Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

[daniel_gudman]

And that is: obviously, I know what outlander is supposed to mean, now, but (even if I were to grant that "Outlander" is an actual existing English word, which I'm not sure I should - the spellchecker certainly doesn't) I wasn't always as competent with English as I (like to think) I am now.

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According to Merriam-Webster, first recorded use of "Outlander" in English was 1598. Substantively the root of "Outlandish", which means a bizarre and strange way of doing things.

It's a little bit archaic though, "foreigner" or "outsider" would be more usually picked to express someone who is from far away in either a literal geographic sense in the first place, or someone with different and alien customs in the second place, both of which are kinda captured in the idea of "outland", which is far away.

"Outlander" also has a similar connotation to the phrase "the past is a foreign country," where "outland" means far away in time instead of place. This is the usage that the book series and TV adaption "Outlander" is using.

 

[foamy]

Twenty years ago, if I stumbled on a word like Outlander, especially in a fantasy story where I couldn't rely on context as much to divine its meaning, I might have been genuinely stumped by it. And the thing is, there's no reason to use a made-up archaism like Outlander instead of a simpler, clear term like exotic here

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Outland, and terms derived from it, go back a long way; it's used in Old English as early as the 11th century, and Germanic before that. Exotic is from the Greek/Latin pipeline, and doesn't exist until the 16th century.

As a native English speaker, the meaning is almost immediately clear (even without further context clues) from the components of the word: 'out(side) lands' , 'out(lying) lands', 'lands (with)out', but in any case 'someplace that's far away'. From there 'outlander' is directly 'someone from far away'. See also "outbuilding", or even "outside", for a similar construction and meaning.

 

[Egleris]

I know what "Outlander" means. I was unaware, but unsurprised to learn, that it's an archaic term. I hold to it not being a terms used with any frequency in modern English, and that it would have confused me, as a non-native speaker, twenty years ago.

 

[Sa'kage]

Honestly, i kinda wonder if the way the story is set up, means that Ramza can't tell Delita about the stone, because that would affect the narrative too much.

In the first chapter, we learn that Delita is know as a hero, and that Ramza is generally considered a heretic. This, establishes two things for us now.

1. That Delita is victorious in the end, he comes out as the final or one of the winners of the Ivalian civil war. This functionally means that Delita can't have become one of the demons, since those tends to utterly hollow you out. Nor, do i think that game would end up with a "Then Delita the demon killed Ramza and crew, before using his magical demon power to beguile and begin the Delita-Ovelia autocracy". So, more then anyone else, from Ramza, to Alma, to even Ovelia this establishes that Delita is not gonna fall to the Lucavi demon. Simple because Ramza would have killed him at some point in the story then.

While, this won't exclude the idea that Delita is gonna get his hands on the stone at some point, considering the type of people the stones usually end up possessing, i find it hard to believe that Delita wouldn't struggle against being taken over. So, this also implicity implies that Delita never ends up in short contact with any of the auracite stones.

2. This establishes that the Church is still around, and while the degree of it's relevancy is left up in the air. Considering the implied common idea of history was that Ramza was a heretic, which is mostly claimed by the Church, they came out of this conflict in fine-enough straits that their power wasn't too diminished.

Given the Delita theory from up in the post, this means we can sorta assume that Delita did win over his fellow co-conspiritor in the backstabbing closet, but the church was probally kept around to serve as one of Delita's powerbases. Perhaps fantasy Pope is killed, and the rest of the high-ranking church members were cowed enough to gain the fruits of victory at Delita's feet.

The heretic bit is important though, since this chapter just establishes that Delita can't be seen with Ramza, due to the political implications that might leave out. And while they won't exclude future meetings, the general feeling i'm getting is that "Delita can't be seen as a asociate of Ramza", that's going to be part of what's recorded history. Delita the Hero never knew Ramza the Heretic.

Delita is seen as a hero, the Church is still around, and Ramza is know as a heretic. Together with the secrecy the Lucavi has been shrouding themself with, comes to together to present a picture where the demon-conflict going on in the background of the civil war never becomes public knowledge.

Which means, Delita can't know about the stones. Not because Ramza can't trust him, or anything like that. But because for the story the writers are writting, Delita is too ambitious, too inteligent to not start a giant mess if he hears about the auracite stones. He would absolutly try to either aquire one(And thus, most likely get possessed in the process, thus getting in the way of Delita the Hero narrative), or he would try to fight them(Conflicting with the Delita/Ramza never know each other narrative, and the church is still around maintaining Delita as a hero(So he was never in open conflict with the Lucavi whom is clad in the church's uniform).

