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

[Omicron]

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.

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The answer, as always, turns out to be Berserk.



These are the Black Ram Iron Lance Knights, a minor antagonist group defeated early on in the Golden Age arc of Berserk. I don't speak Japanese, but their Japanese name (黒羊鉄槍重装騎兵団) includes the 羊 character, which means "sheep" (it could also specifically mean "ram" as well, I can't know; I just know that "sheep" is at least one possible meaning). So, Kentaro Miura introduced a "Black Sheep/Ram" order of minor knights, and the English translators of Berserk probably went with "Black Ram" because calling an order of Knights "Black Sheep Knights" just sounds kinda lame. The original FFT translators probably weren't aware of the inspiration or didn't care to model their translation after the EN translation of Berserk, and later the WotL translators did get the reference and decided to replicate it, or alternatively just independently came to the conclusion that "Black Sheep Knights" sounded kinda weak.

Like the problem, as I see it, is that while "black sheep" does sound kinda cool, "sheep" doesn't, and it's not clear where the emphasis will land. "Black sheep" knights as in "outcast knights, outsider knights, the cool loners" might land; "black sheep" knights as in "the knights that nobody likes" kinda doesn't, and black "sheep knights" as in meek, easily fooled, led to their doom, absolutely doesn't.

Which, considering that "sheep" has a place in the Chinese Zodiac that's widely used in Japan, probably doesn't have the same weak connotations in Japanese?

This is a lot of reading tea leaves, but the point is: It's a Berserk reference. It was all along. It always is.

 

[Imrix]

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.

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Violently reminded of that poem about the racist connotations of 'exotic', which ended in describing what the spices in the quintessential 'exotic foreign bazaar' actually were, and declaring, 'the most exotic thing there was you'. And now I can't find it :<

 

[foamy]

The answer, as always, turns out to be Berserk.



These are the Black Ram Iron Lance Knights, a minor antagonist group defeated early on in the Golden Age arc of Berserk. I don't speak Japanese, but their Japanese name (黒羊鉄槍重装騎兵団) includes the 羊 character, which means "sheep" (it could also specifically mean "ram" as well, I can't know; I just know that "sheep" is at least one possible meaning). So, Kentaro Miura introduced a "Black Sheep/Ram" order of minor knights, and the English translators of Berserk probably went with "Black Ram" because calling an order of Knights "Black Sheep Knights" just sounds kinda lame. The original FFT translators probably weren't aware of the inspiration or didn't care to model their translation after the EN translation of Berserk, and later the WotL translators did get the reference and decided to replicate it, or alternatively just independently came to the conclusion that "Black Sheep Knights" sounded kinda weak.

Like the problem, as I see it, is that while "black sheep" does sound kinda cool, "sheep" doesn't, and it's not clear where the emphasis will land. "Black sheep" knights as in "outcast knights, outsider knights, the cool loners" might land; "black sheep" knights as in "the knights that nobody likes" kinda doesn't, and black "sheep knights" as in meek, easily fooled, led to their doom, absolutely doesn't.

Which, considering that "sheep" has a place in the Chinese Zodiac that's widely used in China, probably doesn't have the same weak connotations in Japanese?

This is a lot of reading tea leaves, but the point is: It's a Berserk reference. It was all along. It always is.

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There's that, to be sure. But, also, 'ram' carries a lot of connotations because it's referring specifically to a virile male sheep; strong, stubborn, aggressive, etc. See for example the Dodge Ram truck, which would never in a million years be called the Dodge Sheep, Lamb, or Ewe. It's also cross-tied with the sense of 'ram' as in 'intentionally collide' -- it is not a coincidence that it's the same word, because ramming into each other is what rams do when they fight each other.

It's just a stronger and more evocative choice for a knightly order.

 

[Omicron]

There's that, to be sure. But, also, 'ram' carries a lot of connotations because it's masculine; strong, stubborn, aggressive, etc. See for example the Dodge Ram truck, which would never in a million years be called the Dodge Sheep, Lamb, or Ewe. It's also cross-tied with the sense of 'ram' as in 'intentionally collide' -- it is not a coincidence that it's the same word, because ramming into each other is what rams do when they fight each other.

