How long does it take to translate? Seriously.

[Che]

Final Fantasy XIII will be released on December 17th, 2009 in Japan. US fans have to wait until April 2010 to play it. By that time, Japan will be done with the game, and probably playing FFXIII Versus. All the details will be available to us about the game before we even get to play it.

This is going to suck. I really want to play this game. How is it that people fansub an anime episode in 20 minutes, yet a translation of the game will take ~4 months? I'm seriously contemplating buying Rosetta Stone - Japanese. It's going to take every part of me not to research the game while it's out in Japan. I don't want to spoil any surprises they might have in store for me.

[Dodie16]

I know how you feel. I hate the 4 to 6 month wait (sometimes longer) that is going on between Japanese release dates and US release dates. Even when they get it all translated, there is still some things that don't translate very well from Japanese-to-English, so the story has to be re-written to accomodate it. I think that we sometimes miss out on some important elements. I know that happens in anime, but I don't know if it happens in video games. It probably does...

[Rocky]

If it's any consolation Che, I know that SE is pretty good at adding in extra stuff in the game for the US fans by the time it gets ported here, like with Dissidia: Final Fantasy for example. But I agree with you, it sucks waiting for the game, and the extra media of communication (like with the internet, etc.) makes it really easy to spoil oneself since the game will be over there for months. It makes playing through games pretty dumb when you already know everything about it, from the story to gameplay mechanics.

[Zargabaath]

Well I don't know about in animes so much, especially subs done by fans, but in a game they not only have to translate but make sure that with the voice acting matches the lips as close as possible. That probably is the most time consuming part. As long as it comes out April/May 2010 in the U.S I'll be happy; I have plenty of games to beat.

Edit: It just came to me after re-reading the poll options; I chose the last one because four months isn't that long compared to the 3+ years since FF XII. I shall expand on this - think for a moment... what month is it about to be???? October. It is already October of 2009, time is flying especially if you are older. Days, weeks, months go by for me. Four months is nothing it will spring up on us before we know it. Take it in segments, there should be other events that come before FF XIII to keep your focus on. An example for myself would be Saw VI that comes out Oct. 23rd.

[Materiathief00]

I agree with you to no end, Che. I can't believe I have to wait that long. My friends into FF are probably going to spoil everything for me if I don't beat them to it by accident. I'm kind of glad that stuff like which summon goes to which character has been kept hidden, although I'm curious I'd rather have the surprise.
I like the idea of hibernating, I think I'll try that out!

[Andromeda]

To give you a sense of things. We spent a year on localizing Saints Row (a US game) for Japanese release. One its a really different language so you run in to the issue of finding the English that fits what the Japanese are trying to say. On top of that you also have to make sure anything you changed in the game for the localization didn't break anything in the game. You'd be surprised how a game can break on you when you think something as a simple text change isn't going to hurt anything. Then there is more things. The biggest difference between fansubs and a localization, someone is doing it as a hobby and someone is doing it for money and to make money. How many fansubs have you seen with bad spelling or grammar? You don't really care too much because you know its not official. However, the game company has to do things right or they'll get hit in sales and reviews, not that it still doesn't happen.

Plus you have to re-record all of the voices. That takes time, sometimes a month or more depending on how much you're dubbing. And RPGs are even worse any other game because of the sheer volume of text present in the same. An anime has 22 minutes of dialogue possible, and its going to be rare that they fill the whole thing with dialogue. So you'll come out with hundreds of lines possibly. An RPG counts theirs in thousands, usually tens or hundreds of.

Even after you've translated everything you have to go into the game and actually confirm that it has been changed. All of the testing required for all of that text has got to take a lot of time to do. Then if anything is wrong, it has to be sent back to be fixed.

And we're actually lucky on FFXIII, because SE is giving us lip-sync on in-game cutscenes. I believe that the FMVs aren't being re-rendered for lip-sync. Almost no game you're going to find re-syncs dialogue for foreign languages as far as I know, especially not RPGs. And we're fortunate its SE, who has people to throw around for these things.

Anyone that looks for the smaller games from like Atlus and NIS. We count ourselves lucky to see them inside of a year.