Granted, that's the doylist reason then most likely, rather then the Waston, where Ramza is unsure how much he can trust Delita(Which is noted as kinda being a weird move, considering demons from hell is ravagning the earth which seems like an important thing to mention).
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As for Delita's relationship with Ramza and Ovelia. My general current kind of feeling is that, due to the spesific feelings and perhaps trauma Delita has, he can't trust other people. He's always suspicious of how they are attempting to use him, gain controll of him or might look down upon him. Delita, seems to be the kind of person that needs to be in controll, at this point in the story.

Put him in any group, and he'd start scheming on how to gain the most power in that group. But more importantly, this seems to be about political power. Or perhaps positional power(That of a noble, unatainble for a commoner). Delita, currently got both political and positional power over Ovelia and Ramza, Ovelia being a trapped princess who's a figure head, and Ramza being a know heretic and very uninterested in that kind of power.

Which means, Delita can "trust" them or allow himself to like them, as much as he can with a person now. Because, he's now the one with the implict power of the system behind him. He's the "noble in charge". I think, if Ramza or Ovelia were to suddenly gain a lot of that political power, Delita would start to very quickly being to resent them. At least, my general feeling in that direction at the moment,.

 

[Pidl]

Unfortunately, Ramza was the only one there to see that, and somehow his talk about how he felled Wiegraf in a single strike make him appear even less credible than his talk about demonic Zodiac Braves.

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I did it as a Ninja by basically throwing stuff at Wiegraf's face and then running away, which from his point of view must be even more humiliating than going down to one all-out attack.

 

[Ehorin]

I know what "Outlander" means. I was unaware, but unsurprised to learn, that it's an archaic term. I hold to it not being a terms used with any frequency in modern English, and that it would have confused me, as a non-native speaker, twenty years ago.

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...You don't read much in English do you?

Outlander is like... in a whole heck of a lot of fantasy and fantasy adjacent fiction.

 

[RubberBandMan]

I want to note that, in this case, one might have guessed that this was a WotL addition from the game reusing the "Gates of Lesalia" Map to represent the outside of Zeltennia Castle, a level of laziness that we've not seen in the actual original PSX cutscenes, all of whom are set on different maps for different locations even when that place is not a site of battle. Think the many different maps for the areas outside of Eagrose in Chapter 1, or the ruined church outside Zaland Fort City being a visibly different place from the ruined castle outside Zeltennia where Delita has his heart-to-heart with Ovelia, despite neither being a battle map, as examples of what I mean.

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It's interesting to compare to the original when it does reuse assets, because they do try and obscure that they're reusing it by changing some details.

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There's an attempt to change how it looks, first by the placement of characters (The fringe of the carpet in the corner is obscured in the rebel interrogation for example) but also the lighting and color, along with the angle of the scene (The one with the stone is turned a few degrees to the right from the interrogation one)

And here's another trashy place reused

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Once again the color pallet is changed, the focus of the scene, but I think the viewpoint angle is the same.

Interesting that both scenes with asset re-use are part of Mustadio's story arc. I wonder if that was being reworked late in development, and thus they had to re-use assets for the talky/explainer scenes?

I don't recall any other examples off the top of my head, but it can be hard to notice. And from what I recall, this section is one of the most sensible in terms of motives and actions, unlike other spots where it's likely to have confusion of 'wait, who knows what again?'.

 

[foamy]

I know what "Outlander" means.

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I know you do. My point is that it's not a particularly obscure or difficult to parse term in English even if you haven't encountered it specifically because it comes through the Germanic influence on Old English and, as a result, it works in the same way as a bunch of other English words; 'out' as a prefix to mean 'distant' is readily understood by analogy. If you aren't a native speaker -- and particularly, I suspect, if you're from outside the Germanic family of language -- those connections might not be as apparent.

'Exotic", funnily enough, is the more exotic word, as it uses a Greek root, 'exo', that's a lot less common than 'out' in English, whereas both 'out' and 'land' are perfectly clear everyday English words put together in the standard English way (e.g. fireplace, waterfall, etc).

This is a case of the WotL translation managing to both improve the feel -- 'outlander' is an archaism and so hits very well given the setting -- and the immediate sense ('outland' is an extremely simple English word made up of two common English words) whilst also removing some of the unfortunate subtext that clings to describing people as 'exotic-looking', which is something you find in Old-Timey Racist Victorian Novels.

