Originally posted here on 2022-05-12.

Started reading FFX-2.5: Le prix de l'éternité, aka the novel that everyone hates. I think I did skim over the extremely sub-par English translation a while ago, but seeing as the French version is a properly translated one and, er, I can actually read French, I realised that was not the optimum way forward.

Inevitably doing this kind of thing I get sidetracked by the actual language used. In all my halfhearted searches for a copy of the French FFX script I have never managed to find anything beyond a quite good but abandoned novelisation of the game. I would be so delighted to see what decisions were made about tutoiement and vouvoiement, presumably in line with the use or non-use of Sir/Lady in English and honorifics/pronouns in Japanese.

Here I am just marvelling at great length at the fact that, zomg, some things have different names in French:

• Vidina is “Vidin” … this really puzzled me until I remembered why he was called that, haha. Although I was always taught that futur was used more often for the grammatical future in French, so surely he should be called Yjahen, which is a bit less phonotactically sound I guess.
• Keepa has become Kippa, presumably to preserve the pronunciation, although I reckon francophone FFX players would be able to interpret the English spelling appropriately. Actually, when I noticed this my first thought was “surely the French use English terminology in sports, surely they say, like, le goalkeepeur,” but this appears not to be true. In fact, as I should have known, the French term is gardien de but. Hey, they could have called him Gardien, that wouldn’t have been confusing at all.
• The Crusaders are les Bannisseurs. A very cursory glance at Wikipedia tells me there may in fact be no French word for “crusader”, which explains the fact that they’re not called, um … croisadeurs? … But what are they supposed to be banishing? Sin, I guess?
• There’s a serious case of Xtreme Kool Letterz with with words like Invokeur and makina being bandied about. In the latter case I get that it’s probably a pronunciation thing again, but why for the first one? And why is it capitalised, when “summoner” usually isn’t? The English term makes summoners seem like a sort of banal, everyday thing in Spira, while the French one gives a more “unusual and cool” vibe, imo.
• There’s a reference made to something called le Mouvement pour la Vérité, which completely eludes me. At first I thought it might be an extremely loosely translated name for the Youth League, but they indeed seem to be “la Ligue des Jeunes”. I don’t think this ever appeared in FFX-2?

Only just finishing the first chapter but I can see it really is sowing the seeds of (if I remember correctly) Tidus and Yuna’s breakup, showing his unease at how everyone has moved on. Based on the fanbase reaction I think this probably came through a lot less clearly in the fan translation. For example, I think Tidus’ evasiveness is a bit obfuscated here:

Fan translation

The more they were enlarging on Yuna's concert, the more they were irritating him. He had the impression that they were making light of the life-threatening adventure they all had.

“What’s the matter?” Rikku asked. “Are you in a bad mood?”

“Of course not …”

“Yeah, sure! You are going too far. I did my best to tell you everything, and you … If that is how it is, fine! I am going back to the aircraft!”

French version

Plus elles s’étendaient sur le concert au cours duquel Yuna avait chanté, plus elles l’agaçaient.

Il avait l’impression qu’elles transformaient en une aventure amusante les événements graves qui l’avaient jeté dans les bras de la mort.

– Qu’as-tu ? demanda Rikku. Tu es de mauvaise humeur ?

– Mais non…

– À d’autres ! Et puis tu exagères. Moi, j’ai fait l’effort de tout te raconter, et toi… Si c’est comme ça, je retourne à l’aéronef !

tobli’s loose but hopefully idiomatic translation

The more they chattered on about Yuna’s concert, the more they were starting to annoy him. It felt as if they were taking the serious things that had happened to him, the fact that he had come face to face with death itself, and treating it all like a funny story.

“What’s up with you?” said Rikku. “You’re all grumpy.”

“I’m not,” he protested.

“Yeah you are! You’re taking this too seriously. I’ve been trying to tell you everything, and you’re just … if you’re gonna be like that, I’m going back to the airship.”

Ok, doing that was a lot of fun but I’m not going to add “translate an entire novel” to my already ambitious list of FFX-related projects, yikes.