I just wanted to say I know exactly what you're getting at and I share your frustration. I have Japanese audio and English subtitles and I can't help feeling like the translation takes a lot of liberties (regardless whether the English or the Japanese was the original). Every time I hear the character say "Nani?" and the English text is something like "Is aught amiss?" or "What hath transpired heretofore?" it just grates on me and it makes me wonder how much difference there actually is between the Japanese and the English scripts. Is the Japanese dialogue also overloaded with the equivalent of a corny pseudo-archaic dialect? I'm not sure but I'd be surprised if it were.
Square-Enix also did this with the new translation of Final Fantasy Tactics and it's interesting to compare the old and the new translations, because apparently they decided the original Tactics translation was too literal and not "ye olde" enough.Â
For fanfiction you should feel free to deviate and correct the flaws in the writing of the original, obviously. Just because the Square English team likes to write like high-schoolers imitating Shakespeare, doesn't mean you have to.
[edit] I did a bit of reading up on it, and it seems like the English and Japanese scripts are just written separately, so one is not really a translation of the other. Even so, I think they're hamming up the dialogue far too much. You should feel free to pare it back to tasteful levels in your writing, in my opinion.
Square-Enix also did this with the new translation of Final Fantasy Tactics and it's interesting to compare the old and the new translations, because apparently they decided the original Tactics translation was too literal and not "ye olde" enough.Â
For fanfiction you should feel free to deviate and correct the flaws in the writing of the original, obviously. Just because the Square English team likes to write like high-schoolers imitating Shakespeare, doesn't mean you have to.
[edit] I did a bit of reading up on it, and it seems like the English and Japanese scripts are just written separately, so one is not really a translation of the other. Even so, I think they're hamming up the dialogue far too much. You should feel free to pare it back to tasteful levels in your writing, in my opinion.
![[Image: hlEovB0.png]](http://i.imgur.com/hlEovB0.png)