 

[Sa'kage]

I know what "Outlander" means. I was unaware, but unsurprised to learn, that it's an archaic term. I hold to it not being a terms used with any frequency in modern English, and that it would have confused me, as a non-native speaker, twenty years ago.

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Speaking as a non-native speaker that's also dyslexic as well. I'd find exotic to be a lot harder word then outlander? When i was like 11 or so, and sometimes came across english word, something like outlander was generally speaking easy enough to parse in the meaning, even if i'd not understand the direct and spesific meaning of that word. It was generally understandable.

Something like exotic though? I'd have no way to even start understanding that. The word itself doesn't carry much in terms of directly understanding what it means, in the way outlander is

 

[Tirfarthuan]

I do know that it completely changes the characters of both Delita and, more importantly, Ovelia. In the PSX version she's actively going along with Delita, following his counsel because she trusts him that this will led to lasting peace and an end to injustice; PSX Ovelia has obviously a lot more agency in openly becoming Delita's co-conspirator than WotL has in blindly trusting Delita, in my opinion.

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This is a really great point of difference. I have noticed one thing though that I wanted clarification on - namely, can anyone verify whether this is a difference in the translation or a difference in the remaster?

That's, uh, probably unclear, so let me rephrase. WotL was released in Japan first, and featured added Delita Battles, the movies in place of spritework, and so on. There's genuinely more Delita Content TM in WotL, and I'm now wondering… was the Japanese script for WotL actually the same in all these scenes, or did they edit the script from the PSX version to 'remaster' their approach to Delita and Ovelia when they were adding these new scenes? Is Delita in fact canonically, intentionally different in WotL?

Genuine question, I'd love it if anyone could verify. I honestly don't know. These translation alterations have often been quite plausibly different translation choices of a unified Japanese script for both versions, but there have been genuine gameplay and story alterations for Delita at this point, and I'm wondering if it's just translation choices at this crucial juncture.

 

[Egleris]

...You don't read much in English do you?

Outlander is like... in a whole heck of a lot of fantasy and fantasy adjacent fiction.

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I see that "TWENTY YEARS AGO" was missed. As was my "I KNOW NOW", that is to say, I knew its meaning last year, too. And ten years ago as well, probably.

I'm not making a point about myself, I'm making a point about somebody who has freshly learned English, or has only a limited, scattershot knowledge of the language (such as my Mom, to make a not-so-random example of a person I know who plays Final Fantasy Games but wouldn't approach one with too complex English prose, or a number of other people I know), might find a word that is archaic and rarely used to be a barrier to playing a game, the way a word that sees more frequent use wouldn't be.

I know you do. My point is that it's not a particularly obscure or difficult to parse term in English even if you haven't encountered it specifically because it comes through the Germanic influence on Old English and, as a result, it works in the same way as a bunch of other English words; 'out' as a prefix to mean 'distant' is readily understood by analogy.

'Exotic", funnily enough, is the more exotic word, as it uses a Greek root, 'exo', that's a lot less common than 'out' in English, whereas both 'out' and 'land' are perfectly clear everyday English words put together in the standard English way (e.g. fireplace, waterfall, etc).

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Let me present you with outage, and outrage, and outing; are these words whose meaning is easily grasped by knowing the meaning of "out"? "Age" is also a perfectly clear everyday English word, so clearly "outage" is some reference to immortal people, who are "out(side) of age"... except, no, it's a word referring to electrical power shortage.

Or let's take "outhouse"; if you don't know the word, and find a sentence like "the house was built in an old stile, with a combined kitchen and leaving area, a single bedroom, and an outhouse", if one was using the reasoning you did, one might assume outhouse to be something like "out(side) the house", so perhaps a garden - but it actually means an external bathroom, as a result of referring to a time when people did not have in-house bathrooms and therefore relieved themselves outside. But that's a kind of etymology that you only learn after you already know what outhouse means; it's not intuitive.

Also, I spent the last seven years living in Germany, it's completely impossible to convince me that composite words somehow make a language easier to understand, or that it's simple to figure out what they mean. I'm only saying this so you know in advance that this conversation will likely go nowhere; I'm fine with continuing it if you want to, but I thought it proper to set accurate expectation of my point of view.

Ultimately, what I was saying is that, in a lot of places, the WotL version uses more archaic words (we did establish that Outlander is archaic, yes?), which CAN be confusing for a person with poor grasp of the language, instead of more common ones, and at times where there is no need. Perhaps I choose a bad example; if so, that's my fault, and I apologize to whomever was offended by it.

