subtitles. When Joshua is manifested as Phoenix, his lines are not written in the usual mix of kanna and kanji. They are written in katakana Japanese. It's kind of like writing in all-caps in English. Then they switch back to kana and kanji part-way through the boss fight. This lines up with Phoenix's eyes turning from blue to gold (it's easy to miss at this point in the fight). Gold eyes on a summoned beast mean the Dominant is out of control. Blue eyes means the Dominant is in control. So the katakana Japanese subtitles are when Joshua is out of control of Phoenix.

So part-way though the fight, Joshua gains control of Phoenix and is no longer out of control of it. Which is a really cool thing to know Dominants can do. And uh... yeah... Phoenix's eyes are blue when Ifrit kills him... Joshua was aware for that whole thing while it was happening...

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Far and away the biggest difference though is Anabella in Anabella’s Thoughts on Clive. This one is like... holy shit.... English went easy on her. In Japanese she is... so much worse.

The first big thing is how she refers to Clive in this scene. Japanese has a lot of different ways to referring to people that range from very respectful to very derogatory. But they're all ways of referring to people. Anabella skips all of those and goes right to talking about Clive using a pronoun that is only used to talk about objects. The subtitles even helpfully put it in quotes so it's very obvious what she's doing. So yeah, Anabella is well into "treating Clive like he's an object" territory in Japanese. This probably explains a lot about Anabella's opinion on Clive back in this conversation: Anabella & Elwin’s Thoughts on Their Noble Blood.

The second thing is what she says to do with (more like "to") him and why. In English, this is pretty straightforward. She's taking what Elwin said about Clive (that he's a good soldier) and saying that's what should happen with him in Sanbreque. And that's about it. Why Clive gets branded as a Bearer in English is very up in the air...

In Japanese this is her speculating/suggesting that Clive is likely going wind up at... basically the lowest rung of the social hierarchy. She uses a very specific term that only makes sense in the world of FFXVI as talking about a Bearer (it's essentially describing something very similar to how Bearers need brooches/seals to act in their master's place). And then she speculates even more that Clive is only skilled enough to play the type of of roll someone has when they're clearing the way for people more important than they are rather than in a roll that requires skill to do.

The entire thing is Anabella all but saying she wants Clive to be branded as a Bearer. What exactly he winds up doing as a Bearer is... besides the point. There's this sense where Anabella is purposely degrading Clive, the heir of the most powerful family in Rosaria (who would also be well-known in the Wind Continent), to the lowest social roll she can think of on purpose because... that's how she's been thinking of him for a while and she can now actually make him actually have the roll she thinks he should have. So yeah, Clive gets branded as a Bearer in Japanese because Anabella wanted that to happen to him and it's very unambiguous...

From a literary perspective... There's a sense where Anabella actually succeeds at her goals regarding Clive here. Clive will never be part of the Rosfield family in an offical capacity after this and will never have official influence in Rosaria. He's forever going to be a societal outcast who will have people after him. Anabella didn't think Clive belonged in House Rosfield and she got that wish granted.

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2, u/CinderLord456
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The Books, Reports, Notes & Announcements and Equipment pages have been updated with all the missing equipment and text entries!

The highlight of the literature page is most likely the Poison Guide and The History of Bearers. The Poison Guide in Japanese goes into how how the poison gets underneath skin without risking injecting it into the bloodstream. It reminds me a lot of oh... how iodine stains skin. Just if that was really painful and permanent. For some reason English makes this out to sound way more like getting tattoos which... makes not a ton of sense... when your ink is fatal when it comes in contact with the bloodstream.

The History of Bearers (Writings of the External World in Japanese, From a Distance in English) spells out something that is really key to FFXVI in Japanese. Which is that Bearers are not thought of as "people". This is significant as Japanese's word for "human" and "person" is the same word. For various reasons, I wound up going with "person" over "human" in FFXVI's translation (otherwise a bunch of stuff to do with Ultima didn't work properly). English FFXVI went with "human" here instead. Which... is kinda undermines the significance of the statement. No one cares if Bearers are biologically human or not. It's about if they are thought of as "people".

This goes a long way to explain why Clive's goal in Japanese FFXVI is to make "a place where people can live as people". He's including Bearers and Dominants as part of the "people" in that statement. Which is bonkers weird for the society around him.

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A fun thing with the Equipment pages is that all the swords Clive uses in the Arete Stone content have slightly different descriptions depending on what content they're used for in Japanese.

Also, the Omega Weapon, Ultima Weapon and Alpha Weapon (Original Sin) do all have their theme naming restored!

A huge thank you to u/SadRecognition1575 for passing on the information to me that I was missing!

Happy reading everyone!

Through the Deep Fog is now up!

Quiet week today. Well, I guess if you count morbols quiet that is.

