Introduction
Final Fantasy VII is one of the most popular games in the Final Fantasy franchise and has a large following. Although I briefly played the original PlayStation 1 game, I was happy to have the chance to work on the script for a simulated remastered version of the game, as I was familiar with other series within the franchise, such as Final Fantasy X, X-2, XII, and XIV. It was also an excellent experience to compare my and my team’s version of the translated script against the original game’s script.
My team members included Nicole Henry, Xingyue (Silver) Zhang, and Harlyn Lane. One of the remarkable things about our team is that we all are Japanese language learners, so this was a great experience working with a team with the same B language as I whom I could turn to if I had a question about a translation. We translated approximately ten minutes of the introduction scene to the moment where the player has to escape from Sector 5’s blast reactor.
We used SDL Trados 2021, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Antconc, and a glossary converter.
Proposal
The proposal is below for your viewing pleasure. Our proposal has six parts: Specifications, Project Goals, Terms and Conditions, Processes & Resources, Deliverables, and the Quote.
Deliverables
For our deliverables, we had the following: Source Text (.docx), Pseudo-translation (.docx), Styleguide (.docx), Termbase (.sdltb), Translation Memories (.tmx), and Target Text (.docx).
Lesson Learned
We encountered plenty of issues while working on this project, but we were able to troubleshoot the problems and resolve a majority of the problems experienced due to trial and error. Since Trados is a powerful Computer Assisted Translation tool, we had a learning curve to overcome, but once we did, we were able to package and recombine translation files and adequately use the termbase and the translation memory. We also learned the importance of style guides and how things quickly go wrong without pre-flighting the documents. Nicole was a phenomenal project manager, Xingyue was excellent at troubleshooting, and Harlyn did a fantastic job as the proofreader and editor of the translated text. Overall, everyone did a great job translating the scripts.
video here
Regina Dukes 