Nevertheless, I do believe that my point still stand, to with: perhaps the WotL writers should have considered accessibility as well, instead of going overboard with archaisms, and the fact they did not ought to be considered a demerit of their translation. That's all I was aiming at.

Something like exotic though? I'd have no way to even start understanding that.

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You make fair points.

All I can say is that, from my experience, Exotic is used far more often in everyday English speak than Outlander, which I've never seen outside of period pieces of fantasy novels, and that, coming from Italian, a word with greek roots like "Exotic" is much easier for me to understand; we have an Italian equivalent for it, even. Which isn't ever a guarantee, as the word "cold" could attest, but does often help.

And, of course, non-English women are referred to as "exotic" all the time in all sort of English-speaking media, so I'd known the meaning of it long before I started learning English, therefore it might be hard for me to realize that it's not as clear an example of a "common word" as I made it out to be.

Clearly, I was as guilty of the mistake I ascribed to the WotL writers (to not having considered the accessibility angle fully); I will try to do better, and will present as my only defense that the writers of the game were doing a job and, therefore, should have perhaps put more thought into it than I did in my own post, and certainly had more time to do so than I did.

 

[Ehorin]

I see that "TWENTY YEARS AGO" was missed. As was my "I KNOW NOW", that is to say, I knew its meaning last year, too. And ten years ago as well, probably.

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I hold to it not being a terms used with any frequency in modern English

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I suppose you don't hold to it not being a term used with any frequency in modern English anymore then?

Because like, it's so common that when Jagex, making a game for 14 year olds, wanted an exotic sounding way to say "foreigner" without having to explain what it meant to literal children they used "Outerlander".

outage, and outrage, and outing

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Outage isn't a word that get's used outside of a context where it's pretty clear, "the light's out", "yeah there's an outage". Outrage has a fairly broad set of meanings but can all be traced to a fairly comprehendible "it's outside the bounds of my rage" type sentiment(I supppose you could argue many of the meaning are instead about an externalization of rage). Outing is just simple, you've verbified "out", you're going out somewhere.

"the house was built in an old stile, with a combined kitchen and leaving area, a single bedroom, and an outhouse", if one was using the reasoning you did, one might assume outhouse to be something like "out(side) the house", so perhaps a garden

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No. It's a house outside the house, so like, if I was going to misunderstand that I'd be imagining like a doghouse. But notably, in that sentence construction, there's no mention of a bathroom despite mentioning everything else, so, because there's a list of known things, it's not hard to then go "the outhouse is the part unmentioned in the rest".

instead of more common ones

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Outlander is just common. And that you think it isn't common says a lot more about your own lack of experience with the language than about the decisions of the translators.

 

[foamy]

Or let's take "outhouse"; if you don't know the word, and find a sentence like "the house was built in an old stile, with a combined kitchen and leaving area, a single bedroom, and an outhouse", if one was using the reasoning you did, one might assume outhouse to be something like "out(side) the house", so perhaps a garden - but it actually means an external bathroom, as a result of referring to a time when people did not have in-house bathrooms and therefore relieved themselves outside. But that's a kind of etymology that you only learn after you already know what outhouse means; it's not intuitive.

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You might not know it's a poop shed, but you do immediately know it is a building of some description, detached or separated from the main one. Likewise we might not know where specifically an outlander's from, but you do immediately grasp it is 'not here'.

Consider 'outflung', 'outlying', 'outside', 'outweigh', 'outdistance', 'outboard', 'outbound', 'outlast', 'outvote', 'outplay', etc. Slapping 'out' in front of a noun to mean 'away' or 'beyond' (often with an implication of comparison to something else that is lesser, closer, or normal) is not unusual.

 

[cB557]

I think outlander carries less of a "foreigner" implication to me and more of a, like, "person who lives on the borderlands" one. Like someone who moved to Alaska, kind of a weird place but still in the same cultural sphere.

 

[Noxlux013]

I think outlander carries less of a "foreigner" implication to me and more of a, like, "person who lives on the borderlands" one. Like someone who moved to Alaska, kind of a weird place but still in the same cultural sphere.

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That's my own connotation of it as well, mostly because of the Dungeons & Dragons Outlander background that specifies one living far from Civilisation or technology.

 

[foamy]

I suppose you don't hold to it not being a term used with any frequency in modern English anymore then?

Because like, it's so common that when Jagex, making a game for 14 year olds, wanted an exotic sounding way to say "foreigner" without having to explain what it meant to literal children they used "Outerlander".

