Mediocrity in Translations: Don't Blame Square as a Whole

by Matthew Schuele 

We appear to be all too quick here to blame Square in its entirety for the quality of recent translations. The problem isn't Squaresoft, it's the translators.

Here's what probably happened. Squaresoft, having lost Ted Woolsey, hires some translators that have good credentials. The translators do a very average job unbefitting the above-average other aspects of Final Fantasy VII. The game comes out in the States. We players are so infatuated with the incredibly immersive nature of the game that we don't notice the translation errors, except for the three or four rather distinct ones ("Hmm, so that's how you fooled them," Samolen Greens, Last Elixir, and "Off course!") until someone whose name is lost to the winds of time (actually, K. Megura, I think) points out that "Hey! They might have clarified the whole 'clone' thing immensely in this translation, but they made a lot of little mistakes! A LOT of little mistakes!"

We, as the fans, begin to do what we do best- argue, in between the "It's terrible" side (which is obviously, looking at the average Capcom or Konami translation, incorrect) "It's average- but we should expect more from Square!" (the general concensus now) side, and the "Quit arguing so I can complain about how the game is incomplete because I can't resurrect Aeris!" side. During this span, someone probable should have observed, "Hmm, we not having complained to Square, and Square being Japan-based, isn't it pretty likely that they don't know how bad the translation is and the SAME PEOPLE are doing Final Fantasy Tactics right now?"

Well, no one seemed to think of that, and whoever at Square who has the authority to fire the translators didn't know what a mediocre job they'd done. Thus, the same people translated FFT, and while the game text contains almost no mistakes, the item & spell names are all screwed up (Moogle and Mogri, Bracelet instead of Breath, the propostion report- though I can understand that since they had to allow for a lot of little things- and Clops/Cyclops.) But we assume that Square doesn't care.

And, on a seperate but equally important note, if the author of the incoherent (but strongly-worded, so it sounds good at first) 'cautionary fable' is reading, I would be respectful toward your editorial, except for the fact that to be absolutely honest I really have very little respect for it [as an editorial. It isn't really an editorial]. Does someone who would rather write a near-punctuationless page-long in-joke than a coherent, intelligent editorial (thus degenerating the very concept of an editorial section) really have the right to complain about style over substance? People always find somethig to complain about. If there had been no FMV, the quality of the story wouldn't be in doubt. But yet from Shining For- or, rather, prior experience, we expect that you can't have both. Can you think of a game with better story quality? Probably not, as there isn't one. We just got our hopes too high. The problem is that if we expect perfection, the line between par and perfect is blurred to such a degree that one can complain about the quality of the story until they discover that no game has a better storyline. If anyone can find a game that they think has a better storyline, I would appreciate if they could E-mail me and tell me what that amazing game, that, coincidentally, everyone else except THEM managed to pass by, is.

We have to know who is to blame; we have to know the difference between good and perfect; or else we really can't claim to be the "informed" public.