Lost In Translation / Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy V

• Final Fantasy V based its villain's name on a pun where the generic scary Faux Symbolism villain name "Exodus" sounds the same as "ex-death", hinting at his origin as a congregation of evil spirits that have returned to ruin the world of the living. In English, you kind of have to go with one meaning or the other, leading to him being named "Exdeath", a name which Western fans still laugh at when talking about how V was a weak entry.
• Krile's strange name is a joke that's only comprehensible in Japanese kana, where it would be spelled Kururu Mururu Barudezion, a name that rhymes and is obviously goofy. Japanese players, knowing the game is a European-style fantasy setting, would have attempted to pronounce it as if it was an English word, leading to something close to 'Kryrh Mryrh'. Since this would be unpronounceable to actual English speakers, her name was localised as Krile Meyer Baldesion, which doesn't have the same ring of absurdity. This in turn creates a Dub-Induced Plot Hole in Final Fantasy XIV, in which a Lalafell mage is named Krile - a gag playing off the fact that "Kururu Mururu" would be a valid name under Lalafellin name structure, but which in the English becomes nonsensical. Though it does happens to be justified in that Krile is an adopted child of non-Lalafellin parents.

Final Fantasy VI

• The Signature Move of the Cactuar enemy, which always does 1000 damage, was translated as "Blow Fish" in the SNES version of the game, because it wasn't clear at first that the name was a reference to the Japanese rhyme kids say along with a Pinky Swear. Idiomatically, that reference is used as a general term for a blowfish, so presumably Ted Woolsey thought that it was referring to the slang term for the animal rather than the childhood rhyme it referenced. Later games (and later releases of Final Fantasy VI) caught on and used "1000 Needles" for the attack instead.
• The "Imp Equipment" set (Impartisan, Tortoise Shield, Saucer, and Reed Cloak), a set of very rare items that boost up your stats a lot if you're under the Imp status. What the heck do any of those terms (bar Impartisan) have to do with The Imp? They sound a lot more like they'd be associated with some kind of water creature. In the Japanese version, it was the Kappa status, a Japanese water creature that is indeed commonly associated with spears, tortoise shells, water plants, and saucers.
• Wrexsoul was originally "Alexsoul" in Japanese, which ruins the parallel of Wrexsoul as the corrupted soul of Alexander.
• When Locke first meets Celes in the Japanese version, she speaks in a very formal style befitting her status as a general. As she travels with the party, her speech style gradually softens and she begins to use the feminine sentence-ending particles wa and no. This is somewhat conveyed in the official translations, with Woolsey's in particular having her use more casual phrasing once she puts on the opera costume (e.g. "On with the show!" and "Have a little faith!"), but the "feminized" aspect is lost (with good reason, as it would be very difficult to convey in English with resorting to crude stereotypes).

Final Fantasy VII, Compilation, and Remake

Many legitimate complaints can be made about the English translation of Final Fantasy VII. While some of the changes were understandable given the difference between English and Japanese, some were Woolseyisms that significantly altered the plot or led to sources of confusion. The Remake fixed many of these, but the version with the mistranslations was still the only way to play it for the longest time.