It's just a stronger and more evocative choice for a knightly order.

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A hypothetical order of "Knights of the Lamb" I think would get a pass because of the specific Christian connotations of the "lamb"; I would expect those fuckers do be the Thinly Veiled Catholic Church Analogue's strongest elites.

 

[Kuja]

real oldheads have one connection with the word 'outlander' that's been living rent free in horror cinephile history for 40 years now

​

(The Children of the Corn is a great movie that's definitely good for all the right reasons and isn't hilariously terrible in any way go watch it.)

 

[foamy]

A hypothetical order of "Knights of the Lamb" I think would get a pass because of the specific Christian connotations of the "lamb"; I would expect those fuckers do be the Thinly Veiled Catholic Church Analogue's strongest elites.

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That's absolutely true, but on the other hand, "Lamb Knights" wouldn't land as well, I think? Knights of the Lamb comes through as fighting for Christ, with some extremely strong implications of chivalry tied in, but "Lamb Knights" strikes me as just a lot weaker. You need that specificity.

 

[Omicron]

I know this forum's demographics skew away from the target audience of this show, but:



That thing has been running for ten years straight and despite never watching an episode, I have still seen enough ads to gather a basic idea of the premise (WW2 nurse is isekai'd into 18th century Scotland).

 

[wetodet]

That's absolutely true, but on the other hand, "Lamb Knights" wouldn't land as well, I think? Knights of the Lamb comes through as fighting for Christ, with some extremely strong implications of chivalry tied in, but "Lamb Knights" strikes me as just a lot weaker. You need that specificity.

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I dunno, with some of the PSX translation's choices in how to name abilities I feel like a squad of knights running around spamming their deadly supermove, the Lamb Chop, would fit in perfectly.

 

[Kuja]

I know this forum's demographics skew away from the target audience of this show, but:

That thing has been running for ten years straight and despite never watching an episode, I have still seen enough ads to gather a basic idea of the premise (WW2 nurse is isekai'd into 18th century Scotland).

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fun fact, it originally started as Doctor Who fanfiction

 

[Amidatelion]

Honestly my main exposure to the term "outlander" was being cussed out by xenophobes in Morrowind. It occupies the same vocabulary space as "N'wah" and "S'wit" to me.

 

[Raj]

Final Fantasy Tactics doesn't have any other translation than the Japanese and English ones, as far as I know; is it fair to limit the ability of people with lesser command of the English language to enjoy the game? To reduce accessibility, especially when it's not actually required, like in this case? I think that's something people should think about before they keep saying that the WotL overabundance of purple prose is not a problem.

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This is easily one of the more interesting points you made to me.

Disclaimer, I personally prefer WotL, and most of the examples you use generally have me thinking that I prefer the more flowery speech that makes me think and does leave more mysteries.

That being said it's very much a fair point that people with a weaker grasp of English are going to struggle substantively more with the WotL version, but I do think that with the people being directly targeted it is likely to be better in general, and for entertainment I generally lean towards specializing more being better, rather than making a subject more general in hopes of more fans.

And that's it for the translation differences; if this was helpful to anybody, let me know!

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As always it very much is useful, Delita's differences being by far the most interesting, and there's definitely been a few scenes now where I've thought the PSX version was better.

For example the PSX having the two meet in a neutral location of an actively filled Church gives a much more tense vibe, then the more dramatic WotL version, which I like more, even if in general I still favor WotL more.

Straightforward series of events, filling in all plotholes and removing the need for both Ramza and Folmarv to act like idiots, the first by handing over the stones to Alma and the latter by failing to retrieve the Zodiak Stone he himself had given to his son. Why didn't the writers set things up this way then? I have no idea, but that's what we're left with - a series of confusing events that could have been easily solved with a bit more attention to the details of the Sally-Anne problem they were dealing with regarding to the location of the various Zodiak Stones.

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Also fully agree on your correction of these plot holes.

 

[Broccoliccoli]

I know this forum's demographics skew away from the target audience of this show, but:



That thing has been running for ten years straight and despite never watching an episode, I have still seen enough ads to gather a basic idea of the premise (WW2 nurse is isekai'd into 18th century Scotland).