Definitely nothing happening next week... Nothing at all...

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2
Let me know if you want notifications for script translations!

Okay yeah, that's the wrong roman numeral in the title... woops!

Approaching Twilight (Sunrise, Sunset) is now up!

Alright, things are getting a little more interesting now.

First up is NPC names. Japanese uses a lot more adjectives and descriptives for the NPCs than English does. There's a lot more personality traits, general ages, and specific job descriptions than in English... and often combinations of them. I'm not going to comment too much on differences between NPC lines yet... but it's interesting comparing the collective emotional vibe they make between different languages...

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From a literary analysis point, Clive’s Encounter with a Bearer is really interesting to compare between Japanese and English. It is FFXIV's initial introduction to what societal role Bearers have and how society thinks about them in general. What the different languages choose to highlight in this scene is a good indication of what they will later put more focus on in regards to Bearers and society in general. This is also an interesting place to compare the English and Japanese VAs and the different feel the scenes in general and the individual characters have in each of them...

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Elwin and Anabella's conversation (starting at Elwin & Anabella’s Thoughts on Clive & Joshua) is also well worth a look at. There are themes introduced here that are going to be discussed for the entire rest of the game. English actually does bring this particular theme up here, it just never really develops it later on. Japanese helpfully circles it with quotation marks in the subtitles. Also, Anabella comes off differently in her English vs Japanese VA work here in particular. IMO, she sounds a lot less reactionary and a lot more controlled. It's well worth a listen to at least once.

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2
Let me know if you want notifications for script translations!

A Knight’s Pride (Pride) quest is now up!

Murdoch's explanations are pretty much the same emotionally, although his explanation for what exactly Clive got with the Blessing of Phoenix is more detailed... Elwin is one of the characters that thankfully is the same in English as in Japanese.

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The scene (and character) to pay attention to is Anabella’s Introduction. The difference isn't too big here, but where her characterization is going to go as FFXVI Part 1 develops is... Let's just say... English tones her down quite a bit...

The same thing goes for how her relationship with Clive gets characterized. Clive is the most outwardly respectful in this scene in the entire game (and later on when he first runs into Anabella at Twinside)... Which is a gigantic red flag considering Clive is pretty informal with everyone else, even at this point in his life. Whenever he thinks Anabella is around, he always talks more formally/respectfully, and he always comes off uncomfortable doing that.

I should say that Anabella's characterization and motives are pretty common for villains to have in Japanese media. But I find it with male villains more often than with female villains...

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A bit on what Clive's title vs job is as Japanese sets this up differently than English does.

"knight", without a capital "k", is the kanji term for "knight"... which is literally "mounted samurai". This is essentially a job/class name.

"Knight" with a capital "k", is in katakana English and is a title in Rosaria that only few knights earn. It's actually the shortened form of the title "Phoenix Knight". People with this title are the personal guards of the Dominant of Phoenix and are given the Blessing of Phoenix. There have been other people in the past who have this title and role and nothing suggests there can only be one of them at a time. In fact, given the nature of them being the Dominant's bodyguards, it's highly likely that there's supposed to multiple of them at the same time. Clive is the only person with this title we meet in the game though. Incidentally, Clive became a knight when he was twelve and got the title of Phoenix Knight when he was fifteen. Dude's crazy talented as a fighter.

A similar situation is going on in FFVII with "soldier" where you've got both the job "solider" as well SOLDIERs, who are a very specific type of soldier (who also were given OP abilities other soldiers don't have). Yes, I did contemplate writing it as KNIGHT just for the sake of the reference...

In English, "shield" is what goes with "knight" and "First Shield" is what goes with "Phoenix Knight", technically. However, the English script very often doesn't differentiate when it's talking about "shields" in general vs "the First Shield" the way Japanese does with "knight" vs "Knight". Which has some implications for Clive's motivations later on...

Further mixing this up even more is that the idea of being "the Phoenix's Shield" is there in Japanese, but it's always used to describe what the relationship between the knights (in general!) and the Phoenix is seen as being rather than as the name of the job or title itself. Although that's probably a good explanation for why English's term for "knight" is what it is...

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2
Let me know if you want notifications for script translations!

Final Fantasy FFXVI Overture and Dominant Assassination (To Kill a Dominant) quests are now up!

And we're back! Script translations are still ongoing and will be continuing for the foreseeable future! Now we can get to all the fun characterization and world-building stuff happening outside the stages!

Not too many crazy changes here in terms of translation (outside of the introduction, which I did a whole write-up on already). We haven't hit anything too major yet. It's mostly just vibes at the moment (I guess it's cool to know Dhlamekia has spies in the Iron Kingdom which is why they know they have Shiva?).

Happy reading everyone!

Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape
Let me know if you want notifications for script translations!