Final Fantasy VII

• Cloud's first line in English is "I don't care what your names are. Once this job's over, I'm out of here." The Japanese version of the line is 「あんたたちの名前なんて興味ないね。どうせこの仕事が終わったらお別れだ。」^note anta tachi no namae nante kyoumi nai ne. douse kono shigoto ga owattara owakare da. The latter is more youthful and playful, and he suddenly switches to a more formal, pretentious choice of wording at the end (「お別れ」owakare), which - just like in English - is something that you would do if you were trying to be funny. The result is that in English he comes off as a straightforward jerkass who only cares about his pay. In Japanese on the other hand, he comes off as a mouthy, condescending poser who thinks that it's appropriate to talk to his coworkers like they're idiots. A loose translation with the same feeling might be, "You know I'm not interested in your names, right? Like, once this job's over, I'll be bidding you adieu."
  • In Mobius Final Fantasy, this line was retranslated as "Not interested in your names. Once this is done, I'm gone." This is, if anything, even further from the tone of the original. And while the remake also does this, what with Cloud stating "This is a one-time gig. When it's done, we're done", the voice actor plays it with a degree of warmth that indicates he isn't being harsh.
• The original script gave Cloud a habit of speaking with clichéd idioms, with the idea being that he's someone whose words weren't his own — a habit strongly associated with the character by Japanese fans, and Lampshaded in Dissidia Final Fantasy. In the English version it's Woolseyfied into him making a lot of understatements and undercutting his own words, which isn't as memorable and hasn't carried over to any of his future appearances.
• Cloud's catchphrase, 「興味ないね」( kyoumi nai ne), was inconsistently translated as "not interested", "don't really care", "don't care", "not my thing" etc. The result ended up diluting the idea that Cloud even had a catchphrase in English. His later appearances all strictly translated this line as "not interested", which accurately reflected the translation and made it a proper catchphrase in English. However, many English-speaking fans assumed this was a retroactive attempt to flanderize his disaffected attitude. It wasn't; it had been part of his character from the very beginning, only becoming an issue because it was so inconsistently translated the first time. That said, the English phrase "not interested" is more harsh than the Japanese; kyoumi nai ne is rude, but the -ne, which softens the tone, and the playful alliteration on nai ne, both indicate that Cloud means it with cheeky humour rather than just coldness.
• English and Japanese do share the same allegorical meanings around the term 'spiky' (e.g. a spiky personality, a pointed comment, etc.), but it's fair to say that calling Cloud 'spiky-headed' in English just sounds like a reference to his hair. In Japanese, it's 'tsun-headed', which comes off like a childish insult about his character as well as a reference to his hair.
• You may notice that Cloud's name is even odder than those of the rest of the cast, having two fantastical names, when the rest of the heroes have normal surnames. This is because Cloud's peculiar surname, Strife, was intended as a slight modification/pun on the common Germanic surname "Strauss" - 「ストライフ」 "Sutoraifu" rather than 「ストラウス」 "Sutorausu" (note that the name of Cloud's mother was given as 'Claudia Strauss' in the artbook). To Japanese ears, it sounds plausibly like a Germanic surname, being only one tweak away from a well-known one. In English, it sounds like a ridiculous and Narmfully on-the-nose name.
• Barret's name is a pun on 'Bullet' that also sounds like the ordinary surname "Barrett" - in Japan, they'd be pronounced the same way: 「バレット」baretto. While "Barret" and "Bullet" both may sound similar in other languages, the ambiguity is lost in English, and the translators went down the more name-y route.
• Contrary to the popular consensus, Cloud and Tifa were not childhood friends when they were growing up in Nibelheim. Both admit at various points throughout the game that they didn't know each other very well at the time, with Cloud having been a loner with a crush on Tifa from afar but who was not a part of her circle of friends, while Tifa didn't pay much attention to Cloud until he invited her out to the water tower and explained that he was leaving to join SOLDIER. The confusion stems from the fact that the Japanese word for "childhood friend" (「幼馴染み」 osananajimi) more closely translates to "someone whom you just so happen to have known since childhood," without necessarily implying any close interpersonal connection. A closer translation of osananajimi in the context between Cloud and Tifa might be "acquaintance", in that it's someone you know of but personally know very little about or have no emotional connection with.
• A Woolseyism led to Cloud getting "Mako poisoning", a sensible decision, since Mako energy allegorises nuclear power. However, the original Japanese called it 「魔晄中毒」 mako chuudoku, which can not only mean "Mako poisioning", but also "Mako addiction". This created a drug-abuse allusion that adds some pop-psychedelic subtext to certain scenes, such as why Cloud gets a Journey to the Center of the Mind after being exposed to the Lifestream, and what's going on when Tifa finds Cloud lying in a city gutter moaning incoherently. It also makes his recovery, after opening up to Tifa about his feelings, much later in the game make somewhat more sense, as his condition is more of a psychological problem than a physical one. Crisis Core used "Mako addiction" to describe Cloud's symptoms, and in the remake, a passer-by yells at Cloud mistaking him for a "Mako junkie".
