Final Fantasy IV: Introduction

(Picture: Square Enix)

Hello everybody! Welcome to my blog, Moogle Translate. Here, I’ll be analysing the characterisation of the main characters of the Final Fantasy games to see how they differ in the English and Japanese scripts.

I’ll be starting with Final Fantasy IV, since it’s just such a well-written game in general that both scripts were enjoyable to play, and I’m essentially picking apart minor differences of two good characters. Well, for the most part…

I’ll be using the PSP Complete Collection English Script (translators: Jilian Nonaka, Noriko Iwahara; QA translators: Earl Gertwagen, Takahiro Soh), and the original SNES Japanese Script (writers: Takahashi Tokita and Hironobu Sakaguchi) for comparisons, and if you don’t speak Japanese: fear not! I’ll be providing English translations of all the Japanese I’ll use. Don’t worry - my Japanese is fairly good (if I may say so myself)!

Now that all the general notices are out of the way, let’s get down to it.

(Picture: Square Enix)

I’ll be going through the characters in this order:
  Cecil - 'A Knight's Tale'
  Kain - 'The Shooting Star'
  Rosa - 'Deceptively Smart'
  Rydia - 'The 40-year-old Child'
  Edge - '27 or 21?'
  Cid - 'Slurring to Save the World'
  Yang - 'A Failed Knight
  Edward - 'The Art of Losing a Backbone'
  Palom and Porom - 'Polite Comedic Relief'
  Tellah - 'The Impotence of Anger'
  Golbez - 'A Falling Façade'
  Four Fiends - 'All for One, One for All'
  Minor Characters (parts 1, 2 and 3)
  Minor Antagonists

So, of course, stay tuned for your favourite character! Now, before I. begin, there’s one last thing I’d like to say: I am absolutely not attacking the writers nor the translators. Whilst I don’t think this is the best translation in the whole series, it is an extremely good one. Any critiques I make are simply that: little critiques. Sure, there are other entries in the series with some objectively bad bits of translation - but I’m not trying to hate on the translators, I’m trying to contextualise why translators may have made certain choices. Besides, these people work under immense time pressures and stress, and frankly, the work they do is outstanding. So, as always, my sincere congratulations to the translators and writers.


On to the show!

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