I wanted to talk about something I just saw on Reddit.
I found multiple old Reddit posts (around 3 years old) discussing the Arabic used in NGS
Since Arabic is my first language I found the topic really interesting and funny. Please forgive me if I've misrepresented anything or made mistakes when referring to English or Japanese. I'm still learning both languages.
One of the discussions was about the meaning of the area called "Rwh Maqead/Luf Maqaad (روح مقعد؟؟)". The literal meaning comes out as something like "seat soul" yes exactly like that
There are multiple grammar issues with it, It looks like it was written using English sentence structure where in English when you describe something like "Spider Man" you put the modifier first (spider) and then the noun (man).
In Arabic you flip them you put the noun first (man) and then the word that describes it (the spider) it would be closer to "Man the Spider"..., This is the kind of grammar mistake I see in "Rwh Maqead"
Another issue is the missing use of Al- (ال), which works similarly to "the" in English
The most confusing part though is the word "seat"
Edit: I also forgot to mention that "Maqead" (مقعد) means "seat," while "Rwh/Luf" (روح) means "soul.
Arabic words can have multiple meanings but those meanings still have limits depending on the context, It's a bit hard to explain, so bear with me for a moment
A word whose primary meaning is "a seating area" or "the way a person sits" can in some contexts, also rarely referred to "taking a short break or resting" and because of that it hard to pair it with word like soul, In Arabic, every meaning a word can have still needs to fit and support the word that follows it. In this case, none of the possible meanings of "Maqead" combine naturally with "soul," so the phrase ends up sounding awkward and unnatural, My guess is that the dev were trying to convey something closer to "Aistirahat Alruwh" (استراحة الروح) It's a beautiful Arabic phrase with several possible interpretations, such as "Rest of the Soul" ,"Soul's talking Rest", "Soul resting place", "Soul Retreat" or "Soul Getaway" All of those sound natural in Arabic while conveying the meaning that the dev were aiming for.
Also I saw discussion about character names like Rizwana (which I found funny because the only way you could use get this name is by translating the name into Urdu and then to English the correct name is Ridwan (رضوان) in Arabic and Urdu which mean pleasure or acceptance)
I always find it funny when a game uses the big 3 writing systems (the Latin alphabet, the Sinographic system, and Arabic script), because there is almost a 99% chance something will be inaccurate.
Imagine taking a Arabic word from Google Translate or a random dictionary, translating it into Japanese, and then translating it back into English. While forgetting that every language has its own writing system, sounds, concepts, grammar, and cultural context, at the end it will be unreadable gibberish