• Another woolseyism led to Sephiroth Copies being referred to as "Sephiroth Clones". This wasn't itself a bad move, since 'Copies' sounds silly, but the Clones aren't real 'clones' but a made-up Magitek concept. It ended up confusing the already convoluted plot as players attempted to find cloning tropes that weren't in the story.
• Shildra Inn in Cosmo Canyon should have been Syldra Inn, a reference to Faris' sea dragon in Final Fantasy V.
• Japanese Pronouns and modes of politeness were all lost:
  • Aerith's speaking pattern in Japanese comes across as being tomboyish and rough, to match her low-class upbringing and contrast with her girly appearance. In English, her speech pattern is made playful and almost cutesy ("Hmmmmm!"), meaning a lot of the irony was lost on English-speaking fans. This is very rectified in the remake, where Aerith is allowed to talk in slang and even swear.
  • After we find out the truth about Red XIII's personality, he goes from speaking in a pompous and condescendingly formal way (with the pronoun "watashi") to speaking like a child (using the very cute pronoun "oira"). In Japanese, this change affected every line, with his party dialogue in early optional events having alternatives depending on whether his sidequest had been finished or not. This change does carry over to the English script, but thanks to English' more limited palette when it comes to indicating social status and politeness, it's much less striking, with a lot of the changes just being trivial tweaks in phrasing ("That's the reactor, and the condor." / "That's the reactor. And the condor.")
  • During Cloud's possession scenes, the Japanese version had him suddenly start speaking in a formal way to indicate that he'd become a completely different person. In the English version, he speaks in his usual way ("This place is about to get rough.") indicating that More than Mind Control might be involved.
  • Back when he was a (comparatively) normal person, Sephiroth used the pronoun "ore" to refer to himself, but after he learned his origins and went psychotic he switched over to "watashi". The remake retains this, which creates an important moment that got lost in the English dub: at the very end of the game, when Sephiroth tries to convince Cloud to help him defy destiny, he uses "ore" as if he were sane again, which visibly shocks Cloud. However, it's a downplayed example since even without the pronouns his statement is still very surprising.
• There's a clever Stealth Pun in the fact that Cloud is introduced as a Rōnin (「浪人」- a former swordsman who abandoned his masters for unclear reasons and now works as a mercenary) and that we later discover that he's a ronin (a young person who failed their entrance exams to get the job they wanted). This is lost in English due to the latter meaning being an unknown cultural concept, and the former archetype being less easy to recognize in the distorted form it's presented in with Cloud.
• A joke about President Shinra where President was his name, not his actual job/title in the corporation was lost in the English translation.
• At one point, Elmyra recalls the young Aerith saying her husband had returned to the Planet - "I asked if she meant a star in the sky. But she said it was this planet." Baffling, unless you know that Japanese uses the same word for both "planet" and "star" (「星」hoshi). This causes a lot of the symbolism concerning stars, planets and meteorites to be muddled because English has no way of referring to them all as the same concept - for instance, Tifa's concern over whether the stars can "hear us" is meant to be a reversal of the 'You Can Hear the Cry of the Planet' motif, but it doesn't come across.
  • This discrepancy is also why some of the remake's story decisions—particularly the ending—have been so contentious among Western fans, while being near-universally accepted among Japanese players. In the last chapter of Remake, it is revealed that the planet has a "singularity" within the Lifestream which "connects all the threads of space and time," facilitating the existence of the Whispers; their eventual defeat by the party creates ripple effects which alter the past, forming an Alternate Timeline in which Zack survives his final stand. To Japanese audiences, this revelation felt perfectly reasonable, but many Western fans saw it as an Ass Pull which conflicted heavily with the established lore of FFVII. This is because most Western languages firmly distinguish between "stars" and "planets": a "star" is made up of burning gases which eventually deplete and collapse into a black hole, which is a concentration of gravity with a five-dimensional singularity wherein spacetime itself breaks down catastrophically—facilitating interdimensional travel. "Planets" meanwhile, are made mostly of rock or gas, but do not burn like stars and thus, never collapse into black holes with singularities. To Japanese audiences, Remake 's revelations felt sensible because their language already conflates planets with stars:「星」hoshi. To many Western fans however, the revelation that the "planet" has a singularity which can manipulate the spacetime continuum felt nonsensical and out of left-field, since the world of Gaia had never been explicitly referred to as a "star" in Western translations, and there had been no indication anywhere else in the Compilation that altering past events was even possible in VII 's world.
• The Western fandom has a different view of the main girls than the Japanese ones based on their clothes designs having slightly different connotations for each country. Since casual basic fashion for young women in 1997 Japan is more cutesy than in the West, Aerith's pink outfit and bow comes off as down-to-earth (while still well-put-together and special), while Tifa's cropped tank, leather skirt and Doc Martens marked her out as being the one who was really interested in fashion (and a bit alternative). In US 1997, Tifa looked like a casual low-maintenance girl-next-door type in old boots, while Aerith came off as being unusually girly and wholesome. Cue people who loathe her for being a cutesy princess type... although that has mostly fallen by the wayside as the fanbase has matured and realized the script doesn't portray her that way.