Outage isn't a word that get's used outside of a context where it's pretty clear, "the light's out", "yeah there's an outage". Outrage has a fairly broad set of meanings but can all be traced to a fairly comprehendible "it's outside the bounds of my rage" type sentiment(I supppose you could argue many of the meaning are instead about an externalization of rage). Outing is just simple, you've verbified "out", you're going out somewhere.

No. It's a house outside the house, so like, if I was going to misunderstand that I'd be imagining like a doghouse. But notably, in that sentence construction, there's no mention of a bathroom despite mentioning everything else, so, because there's a list of known things, it's not hard to then go "the outhouse is the part unmentioned in the rest".

Outlander is just common. And that you think it isn't common says a lot more about your own lack of experience with the language than about the decisions of the translators.

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I wouldn't go so far as to call it specifically common. It's understandable by virtue of all the other words that share that pattern, but its use is pretty much limited to works trying to evoke a feel of age. It's not a word you'd find in, say, a current government document or something the way you might've a millennia ago.

 

[Ehorin]

It's not a word you'd find in, say, a current government document

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...Current Government Documents are FILLED with words that aren't in usage anywhere outside the government, and even the words you might find in a current government document and elsewhere often have entirely distinct meanings in government documents that they don't have anywhere else.

It is, however, a word you will find regularly in fiction. Indeed, in exactly the sort of thing that WotL IS. It's not a word with strange or foreign meaning. It's not a word that's hard to find somewhere else.

but its use is pretty much limited to works trying to evoke a feel of age

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Hi, there, 90% of English Fantasy Literature.

 

[Imrix]

Twenty years ago, if I stumbled on a word like Outlander, especially in a fantasy story where I couldn't rely on context as much to divine its meaning, I might have been genuinely stumped by it. And the thing is, there's no reason to use a made-up archaism like Outlander instead of a simpler, clear term like exotic here

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Assuming for a moment that I agree that outlander is such a confusing word (I don't, it's an eminently sensible word; 'someone who is from outer lands' is an easy idea to follow), no, I disagree, there absolutely is a purpose.

When I was a kid I used to read warhammer novels, like the old Malus Darkblade series. At one point the titular character finds himself in royal favour, and able to equip himself as a high noble, including fancy armour which is described as 'lacquered'. I was a kid, I had no idea what 'lacquered' meant and it was a long time before I thought to look up that it refers to a finish of painted resin for wood or metal, but it didn't cause any problems at the time - the context of its use was enough to communicate to my young, credulous mind that it meant Something Fancy about this special rich man armour, and that was all I needed to know to follow the novel. More, it was all I needed to enjoy some new and exotic language, because it was new and exotic.

Purple prose is not inherently a bad thing! You can take it too far, sure, but evocative description is an aid to engaging writing - as, I think, this thread has demonstrated of late. @Omicron nailed it when he looked at one of your comparisons of the WotL and PSX translations and pronounced the latter 'utterly sauceless', a judgement I can only agree with.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Yeah let's argue about words a little.

- Also, for fun, if Ramza tells Marach that he hasn't read the Germonique Scriptures, WtoL Marach says "a blythe response", but PSX Malak says "blessed ignorance". I like the latter better, just in terms of being fun dialogue. So, I'd definitely give this exchange to the PSX version.

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This one actually bugs me the most, in that the correct modern spelling is "blithe", so that using a "y" in there because vowel assignments were more chaotic in the past, so it's the most twee "ye olde tyme" kind of spelling we've seen so far.

Anyway "blithe" basically means "ignorant because of carelessness," so a "blithe response" is an answer that doesn't really answer the question, becuase the person speaking didn't even try to listen to what the question is asking. "Blessed Ignorance" is more like "you are lucky that you haven't been forced to learn the difference", so Marach's answer is insulting in WtoL in a way the original PSX version wasn't.

On the field of subtle differences, Delita's follow up PSX line of "always being used by someone" rather than the WotL "dancing for puppet-masters unseen", in addition to being less poetic and more straightforwards,

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One thing I'll point out here is that English has gotten more strict about word order over the last 200 years. Putting the adjective "unseen" behind the noun "puppet-masters" sounds old-fashioned because it's formally incorrect; adjectives should always go in front of the noun, so to modern rules it would be "unseen puppet-masters." It's also more conspiratorial, by posing that there are specific guys doing the Puppet Mastering instead of arguing with a hypothetical representative of society writ large.

So, the line that the WotL translation rendered as "this wretched word does not reward endeavor" was, in the PSX version, "try hard and you'll be rewarded, they lie". Yes, that's a much more prosaic, modern sentence, but that's the point, because it's not just prosaic; it's an everyday sentence.