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My mom loves that series! Apparently both the WW2 cast and the Scots (and the cross-time babies) isekai all over the place. There's like a pirate arc and stuff.

 

[Guile]

Actually, when presented with the word 'Outlander', my brain shrieks "Out-lan-da!", male voice pitched high, with as much stank applied as humanly possible, and a bit of an English accent.

And I have no idea why. I must have absorbed that in some movie somewhere, but damned if I know where. It comes directly from the hindbrain to my mouth.

A hypothetical order of "Knights of the Lamb" I think would get a pass because of the specific Christian connotations of the "lamb"; I would expect those fuckers do be the Thinly Veiled Catholic Church Analogue's strongest elites.

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I tend to think knight orders should either be as over performatively badass as possible ("We are the Shitkickers in Christ's Service") or as unbelievably mild as possible (We call ourselves the Knights of the Lamb").

Middle ground is for cowards.

 

[silentorphan]

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.

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In the original Japanese script, the line Marach gave was "The templars who called upon this castle numbered three."

So what is a synonym for "call upon", if a translator doesn't want to use such a tortured sentence structure and wants something that flows better and more naturally?

Edit: The specific verb he uses is 訪れた, which can be variously translated as "visited", "called upon," "appeared," or "arrived."

 

[AliasiSudonomo]

Certainly, this debate is an interesting one showing the merits of various translation attempts.

I still hold the PSX translation to be inferior overall, there's way too much "all according to keikaku *(keikaku means plan)" in it for my taste; it's a translation, not a localization, and leans on blind idiot translations to boot. (Brief aside if someone isn't familiar with that term: it refers to overly literal translations such as translating the saying 'out of sight, out of mind' to 'blind idiot'.)

But one can allow there's places the War of the Lions localization team decided to get too cute for the room, or missed a cunning reference like in the chapter title. Overall, though, the subthread about Delita... I think it's showing Delita convincingly as someone who both has genuinely fallen in love with Ovelia but also can't help playing the chessmaster with people and thinking three moves ahead. Dude was training to be Ramza's intelligence officer, don't forget.

These are not mutually contradictory concepts, much like I don't get folks who do not understand why Ramza does not share the secret of the stones that give you a bunch of power(by turning you into a demon) to the guy who has demonstrated he will do all kinds of shady shit for power.

People are complicated. Delita doesn't appear to be a sociopath, he has empathy and feelings and cares about people. But he has made a hard turn into "never again!" and "I'll beat the nobles at their own game!" and is willing to use anyone to bring about his goals. This is probably going to bite him on the ass at some point when some genuine show of emotion on his part is assumed to be base manipulation, but until then he's moving up in the world and doing pretty good for a common boy.

 

[Egleris]

In the original Japanese script, the line Marach gave was "The templars who called upon this castle numbered three."

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That just means that Marach's lack of object permanence was a mistake of the original Japanese, not that the PSX translation changing it to make more sense is wrong. "Three templars arrived" is not what happened, "three templars were here" is - that's really not up for debate.

 

[DanZapman]

That just means that Marach's lack of object permanence was a mistake of the original Japanese, not that the PSX translation changing it to make more sense is wrong. "Three templars arrived" is not what happened, "three templars were here" is - that's really not up for debate.

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Had the three templars been at the described location since the dawn of existence or did they at some point arrive there

 

[Egleris]

Had the three templars been at the described location since the dawn of existence or did they at some point arrive there

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One of the three had been there for however long Omicron spent roaming around between the Orbonne fight and the Riovanes fight, minus one week of necessary travel. The other two arrived just a few minutes before Ramza. These two things are not equivalent and cannot be described collectively as "these three people arrived not long before you". At least, not if you're being honest, which Marach would have no reason not to be here.

 

[ZerbanDaGreat]

Except.

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DRAGOON'S IGNORE ELEVATION VINDICATED AT LAST.