• Aerith is a lot more direct about her relationship with Zack in English. In English, she calls Zack "my first boyfriend", Cloud asks if they were "...serious", and Aerith denies it, saying she only "liked him for a while". In Japanese she says Zack was the first guy she liked, and Cloud asks if they were dating, which she denies, saying she only thought for a while that it would be a nice idea. (Since the English version seems to indicate that Cloud's asking Aerith about her sexual history, it might have been a Woolseyism to go along with the other changes to make the script more adult and swearier.) Her comments about him later are much less sexual as well - in English she says Zack "loved women, a real ladies' man... He probably found someone else", when in Japanese she says he probably met a girl and settled down with her, not implying any particularly possession of him at all.
  • The Remake goes for more of a vague, middle-ground approach. Aerith simply states that Zack was "the first guy [she] ever loved" without clarifying whether or not they were a couple or if her affection for him was even reciprocated. Cloud simply acknowledges this and then leaves it at that, not pressing her for specifics.
• When Aerith is in the prison cell explaining to Tifa what the Cetra are, in the English version she just says a few vague lines in her normal speaking style. In the Japanese version she recited a nursery rhyme about the Promised Land legend, indicating it was something her mother taught her as a child. The scene in Dirge of Cerberus where Lucrecia recites Cetra poetry to Vincent was supposed to be a callback to this, but this change means that this is lost on English-speaking players.
• Aerith and Cloud have a weird conversation in the Temple of the Ancients, where Aerith reads out the word 'Black Materia' one letter at a time, Cloud says "Black Materia!", and she gets annoyed before saying, "...Black Materia". In the Japanese she read the word correctly, but inserted the space in the wrong place, coming up with the nonsense phrase「黒魔 テリア」kuroma teria ("black-magic terrier"). Cloud corrects her on this with「黒 マテリア」kuro materia, embarrassing her. It's a type of pun/word-play called "ginatayomi" (「ぎなた読み」), basically The Problem with Pen Island, that's very hard to translate out of Japanese. Written Japanese uses a combination of both logo-graphic and phonetic characters, with the latter often being used as either a pronunciation guide or as a placeholder when the writer does not know the logo-graphic character(s) for a particular word. It is for this reason that Japanese writing does not use spaces, as it is the constant alternation between the two systems that is the primary means by which individual words are differentiated from each other. However, when a particular sentence is written entirely in phonetic characters (as was the case with the "kuromateria"「クロマテリア」example above), the lack of differentiation can lead to ambiguity about where one word ends and the next one starts. Ginatayomi is especially common in the spoken language for just this reason. For example, the phrase「パン作ったことがある？」pan tsukutta koto ga aru? (meaning "Have you ever baked bread before?") could also be interpreted as「パンツ食ったことがある？」pantsu kutta koto ga aru? (meaning "Have you ever eaten underwear before?"). There is really no way to translate this type of word-play. The only way to do it (short of removing it and replacing it with some sort of English pun) is to do it in the original Japanese along with text explaining the joke.
• A joke which also doubled as a Shout-Out to Domino's & Pizza Hut was lost in the English translations (both in the original and the Remake). This is because Mayor Domino's assistant was simply named "Hart" in English, when in fact his Japanese name (「ハット」Hatto) is a pun on the name "Hut." Between that and Barret's description of Midgar as a "rotting Pizza" on account of its overall circular shape, and you have a joke that the localizers perhaps thought was just a little too punny for English-speaking audiences. The Remake brought it back with the mayor being named Domino again. And the real life Malaysian Domino's Pizza twitter account posted a picture of Midgar as a pizza after the game came out.
• Cloud recounts a memory of looking in Tifa's drawers and finding what the English translation calls "Orthopedic Underwear". Fans often translate it as "Slightly Stretched Underwear". The 'stretched' in the phrase (「背伸び」senobi) is meant to be understood idiomatically, with 'stretched' being in the sense of how a child might stand on their toes in order to appear taller, so a more accurate translation would be something more like "Kind-of trying-to-look-grown-up Underwear", or, for a smoother localisation, "Sort-of Granny Panties". The implication is that Tifa was wearing underwear designed for women beyond her age range.
• Depending on how high your affection rating is with Tifa, a scene may appear towards the end of the game in which she and Cloud are left alone under the airship and a suggestive line of dialogue is followed by a Fade to Black, implying that the two of them made love (this is why Tifa collapses in embarrassment upon learning that Cid, Barret, and Red XIII may or may not have been "watching [them]"). While the developers stated in the 10th Anniversary Ultimania that it was intended to be at least slightly ambiguous, the scene went completely over the heads of many players because the line in question was translated as "Cloud, words aren't the only thing that tell people what you're thinking," which sounds very matter-of-fact and lacks any kind of sexual nuance. The Japanese line however is「想いを伝えられるのは言葉だけじゃないよ。」^note omoi wo tsutaerareru no wa kotoba dake janai yo, meaning: "Words aren't the only way of letting someone know how you feel," which sounds far more romantic and does a more effective job of conveying the intended meaning of the scene.
