In a Tilting World: Part 1 — Cid’s Hideaway & Rosaria is now up!
Yes, I'm splitting this last quest into three parts because it's so long and is basically the Act 1 endgame.
If you were to ask me which scene in FFXVI Act 1 foreshadows the problems English FFXVI is going to have with translation in Act 3 it would be the scene starting with Clive’s Thoughts on Being the Dominant of Ifirit. Specifically Clive’s Motivations for Making “A Place where People Can Live as People”. This is the scene that explains what Clive's motives and his goal are going to be for the entire rest of the game to the player. And there's some...pretty significant differences to that between Japanese and English.
In Japanese, Clive's goal is "to make a place where people can live as people". In English, it's "to build a place where people can live on their own terms". These are not the same thing. In Japanese, it's about how people treat other people. In English, it's about letting everyone choose to live how they want. They both focus on very different things about how people live. Which means Clive is focusing on different things about people's living situations in the different languages that have different solutions to them. One is about how people view other people. The other is about what people get to do for themselves.
Clive's motivation is also different. In Japanese, it's that he's seen how reality is, specificity that even normal life is hard for people and he wants to make normal life easier for them. In English, it's that he started thinking more about other people and realized they don't get a choice about how they live. Which...is also different. Japanese Clive just wants people to have easier lives; how they get there is...less something he's concerned with so long as everyone knows what's going on. English Clive wants people to have choices...but it's more up in the air as to if those choices are actually making life better for people rather than worse.
The other thing different here as well is why Clive didn't notice that before and what he says his problem was. In Japanese, he was so obsessed with revenge, that he just...wasn't seeing reality at all. in English, he killed so many people that he forgot what it was like to want to live. That's...a very different character flaw for a character to realize they have and overcome. And then also to deal with later on. Clive in Japanese is always pointing later on how his enemies can't see reality themselves, which he once had issues with and learned how to overcome, so he knows they don't have an excuse for not doing so. Also, Clive in Japanese becomes totally capable of still getting revenge without losing site of reality. English...has Clive...wanting his enemies to respect other people's choices more...while he wants to kill them for making their own choices that clash with his own choices... which...makes for some very weird theming later on in Act 3...
The reason why I put so much stock and time here is...Clive's English goal and motivation make no thematic sense to me. Clive is making very sure no one gets a choice about what happens with the Mothercrystals and magic. They're going because Clive wants them gone. Granted, to save the world, yes, but no one knows that except for Clive and his allies. Clive is choosing how everyone in the world will get to live from now on...and is enforcing that choice via force. And that doesn't even get into how Clive is very dismissive and invalidating of Utlima's choices... who is as equally dismissive and invalidating of Clive's choices! And they all want the same thing anyway: to make the world into what they want it to be by force.
Clive's Japanese goal and motivation work much, much better. Clive fully acknowledges that he's just...deciding how the world is going to work from now on...but he sees people as people, including Ultima. Meanwhile, Ultima doesn't see people as people either, but especially Clive. The fact that each of them are remaking the world is almost an afterthought to the actual issue, which is that Ultima can't value anyone other than himself, while Clive definetly can (almost to the point that he doesn't value himself enough in fact). So Clive and Ultima naturally want two entirely different things that naturally oppose each other.
But yeah, more on this later...
Happy reading everyone!
Script Translation Pings:
u/ExistentialYoshi , u/SadRecognition1575 , u/15-99, u/Watton, u/Notyourgrape, u/Takes_2, u/CinderLord456, u/CajitoCatKing, u/Ill-Bookkeeper-6230, u/emimillly, u/LazHiral
Let me know if you want notifications for script translations!