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The second sentence is also significantly more complicated in structure though. It uses irony to reverse the meaning by adding a dependent clause; "try hard and you'll be rewarded" is expressed, and then "they lie" is appended to retroactively create a speaker who isn't telling the truth, reversing the meaning. Meanwhile "this wretched world does not reward endeavor" is very straightforward, and to my ear sounds more forceful because it's not arguing with a cliche, it's just a direct statement about how the world is. And the use of "wretched" is charged with Class Criticism too, "Wretch" means someone miserable because of their poverty, or someone who betrays a trust and steals because of their 'low character'.

This is one where I think that, as a native speaker with good vocabulary and historical knowledge, I can pick up the allusions from the word choices. Remember this?

You wretches detestable on land and sea: you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live.

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"Wretch" has some extremely dense meaning when we're talking about a video game based on the War of the Roses. "Never use a 20-dollar word where a 5-dollar word will do," as Mark Twain said, but "Wretch" is earning its $20 of wages there.

WotL Delita says "I will exact from the gluttons the cost of their meals" (in reverse order, because faux-medieval), which is a more general sentiment of "eat the rich" - almost word for word - which reads as revolutionary.

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The sentiments are different though. The first one is literally "I will make them pay," it's a promise of revenge.

Meanwhile, the PSX version has him be more specifically, and say that those who must pay are "those who used me"; that's not a revolutionary statement anymore, that's just pure desire for vengeance.

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This is just putting the vengence in later, whereas the WotL put it in from the first sentence.

FFT PSX and FFT WotL are two different stories, because one of the two central cores of the narrative, the relationship between Ovelia and Delita, has been completely rewritten. Was it just to make Delita's character more ambiguous?

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Honestly, as someone who played the original PSX translation and is only now seeing the WotL translation, Delita's and Olevia's characters seem pretty much the same? Like Delita is basically doing the same thing, making a big rant about how he's gonna stop being somebody that just gets pushed around and starts doing the pushing, and then trying to recruit Olevia into cooperating with him instead of the other schemers. In both cases, it's a very transactional "everybody is trying to use you, yeah, but you should go along with my offer because I won't kill you out of convenience".

But perhaps I'm just reading too much into it? What do people think?

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Honestly, I feel like the biggest difference is that WotL!Olevia doesn't commit here, so they added the waterfall scene later for her to agree, wheras in the PSX version she agrees right away? It arrives at the same conclusion, but WotL just paced it slower I guess.

- More interesting is the following exchange. In WotL, as @Omicron remarked, Orran answer's Ramza's pointed question "so Goltana would stop fighting if Larg did?" with a realpolitik "no, that's not how things would go"; PSX Orran, meanwhile, absolutely deflects the question by saying "but that would never happen", refusing to engage Ramza's hypothetical.

This obviously makes Orran look less honest, but at the same time, it does seem to offer Ramza a path forward, if he could somehow make Larg stop fighting. It's an interesting change in characterization - WotL Orran gives Ramza harsh truth, PSX Orran gives him hope - that informs the following exchange. It's the same in both versions, with Ramza asking Orran to deliver the message to Orlandu that somebody is manipulating things behind the scenes, but in the PSX version, this is in answer to Orran giving Ramza hope that war can be stopped if one side deposes their weapons and focuses on the real enemies; in the WotL version, it seems like it's Orran honesty that makes Ramza trust him as messenger. Same outcome, but changes the motivation behind the action, and therefore the characterization of Ramza himself.

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Honestly, my take on that exchange when I was playing the PSX version was that Orran had to deflect because they both knew the answer was "no." Ramza asks "oh yeah? You really think so?" And WotL!Orran replies "...no" and PSX!Orran says "I have no good answer for that." Not really the same answer, but heading in the same direction.

After the slap, Rapha's line is slightly different and, I think, stronger for it in the PSX version: she says "You know what he did to me! I KNOW you know!", with the all-caps in the dialogue - I think the first time they show up in the whole script - which feels so much more raw than her talking around it with the "you know of the... the thing he did to me", or having her sentence interrupted; in the WotL version, with Rapha's line direct, Malak is the one who tries to talk around the issue with a "Don't you say anything more, or I...", and getting interrupted. It just feels punchier if Rapha is the one who is direct and Malak the one who has trouble articulating his excuses, you know? At least to me.