• A major game mechanic is the "PHS", a device with which you can switch your party members (and which is occasionally used as a phone in the storyline). In Japan, it was a reference to a late-1990s branch of entry-level mobile phones with reduced features called "Personal Handiphone System" or "PHS", with the joke being that Cloud's was a「パーティ編成システム」Pāti Hensei Shisutemu, which translates to "Party Summoning System". In English, the PHS's name is left untranslated and the allusion to its in-game use is lost, and the total obsolescence of the technology it's based on hasn't helped either.
• Cait Sith speaks with a comically exaggerated Kansai Regional Dialect, which is later revealed to be Reeve playing up his own accent, which he normally hides at work so to appear more professional. This detail is missed entirely in the original localization, causing problems with a much later scene where Reeve panics over Scarlet and Heidegger overhearing talking to the party, despite not saying anything incriminating (in the original script, they caught him speaking with his accent). Rebirth would fix this by translating it to a Scottish accent.
• The teenage Cloud comes off as something of a serial heartbreaker in the English, and a Celibate Hero in the original. In English, his mother asks him, "I bet the girls never leave you alone", and he answers, "not really", before she begins to worry about 'temptations in the city' and discusses what kind of girl Cloud should settle down with, while Cloud protests and says he's not interested (as if he's fooling around with girls but never serious, and enjoying his freedom). In Final Fantasy VII Remake, his mother instead says "Women must be hounding you day and night", and Cloud responds, "not really", before she starts worrying about 'keeping [Cloud] out of trouble' talking about what kind of girl Cloud should settle down with (as if she's trying to encourage her aloof, naive son to make an effort and open up to people).
• During Tifa's journey into the center of Cloud's mind, a young Cloud tells her that he "wanted to play with [all the other kids in the village], but you never let me in the group." This line alone casts the young Tifa in a completely different light than the one in which she is otherwise portrayed, making her seem more like an Alpha Bitch who deliberately ostracized the lone socially-awkward kid in town throughout his entire childhood and in doing so contributed to his Friendless Background and eventual development of an Inferiority Superiority Complex. The Japanese line however is「本当はみんなと一緒に遊びたいのに、どうしても仲間に入れてって言えなかった。」, which (more or less) translates as: "The truth is that I wanted to play with everyone, but I just couldn't bring myself to ask." This reveals that Cloud's lonely childhood was more due to his own social insecurities rather than any form of bullying or ostracism, and that Tifa and the others would have very much welcomed him in had he not been so distant. Remake rectifies this error by showing a flashback in which a young Tifa explicitly invites Cloud into her social circle, and is upset when he silently ignores her out of disaffected shyness.
• The localization completely obscures an important detail which is made more explicit in the original Japanese. The "Sephiroth" whom appears for all the present-day story up until the Final Boss is not the actual Sephiroth, but JENOVA parasites with his physical appearance; carrying out his will (and possibly Jenova's herself). Sephiroth's actual body spends the entire game stuck in the Northern Cave, having washed up there sometime after Cloud threw him and JENOVA's head into the lifestream in the Mako reactor at Nibelheim, while the "Sephiroth" whom the party spends all of disk 1 pursuing was actually the headless, shapeshifting JENOVA body which broke out of Hojo's lab in the Shinra building. This is the reason why so many of the Sephiroth encounters end in the party fighting JENOVA—they are meant to represent what the "bodies" morph into when fought. All of this is conveyed far more clearly in the Japanese text; while it is still present in the English localization, it is barely noticeable because it's consigned to only two sentences, with Cloud even saying: "I'll explain later," only to never do so.
• By far the most famous example of this trope in the game (in part for it being used as the name of a well-known video series dissecting the original translation) is right before the Final Boss, where Cloud bafflingly closes off his Rousing Speech by suddenly declaring "Let's mosey", before amending it to "Let's go" after Cid complains. The reason for this seemingly random comedy bit is that the scene is a Call-Back to an earlier scene after Aerith's death, where Cloud goes on an extended Despair Speech about how he's all but given up, closing off by very weakly saying "Ikou" (行こう), a weak verb meaning "to go", having resigned himself to the quest despite all but having given up. Cloud is meant to use that same weak verb here to demonstrate his nervousness, with Cid calling him out on this and getting him to change it to the much stronger "Ikuze" (いくぜ) to get everyone psyched for the final battle. The localization misses this entirely, making Cid's reaction of "Again!" come off inexplainable, and turning what is meant to be a small but meaningful reminder of Cloud's Character Development into a sudden and jarring instance of Mood Whiplash.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children:

