Conclusion and final thoughts for this first EN/JP project.

日本語でも読めるよ！下に進んでご覧ください。

Phew.  What an immense amount of work this has been.  I want to thank each and every player that contributed a question, answer or opinion to this little linguistic adventure.  I was surprised how fast it spilled out amongst all the FFXI forum communities and blogs.  Within two weeks, there have been over 11,000 unique visitors to the site, and well over 600 responses to the JP questions through forums and e-mail.  It’s nice to see there are still some things we can all work together on.

With that in mind, I thought I’d go over the development of this project.  It actually started out on BlueGartr as an experiment.  After the big news blitz concerning Pandemonium Warden, there were stories everywhere critical of Square Enix, as well as a nice, fat thread on the forums.  To cut through the squabbling a bit, I thought I’d post some reactions from 2chan on the whole issue.  The Japanese response was very much in line with ours, and their forums read very similar to English forums.  I posted an amusing selection of their posts, and it got a good response.  It got me thinking, “What if we got some responses to other things we want to know about?”

So I used BlueGartr as the launch pad for an experiment that would “interview” JP players.  The original idea was to do a back and forth with BlueGartr, then another with a different community, and so on.  Once the answers came back and got posted though, it was a different story.  The reaction was great and spread across several communities, so I knew I couldn’t just limit it to one anymore.

You can read all about the answers and reactions to the various questions and answers, but I think there is one theme that runs through most of the problems we face as two communities trying to bridge the communication gap: context.  You can add all the words you want to the Auto-Translate Function, but you can’t translate the context in which they are spoken.  This is especially difficult English speakers, (especially Americans), as we live in such a culture of sarcasm.  Even when talking to each other on our own forums, there are often misunderstandings concerning tone and intent.  How many times has the absence of a smiley face caused a joke to be taken literally?  I cannot remember the last time I used {That’s too bad.} or {Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to pass.} without a tone of derision, playful or otherwise.

I believe lack of context causes “JP Only” to be so offensive.  Is this Japanese player angry, or is he just afraid to use English for fear of ridicule?  {English}{Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to pass.} also sounds pretty sarcastic on its own.  English?  You’re kidding right?  Yeah, go over there and play with the other mouth-breathers, thanks.  There’s no Auto-Translate for Japanese who need to say {I just failed my English test at school, and my mom was yelling at me and now if I see another English word I’m going to put my PS2 in the rice cooker.}  They should totally add that, though.  Until that day, “JP Only” or “English” “No thanks” is the only way to put that feeling across.

More than the language barrier, I think there is a cultural barrier that causes a lot of problems.  People don’t understand the way other players think.  You may /check a Japanese player and have them get angry, which is frustrating because you don’t know why.  The Japanese player certainly can’t explain to you why he’s mad, so each of you go your separate ways, confused and annoyed.  Being able to explain these things to each other helps everyone get along, and while you may not like their reasoning, at least you have some context in which to put their reaction, and can figure out ways around it (like asking persmission.)  It’s also important that you can see that other players sympathize with you.  Foreign players appear to have a stigma of rudeness and foul play.  I think we were all surprised to learn that foreigners were somewhat thrust upon the Japanese without warning during the release.  Whether it’s melodramatic or not, I’ve heard more than a few people comment about the shock of having English-speakers suddenly flood into the game, littering the landscape with corpses and profanity.  By viewing our answers and opinions, hopefully Japanese players can realize that a lot of the things they dislike are also frowned upon amongst the English-speaking community.  Again, put within the context of 600 people eager to speak with the Japanese, one racist guy becomes insignificant.

Maybe a lot of us will never get over some of these differences.  No matter how accepting an English-speaker or Japanese-speaker is, it isn’t practical to learn a new language just for an online game.  Still, I think it’s worth working together for the benefit of players who want to have a good time, and want the chance to communicate with everyone who they share Vana’diel share.

I hope everyone enjoyed participating in this project, and will continue to support efforts to keep the lines of communication open.  I’ve spoken with various community leaders for their opinions and will continue to develop my site using the reactions from players on both sides.  I wish there was some official capacity in which I could facilitate this and have players contribute.  I think it just goes to show that the best improvements to the game have always come from the support of the players.

• 英質問→和回答
• 英反応
• 和質問集
• 和質問→英回答
• 和反応

日本語版：

ふぁ〜　皆さんお疲れ様でした。応援してくれた方々、皆様、誠にありがとうございました。こんなに早く色々な掲示板やブログに流れたことに驚きました。二週間以内、サイトにビジターが１１０００人以上が来てくれて、回答集が六百件以上届きました。世界中のファイナルファンタジーのプレイヤーみんなが一緒によく頑張りました。感謝しています。

そう言えば、ちょっとアンケートの開発を説明したいんですね。実は、事件としてBlueGartrで開始されました。Pandemonium Wardenというニュースが起こった後、スクエアエニックスに関してのニュースがアメリカでよく流れました。掲示板にも非常に大きいスレがありました。皆さんの厳しい討論からちょっと休憩するように、私は２chanの反応を発表しようと思いました。日本の方の反応は海外プレイヤーとそっくりだったから面白いと思いました。そして、日本のコメントを翻訳して発表しました。その後、結構いいリアクションが来ました。だから、”他の知りたいことについて伺うことはどうかな”と思いました。