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I wonder how much of this was the translator struggling with the fact that English is SVO and Japanese is SOV, so incomplete sentences, where the person trails off leaving what they're saying incomplete, has to leave different parts incomplete between the two languages. "Talking around it" is the most literal way to translate an incomplete sentence from Japanese to English, by just leaving the verb out of the middle. It's basically impossible to translate two people talking over each other in an argument, between the two languages, without doing a lot of rearranging.

Inside Riovanes Castle, upon meeting Wiegraf, we have another example of the purple prose reducing the impact of certain portions of dialogue, in my opinion. Whereas in WotL, upon Ramza chastising him for selling his body to the Lucavi for revenge, Wiegraf answers with "I do not fight to avenge Milleuda's death", the PSX version has him saying, straight out, "I don't give a damn about Miluda's murder". Same meaning, much more direct phrasing, and in this case, much more stunning in the delivery, I feel.

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These are different though? "That's not why I'm doing this" and "I don't care about that" are different sentiments.

"I don't give a damn" is also an American phrase as far as I know, so it feels like a weird anachronism here.

- In the conversation that opens the chapter, is worth mentioning that WotL Marach has apparently also been having problems with object permanence, as he says "Three men from the Templarate arrived shortly after you", which is obviously nonsense, since it was only two who came, Isilud having already been in the castle. Meanwhile, the PSX version actually makes sense, as there Malak says "only three Shrine Knight were here", which is correct - Isilud was there, but not freshly arrived. Just wanted to point this out, because the only reason this mistake is here is due to the WotL translation wanting to use "arrived" instead of "were" - the classic sign of purple prose, using the wrong world to make the sentence more flowery and, in the process, sprouting nonsense. Again, minor but worth pointing out, because it makes the WotL translation of this scene clearly inferior, since it's communicating false information by accident.

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Three things:
1) Are we sure about the sequencing here? Like is "they arrived before you" per the PSX version actually a more accurate translation than "you arrived, then they arrived right after you" that WotL is going with? Like this isn't a real difference in vocabulary, it's a change in the order of events, when exactly these three guys showed up.

2) Purple Prose is not using the wrong words, it's spending time describing something that's a distraction from what the author should be talking about. (The purple curtains next to the painting the poet is supposed to be describing, in the analogy that Horace was making, which the phrase "purple prose" is alluding to.)

3) The cliche phrase is "spouting nonsense," in the sense of water getting poured out a jar, not "sprouting nonsense" in the sense of a plant growing.

Also, just in case I haven't mentioned it before: in the PSX version, the Knight Delita leads are "the Black Sheep Knights"; "Blackram" has the same meaning, in that rams are sheep, but, considering how we had that scene of Delita declaring himself a tragic villain, the fact that the game isn't subtle about driving it home by having him being a "black sheep", while the WotL obscures it by naming them "Blackram", seems emblematic of the whole difference between the two translations - one is plain and very direct, the other is artistically convoluted.

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The difference is one of gender; sheep refers to the whole species whereas "ram" refers only to males (ewes for females). Leaving aside what the game is trying to say about Gender Politics, the English language has been progressively abandoning grammatical gender (as well as case), so "Black Ram" sounds more old-fashioned than "Black Sheep" because it's bothering to include a gender.

As far me, "Black Sheep" sounds kind of lame because it's too direct, especially since it doesn't really engage with "the sheep and the lions lying down together" of the parable that's *right there* if you want to talk about the Church putting an end to the war, only the idiom of "the black sheep", so it's just kind of lazy writing. Better not to use it too directly when it's not really being leveraged anyway.

 

[Pidl]

1) Are we sure about the sequencing here? Like is "they arrived before you" per the PSX version actually a more accurate translation than "you arrived, then they arrived right after you" that WotL is going with? Like this isn't a real difference in vocabulary, it's a change in the order of events, when exactly these three guys showed up.

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I think the bigger issue is that saying Izlude 'arrived' is a weird way to phrase 'we took him prisoner'. It would make sense as a euphemism, but that's not what Malak is doing there.

 

[Omegahugger]

When I was a kid I used to read warhammer novels, like the old Malus Darkblade series. At one point the titular character finds himself in royal favour, and able to equip himself as a high noble, including fancy armour which is described as 'lacquered'. I was a kid, I had no idea what 'lacquered' meant and it was a long time before I thought to look up that it refers to a finish of painted resin for wood or metal, but it didn't cause any problems at the time - the context of its use was enough to communicate to my young, credulous mind that it meant Something Fancy about this special rich man armour, and that was all I needed to know to follow the novel. More, it was all I needed to enjoy some new and exotic language, because it was new and exotic.