• Tifa uses the phrase "dilly dally, shilly shally" when commenting on Cloud's apathy and depression. This makes some sense given that "dilly dally" refers to the act of procrastination, but many English-speaking audiences were baffled as to what she meant. This is because the original Japanese line is 「ずるずるずるずる」 zuruzuru zuruzuru. There really is no way of translating this into any other language, because zuruzuru is a Japanese onomatopoeia which mimics the sound of dragging something heavy across the ground. It makes sense in context, since the entire film is about Cloud being weighed down by survivor's guilt and feelings of powerlessness, hence a later scene wherein Cloud says that he feels "lighter". Still, "dilly dally, shilly shally" may or may not cross the line from Narm into Narm Charm depending on your mileage.
• The very concept of forgiveness carries far more weight within the context of Japanese culture than it does in English-speaking ones, as explained on this page. Simply put, the practice of forgiving others over any perceived wrongdoings and then accepting said forgiveness is so important in Japan that the phrase, "this is unforgivable!" is tantamount to telling someone: "you don't deserve to live," hence why the phrase is so common in anime and manga. The Japanese word for "forgiveness" (「許し」yurushi) is thus comparable to the English word "mercy." Knowing this adds another level of significance to Cloud's emotional arc as he struggles to overcome his survivor's guilt—he's not saying that he wants Aerith and Zack to forgive him. Rather, he thinks that he is no longer worthy of living after having failed to save their lives, and is unable to reclaim his own will to live (i.e. 'have mercy on himself') because nothing he does can ever bring them back. This further ties into Japan's culture of honour and atonement that descends from the Samurai code of Bushido, in which a Samurai who failed to successfully protect the life of his master/superior was expected to atone for said failure through ritualistic suicide. This subtext however is lost in translation due to it not carrying the same level of cultural significance in English-speaking countries as it does in Japan. It is also due to the localizers opting to translate the word「許し」yurushi as "forgiveness" when in fact "mercy" would have been a more sensible decision. Given Aerith's messianic qualities and later use of her Great Gospel spell to "baptize" and cure everyone's Geostigma at the end of the movie, the decision to localize it as "forgiveness" might have been an attempt to emphasize the Judeo-Christian symbolism as Cloud struggles to overcome his own illness and absolve himself of his "sins." However, this significantly confounds upon the nature of his emotional state, making it more difficult for audiences to sympathize with him. Likewise, one of Sephiroth's lines during the final duel between him and Cloud is「許しを請う姿を見せてくれ」^note yurushi wo kou sugata wo misete kure, which most accurately translates as: "I want to see you begging for mercy," doubling as both a villainous one-liner and an ironic taunt directed at Cloud's own emotional turmoil. The localizers however, opted to translate it as "I want you to beg for forgiveness"—presumably for the sake of consistency, but the resulting line doesn't make as nearly as much sense within the context of the scene.

