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Final Fantasy games are very long JRPGs, so they have a lot of text to go through. The series also reached overseas popularity in the 90s, when Nintendo had strict content rules for American releases. That, combined with next to no resources on the Internet, made localization a grueling job. Still, the change from English to Japanese, warts and all, is a very interesting process that many gamers take for granted.

10 Setzer’s Business Woes

In Final Fantasy VI, the heroes have to persuade a man named Setzer to work against the Empire. He refuses, saying that the Empire has made him rich. In Japanese, he uses the word “agattari” - literally “go up”. This is actually an idiom. A more faithful translation would be “The Empire has made my business dry up.” instead of “go up”. So this line actually means the exact opposite!

The GBA remake fixed the line, but many reviewers criticized this, thinking the original was correct. The translator, Tom Slattery, discussed the line in an interview with RPGamer, and how it completely changes Setzer’s motivation.

9 Garland Won’t Actually Knock You Down

One of the earliest memorable moments in the franchise. At the beginning of Final Fantasy I, an evil knight threatens the heroes with “I, Garland, will knock you all down!”. Not particularly threatening. This is another literal translation of a Japanese word, “kechirasu”. At face value, it does mean “knock over”, but in this context, it’s more like “defeat” or “vanquish”.

The Playstation release changed the famous line to “I shall vanquish all of you!”. But the GBA remake added it back. It may not have been correct, but the line seems to be a classic bit.

8 No Churches Allowed

In the 1990s, parents became concerned with violent and inappropriate content in video games. Nintendo of America drafted up a strict set of rules for localization in response. One of the rules banned any depiction of religious material - even tiny things. For example, in Earthbound Beginnings, the gravestone graphics were changed to remove crosses.

This also affected the original Final Fantasy game. Nintendo of America removed the crosses from churches and changed them into generic “clinics”. They also removed the pope-like hats from the priests inside.

7 S/he

Quina Quen is a party member in Final Fantasy IX. Quina is a member of the Qu race, who are all genderless. As such, Quina uses the seldomly seen pronoun s/he. Gender-neutral pronouns are becoming more and more widely used, but s/he is quite unusual. What does the original Japanese say about him/her?

It’s a bit difficult to answer. Japanese doesn’t have gendered pronouns in the way English does. The closest thing used in reference to Quina is “aitsu” - technically gender-neutral, but used commonly to refer to men and women as well. Since this game came out before the singular they was widely used, the localization team must have felt pretty stuck.

6 Celes And The Cliff

One of the most famous and emotional scenes in Final Fantasy VI takes place after the time skip. Celes, overcome with grief, throws herself off of a cliff. She survives, but showing a suicide attempt was far too much for NoA’s strict rules. However, they couldn’t remove the scene entirely - the plot wouldn’t make much sense, and no one had the technical skill to delete a cutscene. What to do?

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The localizers tried their best, and it still didn’t come out that great. According to Cid, people who washed up on the island would jump off the clip in an attempt to “perk themselves up”. Not very convincing. The line was changed to be more accurate in the GBA remake.

5 7 Is Filled With Typos

Final Fantasy VII is a very long game with a massive amount of text. Overall, the localization team did well, especially for the time. There are a few slipups, though, and some of them are so obvious you’ll wonder how they got through. The most famous is Aeris’ “This guy are sick”, pictured above.

When killing an enemy in the Battle Arena, the player can answer “Off course!” when asked to keep going. At the Chocobo Ranch, the names of various Greens are misspelled so frequently it’s hard to keep them straight. Perhaps most embarrassingly of all, on the game’s box art, they dropped the I out of “masterpiece”.

4 “You Spoony Bard!”

This is a famous line from Tellah in Final Fantasy IV. It’s become a meme over the years and is frequently cited as a funny “bad translation” moment. What the heck is a “spoony bard”? And what did the line originally say?

“You spoony bard!” is 100% an invention of localization. The Japanese line isn’t close to it at all. As for why, a significant portion of the localization team wasn’t fluent in English. They might not have known that “spoony” isn’t an adjective no one uses in everyday speech. FYI, “spoony” is an outdated word meaning “foolishly or sentimentally amorous”.

3 The “D” Status Effect

There’s a rare status effect in Final Fantasy IV called Gradual Petrification. It turns a character into stone over the course of three turns. In the English version, the first stage of the effect is called “D”. What’s that supposed to stand for?

The truth is, it doesn’t stand for anything. The first stage doesn’t have a name at all in Japanese. It displays as blank when using healing items. When looking at the game’s text files, it seems that D was used as a placeholder for bits of text that were removed in the localization. So this is probably just a mistake.

2 …Whatever.

Squall says “…Whatever.” a lot throughout Final Fantasy VIII. It’s become a sort of unofficial catchphrase. The Japanese line is “warukatta na”, or a rather terse “Well, excuse me.”. That is, most of the time.

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When comparing the two languages, it seems that many different lines got translated as “…Whatever.”. Most of the time it’s “Well, excuse me.”, but it’s extrapolated to many other of Squall’s rude or dismissive remarks. Essentially, the catchphrase appears much more often in English than it does in Japanese.

1 Aeris or Aerith?

You have probably heard of this Final Fantasy VII character referred to by different names. This isn’t a simple fan squabble. Aeris/Aerith’s name actually changed after the first release of VII. The very first localization calls her Aeris, but ever since she’s been Aerith. This comes from a common pitfall when translating Japanese names to English.

Japanese-to-English transliteration is complicated, but here’s an attempt to make it short. Her original name is エアリス (Earisu). The first English name, Aeris, is very close to the Japanese pronunciation. Here’s the kicker - Japanese doesn’t have a -th sound, so it gets transcripted as a -s instead. Turns out the intended pronunciation is Aerith, deriving from the word earth.

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