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Warhammer Army Books* were some of the first English texts I as a young Dane (tried) reading. I most certainly didn't know the meaning of most of the words, but I got the general thrust of the thing.

*The 5th Edition Lizardmen had a giant maneating StyraTriceratops on the cover, my 9-year old self never stood a chance

 

[Shadell]

Outlander vs "exotic" is wild in that the latter carries a strongly iffy undertone, which is great if the goal is to imply that a chunk of the cast is probably naively racist, but probably iffy otherwise.

Outlander, by contrast, maintains the tone of the translation while avoiding the obvious side-eye.

I know you do. My point is that it's not a particularly obscure or difficult to parse term in English even if you haven't encountered it specifically because it comes through the Germanic influence on Old English and, as a result, it works in the same way as a bunch of other English words; 'out' as a prefix to mean 'distant' is readily understood by analogy. If you aren't a native speaker -- and particularly, I suspect, if you're from outside the Germanic family of language -- those connections might not be as apparent.

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I'd note, this is actually an incredibly common construction for foreigner across the globe in ways that extend well beyond germanic languages.

In Japanese, "gaikokujin" is literally "outside country person." I believe Chinese uses the exact arrangement of characters to write foreigner, though there it would be read "Wàiguó rén." Not only is that a billion extra non-germanic people for whom "Outlander" is, perhaps, the most intuitive way to describe a foreigner. I've been told that the same pattern holds in Polish where the etymology of foreign is just "other land." At least as far as Wikipedia believes, the Italian straniero comes from Latin extraneus which, combines extra (outside) with aneous (pertaining to), leaving it at "of the outside."

It is, while not *universal,* probably the most intuitive way to describe a foreigner in general and also quite probably a far more literal translation of the original Japanese.

 

[Guile]

I don't really have a horse in this etymological race, but I've never once heard the word 'outlander' in anything but a d&d game, and I grew up reading fantasy novels.

 

[daniel_gudman]

I think the bigger issue is that saying Izlude 'arrived' is a weird way to phrase 'we took him prisoner'. It would make sense as a euphemism, but that's not what Malak is doing there.

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I think it was what he was trying to do there though?

"We took Isilude hostage, but we're not saying that out of a polite fiction as part of tense negotiations where my boss is trying to convince the other two guys, Isilude's dad Folmarv and some guy he brought along named Wiegraf, to support my boss's scheme to seize the throne" is not only much longer, but way more information than he probably wants to share in the first place, so the shorter and more neutral "yeah they just kinda showed up" is going to be the thrust of the statement.

It is, while not *universal,* probably the single most intuitive way to describe a foreigner in general.

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"Foreigner" as an English word has the convoluted "Latin=>French=>English" etymology typical of Fancy Words, and is ultimately derived I believe from the Latin word for "door", so it means something like "person from the far side of the door", which is basically a more complicated way of expressing the exact same sentiment as "out-lander" LOL.

I don't really have a horse in this etymological race, but I've never once heard the word 'outlander' in anything but a d&d game, and I grew up reading fantasy novels.

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It's unusual as a word because as a direct piece of vocabulary it's archaic, but it's such an obvious construction it keeps getting remade, eg for the titles of: the time-travel romance novel series "Outlander", the colony-building video game "Outlanders", and even the manga "Autorandazu."

 

[Egleris]

I think it was what he was trying to do there though?

"We took Isilude hostage, but we're not saying that out of a polite fiction as part of tense negotiations where my boss is trying to convince the other two guys, Isilude's dad Folmarv and some guy he brought along named Wiegraf, to support my boss's scheme to seize the throne" is not only much longer, but way more information than he probably wants to share in the first place, so the shorter and more neutral "yeah they just kinda showed up" is going to be the thrust of the statement.

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You appear to be confused about which scene I was talking about here.

Marach was talking with Ramza after Isilud and Barrington both were already dead, and they'd seen the corpses; the scene is taking place at the beginning of chapter four.

It makes no sense to tell Ramza "three templars arrived before you" when BOTH Ramza and Marach know that Marach had taken Isilud prisoner, and if anything muddles the water because it makes it seem like there is a third templar that showed up with Folmarv and Wiegraf who is unaccounted for, which is, in fact, not the case.

The PSX translation says "there were three Templars in the castle", implicitly "aside from your sister and Barrington's men", which allows you to count Isilud as one of the three because he was in the castle, but not "just arrived", he was there from long before. The WotL translation is mucking it all up for no reason at all; why would they use "arrived" to describe a group that included a long time prisoner? It makes no sense.