Final Fantasy VIII

• Squall's catchphrase is probably one of the most famous examples of this - in the English, it's "...whatever". In Japanese, it's "warukkata", which means something more like "...sorry" or (perhaps more literally) "...my bad". It does have the same youthful, slightly rude connotation as 'whatever', but the change overall makes Squall a lot less like he has No Social Skills (the intended reading) and a lot more like he's just heartless and nasty. Opinions about Squall between Japan and English-speaking regions tend to be very different because of this.
• The Japanese version of Rinoa's confession in Galbadia Garden plays out a differently from the English translation, and includes a line referencing that indicates that she no longer likes Seifer:
  Rinoa [Japanese]: If I did I couldn't talk about it like this.
  Rinoa [English]: If I didn't, I wouldn't be talking about it.
• Although it's still possible to guess from Gilgamesh's comment about the Rift that he's the same Gilgamesh that appeared in Final Fantasy V, a single syllable confirming it was left out of the English translation:
  Gilgamesh [Japanese]: Huh? Was it you... Ba—? [referring to Bartz]
  Gilgamesh [English]: Huh? Was it you...?
• The name of the airship Ragnarok is a pun on the name of Laguna — Laguna's name in Japanese is ラグナ, Ra-gu-na, and the word Ragnarok is ラグナロク, Ra-gu-na-ro-ku, which could be translated directly as "Laguna Six". This is a source of humor when Laguna quips that the ship's name "sounds so cool!". and it could be intended as Foreshadowing that Laguna is the President of Esthar, since the ship was probably named in his honor. But this wordplay wasn't retained in the English translation. Other translations like the Spanish and Italian versions just name the ship after Laguna directly, and in the Italian version he even says the ship was named after him. This bit of wordplay came up again when Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy came out, and Laguna has a BFG modeled after the Ragnarok for many of his attacks — English players just assumed it was for the Rule of Cool, not knowing there was a stronger connection between the man and the airship.

Final Fantasy IX

• The Japanese equivalent of the English idiom, "to reveal one's true identity/colors" is 「尻尾を出す」^note shippo wo dasu, which literally translates as "to show one's tail." This alludes to the Kitsune of Japanese folklore — fox-like spirits that would disguise themselves as humans, often with the intent of causing trouble or mischief. This lends an idiomatic significance to Kuja's tail which he keeps hidden beneath his outfit, but it is lost in translation due to the Kitsune being a concept which is unique to Japanese culture.
• While the Final Boss of the game is already an infamous Mind Screw, the Dub Name Change in the English track causes things to become even more unclear. In the Japanese, Necron is called [永遠の闇], which not a name at all and more a descriptor meaning "The Darkness of Eternity", making it clear that it's less supposed to be a character and instead a symbolic representation of oblivion manifested from Kuja's fear of death. This makes the nature of the fight much clearer in how it thematically connects to the story, rather than seemingly having the Big Bad upstaged by a completely new and unexplained character.

Final Fantasy X

• Sin's original Japanese name is written "Shin" in katakana, which is the closest Japanese syllabary can come to the English word "sin" but can also mean, due to the Japanese language being abundant in homonyms, "deity"/"god", "truth", or most notably, "death". There was just literally no way to localize this, however, so the English version leans more heavily on the "sin" angle.
  • This is notable when Sin first appears and Auron says to Tidus "We called it 'Sin'". Thanks to the multiple homonyms of "Shin" in Japanese, it is entirely possible to interpret the statement in Japanese upwards of four ways: "We called it 'Sin'" (if you assume the loanword meaning), "We called it 'Death'", "We called it 'Truth'", and even "We called it 'God'" (though shin would be a slightly odd choice of form in context). This is why Tidus seems confused by what Auron says - he's not repeating the name to ask "why is it called 'Sin'", he's asking "wait, what exactly do you mean?" The name in text, of course, is in katakana (which slightly leans into the first interpretation, but unspoiled, you can also think that Auron is simply converting an existing Japanese word into a proper noun and emphasizing it, especially given the ambiguity of the rest of the context), but Tidus isn't reading the script. In English, meanwhile, the quadruple interpretation of the statement is simply untranslatable, and so Tidus' reaction comes across much differently (and even the player's reaction will be different, as there is only one meaning to "Sin").
• There's also a hilarious aversion that needs to be mentioned - the infamous "I'm gonna be a blitzball when I grow up!" kid. The natural reaction would be to assume the translators made a typo or somehow lost that the kid meant "blitzball player". But nope — even in Japanese, the kid says, word for word, "おっきくなったらブリッツボールになるんだ!", which is indeed unquestionbably the line as translated in 2001. The HD remaster made it clear that the typo was in the Japanese script — the line in JP gets "player" added after blitzball — but the English version left the now-spoony-bard-level-famous line in unaltered as a homage.

