- A bit of interesting nuance is that, when Rinoa worries over whether Artemisia will force her to fight the others, the English version goes with a more neutral, slightly ominous "scary thought, isn't it?", while the Italian version has her say "I hate fighting", which feels more personal, although also somewhat at odds with Rinoa's personality. Characterizing her as angry at the idea, in addition to scared, on the other hand, is a better fit for Rinoa's personality, so overall the translation here use a less effectual phrasing to convey a stronger feeling.
This is another case where the Japanese script is being vague and unclear for stylistic reasons, and translators have to interpret what the line is actually
saying, and the English and Italian translators went in different directions. In the Japanese script, Rinoa says "If the world becomes (my/our) enemy... (will we) have to fight... (I) don't like it... it's scary."
The words in parenthesis are not in the actual text, and only implied through context and grammar. So the English translator went for the route of Rinoa thinking the whole situation is scary and she doesn't like it, while the Italian translator went for the route of linking the previous statement to the next one, so Rinoa is saying "fighting is scary/I hate fighting".
- Then, when Squall declares that he'll never hurt Rinoa and that is true enemy is Artemisia, the Italian translation goes more personal, with him characterizing her as "the Sorceress that caused you to feel so afraid"; that Squall wants to kill Artemisia specifically because she hurt Rinoa is very in line with his newfound motivation/character development, instead of the far more neutral English line "my enemy is the Sorceress of the future". This is a very divergent translation, and I don't know how it came about; we'd need the Japanese script here to be certain whether the English team dropped the ball so profoundly, or whether the Italian team choose to emphasize Squall's changed motivations by editing the line so aggressively.
Oddly enough, this is a case where I can see where
both translations are coming from, and it looks like the English and Italian translations took the Japanese line and split it between them. If I had to choose, I'd say the Italian translation is more complete, but it might also overstate the motivation.
The line is "The Sorceress I (want to) defeat is not Rinoa. (It is) the one from the future that Rinoa is afraid of, Sorceress Ultimecia." The English translation left out the part where Ultimecia is described as someone Rinoa is afraid of, but the Italian translation seems to leave out the part about Ultimecia being from the future.
I'm not sure if the Italian translation overstates Squall's motivation, because in Japanese Squall is using "Rinoa is afraid of this Sorceress from the future" as part of the description of Ultimecia. So "the Sorceress that caused you to feel so afraid" is valid, but doesn't really say anything about Squall wanting to defeat Ultimecia
because Ultimecia makes Rinoa afraid. However, I also don't know if I'm
under-reading the implications in Japanese, and Squall mentioning Rinoa's fear
at all might be significant enough to match the Italian translation.
- Which is a smaller change than the following beat, where either the English translation completely dropped a line from Rinoa, or the Italian translation added a fully new one. In English, Squall says "there's gotta be a way", and in Italian "I'm gonna find a way" - a minor variation that I'd not normally mention - but then, whereas in English Rinoa goes with an ellipsis, a "..." that reads as deep doubt of him, in Italian she says "will you? Really?", which is less doubt and more desperate hope, telling us that, while Rinoa doesn't really believes that a way exists, she deeply wants it to, and thus we get the impression that Squall's words reach her far more deeply than even she herself expected.
The English translation did remove an entire line, yes. Having said that, Rinoa's line
is doubtful; the line is "本当に見つかるかな", and I admit I can't think of a way to convey that in English properly without tone. The Italian translation of "Will you? Really?" is valid, but imagine it being spoken doubtfully, rather than hopefully. In context, Rinoa isn't doubting Squall specifically, but rather that any solution exists at all. I suppose "Is there really a way?" would be keeping the spirit of the line, over a literal translation.
As for Squall personally vouching for a way (or method or plan; 方法 translates to any of those), it's another instance of lack of pronouns, in that line itself. Translated as is, the line is "A way can definitely be found", but I can see the interpretation where Squall is saying he personally will find the way. Or that everyone together will find the way.
None of this is evident with the English translation outright removing Rinoa's line, so that one is clearly bad.
This continues on with the next few points (up until the comment about the Edea and Cid discussion being unchanged), where the Italian translation is consistently closer to the Japanese text than the English one, which aggressively strips out a lot of emotion and context, including outright deleting words. The core message of each line is there, in terms of information, but the nuances are gone. I had been doing a multi-quote of each case, before I realized it was just going "yeah, Italian is closer, no idea what the English translation is doing" over and over.
For the Deep Sea Research facility, again the Japanese script site doesn't have side content. However, I'm a huge Hololive fan, and Koyori Hakui has been doing marathon streams of FFVIII (as part of her own "play through all the Final Fantasy games" streams), and reached the Deep Sea Research base. No translations for Zell, because her party is Squall-Rinoa-Selphie.
- Right before the final Ruby Dragon fight of the pre-Bahamut sequence, the question is addressed as "Ignorant creatures", which seems more fitting here than the "Damned imbeciles" translation of the English version.
- Then, after defeating him, Bahamut's line is "have you found your answer?", implicitly to his last question (Why do you fight?), which is a different take on his characterization from the "have you seen the light?" he asks in English. The Italian translation suggests that Bahamut, too, is seeking the answer to the question of why it is in his nature to fight, and is joining the team in the hope that fighting alongside them, people who are seeking the same answer, will help him find it, whereas the English version has the fight as more of a teaching moment, but it's not clear exactly what it is that Bahamut would have wanted them to learn from it.
"Ignorant creatures" and "damned imbeciles" are pretty much just variants of insulting the player party for being fools. The line is "愚かなる者よ", which is an arrogant and old-speech way of saying "you fools". Bahamut speaks in haughty old-time vocabulary, of the sort that would likely be full of "thee" and "thou" in most English translations. The idea here is contempt and anger, without pity.
Bahamut's line upon defeat is "戦いに... こたえは見えたか?" which once again has no subject-object pronouns, so it could be "have you found your answer", "have you found the answer", "have you found an answer", "have you found answers", or any such variation. The first part (戦いに) is "battle", or possibly "upon this battle" or "with this battle" or "after this battle". So overall I would say it
could be a teaching moment on the part of Bahamut, the party, or both, but in all honesty I feel like it's just a cryptic line that the writers put in for the sake of characterizing Bahamut as "old grandiose king".
Completely unrelated to any of this, an amusing bit of fluff:
The correct title of the painting is "Vividarium et intervigilium et viator," which the game translates as, "In The Garden Sleeps A Messenger."
Seeing this now made me a little confused, because FFXIV lore discussions have taught me (correctly) that "viator" means "traveller" (or "wayfarer" or some such synonym). It was only after looking it up further that I learned "viator" was also "messenger"; I assume this is at least partly due to messengers being associated heavily with travelling.
Given the future (as of this game) efforts and productions of Tetsuya Nomura, I lay the sin of pointlessly gratuitous Latin at his feet.