Hadrian with IE on just completely ignores all elevation. He literally walks up to the sheer wall of the bell tower, jumps, and lands in melee with the Confessor on turn 1, hitting him for 220 damage. That's nearly a wrap right there, before Zalmour has even taken his first turn. Whe does, it's with some dialogue.

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Imagining Hadrian walking to the base of the wall and then just cartoon extendo-leg BIG STEPPY up to the top with a zoo-wip noise. Or like an RTS unit on a custom map that went ham on the terrain-warping tools but didn't update the walkable terrain so they can just Ascend an 89-degree incline.

Incredibly, he doesn't teleport away.

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Yeah it says something that Delita went "HE'S SEEN MY FACE HE MUST DIE" and I was like "oh cool i guess he's not allowed to teleport away then"

Okay so like. Setting aside the obvious ominous implications regarding Delita having anticipated and accounted for Ramza's behavior and planning to use it somehow.

This is crazy, right?

Let me sum up the past two exchanges with Delita:

Ramza: "What's your plan, Delita?"
Delita: "I am planning to kill Dukes Larg and Goltanna, both your brothers, and Cidolfus Orlandeau in the chaos of the fighting, on behalf of the conspiracy I'm using to my own advantage. What's your plan, Ramza?"
Ramza: "I am planning to convince Cidolfus Orlandeau to step down from the fighting by using the Scriptures of Germonique to unravel the conspiracy that you're using to achieve your own goals and exposing the Church's lies to everyone."
Delita: "Sounds good."
Ramza: "Sounds good."

Then they shake hands and part amicably.

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This is what people mean when they say "oh we don't let politics get in the way of our friendship, we're both adults here". Who's to say whether allying with Cid or murdering him like a dog is what's best for the country? There's good points on both sides really.

 

[WestOrEast]

Throwing in my two cents, I've always seen Outland(er) as meaning 'area only light(at best) under control by the speaker's group but still close to it'. First exposure was probably a line from Half Life 2, actually.

 

[Thozmp]

The Children of the Corn

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It was either this or the South Park parody episode that was my first memorable encounter with "Outlander."

Outlander is such an odd phrase, as it does mean foreign, but like with Children of the Corn, how foreign is up for debate. Beyond our cult/city lines, the next state over, other side of the country, another country entirely. The Beverly Hillbillies are outlanders in California even though it was a move to a different part of the country.

Not sure how to convey my thought on the word "exotic."

 

[Cerillian]

Amusingly, I was able to find the text of the very first fantasy novel I ever read as a child in the late 80's. A few years back I did way too much work to figure it out, but it was Blue Sword, by Robin Mckinley, published in 1982.

It does use outlander.

 

[Gazetteer]

I know this forum's demographics skew away from the target audience of this show, but:



That thing has been running for ten years straight and despite never watching an episode, I have still seen enough ads to gather a basic idea of the premise (WW2 nurse is isekai'd into 18th century Scotland).

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I felt like I was going a little crazy reading this entire conversation and having no one mention this, it's like, my parents watched that show, we have all the DVDs at the public library I work at, it's very popular. It is based off of a thirty three year old novel series which consists of nine books, a spinoff series, multiple short stories and companion books, and a graphic novel adaptation in addition to said TV series.

 

[ArlequineLunaire]

I felt like I was going a little crazy reading this entire conversation and having no one mention this, it's like, my parents watched that show, we have all the DVDs at the public library I work at, it's very popular. It is based off of a thirty three year old novel series which consists of nine books, a spinoff series, multiple short stories and companion books, and a graphic novel adaptation in addition to said TV series.

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Given how atomised culture on the internet can be, it doesn't surprise me that Outlander could be a massive hit yet still make nearly no impact on SV, not really being in the forum's wheelhouse

 

[Gazetteer]

Given how atomised culture on the internet can be, it doesn't surprise me that Outlander could be a massive hit yet still make nearly no impact on SV, not really being in the forum's wheelhouse

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In the same sense that a friend I knew through SV who started working for a public library in the UK came back from his first shift and immediately asked me "who the fuck is James Patterson", yes.

I am not like, surprised by people on SV being unaware of popular mainstream fiction outside of their genres of preference, nor do I need this being the case explained to me, but it is occasionally very funny.