Final Fantasy XIII

• While Sazh and Vanille are waiting for a ship at the port to Nautilus in Chapter 6, Sazh mentions that everything that has happened so far (the Purge, the main party's transformation into l'Cie, and the subsequent burden of their Focus) was because Sazh's son Dajh ran into Pulse l'Cie at Euride Gorge. Vanille asks Sazh not to blame Dajh before cutting herself off, and Sazh responds, "Yeah, you're right. It was that scum from Pulse behind it." Vanille runs out into the pouring rain, overcome with emotion. The English translation removes the cultural reference to idiots not being able to catch colds, somewhat weakening the foreshadowing that Vanille wasn't branded at the same time as the rest of the party and was one of the Pulse l'Cie responsible for the Euride Gorge incident. The original wording does a better job of conveying Vanille's feelings of guilt, but wouldn't work in English due to cultural differences.
  Sazh [Japanese]: You'll catch a cold out there.
  Vanille [Japanese]: I won't! ...because I'm an idiot.
  Sazh [English]: You're getting soaked.
  Vanille [English]: I'll be fine! It's only water.

Final Fantasy XIV

• When Final Fantasy XIV was first being developed, Chocobos were being referred to in Kanji as "Horse-bird/馬鳥". This set off a small firestorm which led to a renaming, and accidentally being called "Chocopos" before finally being reverted back to the common チョコボ/Chocobo in both Japanese and English. It has since then been lampshaded a few times, such as in the 2014 New Years "Heavensturn" with a competition of popularity between some visitors from the world of Hydaelyn's Far East supporting horses, and people from that region, where chocobos aren't native, regularly referring to the Eorzean region's chocobos as "horse birds".
• For the English, French, and German speaking players, the name of one boss in the game had to be changed twice due to this. As part of the Crystal Tower storyline, the enemies are named and designed as one big shout out to FFIII. However, at the end of the Labyrinth of the Ancients dungeon, players face a boss distinctly based off of FFIII's version of Titan. Problem is, there's already a Primal being and a related Summon named Titan. Japan can get around this, because in FFIII, they used ティターン which is based on the Greek pronunciation (Tea-tahn) for the III/Crystal Tower boss, and タイタン (English pronunciation: Tie-tun) for the Primal and Summon (and every other boss by that name in the series). However, for the other major languages, they can't do this, as regardless of pronunciation, it would still be spelled Titan. The English localization team came up with a solution, and got special permission to use the name of one of FFIII's Titan Palette Swaps, Acheron (named after a river in the underworld of Greek mythology), for English, French, and German.
  All was well until 2.3 dropped, when the Syrcus Tower, the very next raid in the series, added another minor enemy named... Acheron, and the other major languages were forced to quickly rename the Labyrinth boss to another of FFIII Titan's palette swaps, Phlegethon (another underworld river from Greek mythology). This got an in-universe justification, that the researchers mistranslated the text from the ancient Allagan due to it being a mostly dead language, and they rectified their mistake afterwards.
• A similar case happened with the new class in the first expansion, Astrologians: since the game came out, Astrologian was a catch all term for the astrologists of Ishgard, but when it was reported that the new playable class was from Sharlayan, a completely separate continent, the dev team had to admit that it was a translation error on their part. Like the above, this forced an in-universe justification where Ishgardian astrology is an offshoot of the original Sharlayan art, focused on watching and reading a specific star to predict the movements and actions of dragons.
• Primal Brainwashing in the Japanese script only has one sweeping word that refers to all such brainwashing. The English script occasionally uses a specific term for each primal - Ramuh's thralls are "touched", Leviathan's thralls are "drowned", etc - but for the most part uses "tempered" as a generic term, despite being a fire reference to fit Ifrit, simply because it was the first one introduced.
• At the end of the ARR questline involving Gentleman Inspector Hildibrand, a character refers to an incantation which saved the day as being wielded "not by a Warrior of Light [referring to the player], but by a Gentleman of Light", which is a different-spelling-by-one-character pun that doesn't land in English: in Japanese, "Warrior of Light" is "光の戦士" (Hikari no Senshi) while "Gentleman of Light" is "光の紳士" (Hikari no Shinshi).

Final Fantasy XVI

• The first line of the game begins with a quote by someone named Moss the Chronicler, who (in English) was said to have described people being guided by the light of the crystals but eventually gave in to "temptation". In Japanese, it is instead said that the one day, "ego" grew within people, in the sense of free will and self-identity. This seemingly small detail was meant to foreshadow the Big Bad Ultima being motivated by humans developing ego, something which was outside of his design and ultimately led to his defeat.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

• Llednar Twem's class name in the Japanese version of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is "Bisquemata," a portmanteau of "Bisque Doll" (a doll made of biscuit porcelain) and "Automata." In the English version it was written as "Biskmatar," which is meaningless.

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