Final Fantasy XIV: “Chocobos” Renamed “Horsebirds”
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Sep 18, 2010 22:46 JST
- Tags: China, Final Fantasy, Made in China, MMORPG, Square Enix, Translation
Square Enix’s bizarre decision to rename “Chocobos” to “horsebirds” for the Japanese version of Final Fantasy XIV has given rise to a storm of criticism and a grovelling and unconvincing apology from the designers.
Meanwhile, players have begun to speculate that the game was largely made in China, with Chinese audiences in mind…
The situation began with Square Enix revealing it has a full Chinese version of Final Fantasy XIV planned.
Square Enix for its part has commented that “the Chinese version is a completely different service” and that it will solve the problem of gold farmers with IP bans.
Japanese players of Final Fantasy XIV soon noticed that their own version of the game dispensed completely with the “English” names in favour of names using Chinese characters exclusively.
Most noticeably, “Chocobo” (チョコボ – chokobo) was renamed to “馬鳥,” a meaningless word combining the character for “horse” with that for “bird.”
Chocobos thus became “horsebirds,” a phrase as ridiculous to Japanese ears as to western ones.
For those with some familiarity with the languages in question, this is how it all ended up:
Japanese: English: ”How it should be”:
盾備 Guard ガード
搦槍 Heavy Thrust ヘヴィスラスト
奥儀：早詠 Fastcast ファストキャスト
霊銀鉱 Mythril Ore ミスリル鉱
主器 Main Weapon メインウェポン
馬鳥 Chocobo チョコボ
Final Fantasy games have typically made heavy use of English in their Japanese language versions. Most Japanese players seem to have found these made-up Kanji terms considerably more confusing than the admittedly unwieldy English transliterations.
Curiously, some users also noticed that “index finger” was written in Chinese (食指) rather than Japanese (人差し指) – a very odd oversight indeed, unless it somehow transpired that the game was actually developed in China.
Soon suspicious users began to connect these changes with another major design change – the highly controversial “fatigue system,” which imposes severe penalties for players who play too long, as Square Enix sees it.
In fact, Chinese law requires all MMORPGs to have just such a “fatigue” system, in order to “protect” players from the addictive properties of these games.
For many, the coincidence of this exact feature appearing in the game alongside an announcement of a full Chinese release cannot be dismissed as coincidence. Soon Square Enix was being accused of making most of the game in China, for the Chinese.
Regarding this sudden change in naming, Square Enix’s Hiromichi Tanaka was at pains to deny it had anything to do with a Chinese version:
“Even in XI there were these Chinese-like Kanji names – it was just intended to build atmosphere. It’s just made-in-Japan Chinese for a Japanese audience, the Chinese version is probably translated completely differently I expect.”
The next day Square Enix published a lengthy explanation of the decision, saying it was intended to simplify naming by consolidating on Chinese-like names but that the resultant mixture of hard to read Kanji names and the remaining unwieldy English names was even more confusing and inconvenient, and that it ruined the atmosphere.
As a result they announced they would be changing back to the English style naming.
Not all are convinced:
“What an absurd excuse!”
“The naming was abnormal, but putting out an explanation like that is even more abnormal…”
“You don’t normally write ‘index finger’ in Chinese for no reason, do you?”
“If this explanation is right, then there’s no reason for ‘Chocobo’ to become ‘horsebird’ now is there?”
“There is no way they turned ‘Chocobo’ into ‘horsebird’ to make it easier to remember.”
“Explain that one away!”
Of course, none of these translation concerns are likely to impinge upon the western release of the game (although seeing the international reaction to Chocobos being renamed to “Horsebirds” would be instructive indeed).
The suspicion that the fatigue system was largely introduced as a way of coping with Chinese laws does however make as least as much sense as the “reaching out to casuals by curbing hardcore players” explanation offered, and the doubts over the use of Chinese text in the game do not seem to have been dismissed as easily as Square Enix apparently hopes.
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Playing the beta, there were numerous spelling and grammatical errors in the story text. Reading this would make me wonder if they did get some Chinese sweat shop to translate their dialogue.
Really disappointed so far with these small details.
Everyone here not making fun of Horsebird are trolltastic faggots, regardless of any apparent vapid intellect.
I didn't care about the copy/paste thing, and I was going to try my best to over look the exp limets. But god be damned to hell if I'll over look SE bowing to chinese rmt's or renaming chocobo's "horsebirds". -_-
I mean really the hell?! china hates japan so why is japan going out of it's way to make a game for them?
(I only read bits and picese as I skimed down so if my rant is off, my bad xD )
why not? it's funny that way, I don't even play those games anyway -_-
they're really trying hard to make this game an epic fail
i think its chickenbirds is the best for it.
Final fantasy has become just a mere deformed shadow of its original self.
Sound like it might be fun to buy this for a laught.too bad i m so poor i'll only be able to get 1 game in the next few months.Sorry everything else im going with FO:New Vegas. It is sad this will probably blow.
The correct name is penisbird.
I normally dismiss these Japanese nationalistic/anti-Chinese posts out of hand, but it does make some sense that they would put that godawful fatigue system in for the Chinese. I don't see why they would risk their game failing in every other market for something that should have been handled by the localization process like WoW did though, other than having no sense whatsoever. I admit, that's not that far a stretch for Hiromichi Tanaka and the FFXI team, who have a history of making very strange decisions and never properly explaining them.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Say it with me.
Cho-Co-Bo.
Eh, the kanji might literally be "horsebirds", but Kanji can be freely "pronounced", so you can read it as "Chocobo".
Many authors of literature in Japan do that, combining kanji, and then giving an own "reading".
So, this news is pretty much worthless.
There's no furigana there to indicate a alternate reading, so your observation is pretty much worthless.
Drugs were involved.
lmao HORSEBIRD! ah well.. i'm still buying this game limited edition also i can't wait to play it
I read, and spilt my drink on the gif.
You might as well change the title to a big "****YOU" for the chinese version.
All this shit because the chinese can turn games into a freaking economy that earns more than them..
Is there an online trading system for this game?
Because, all items bought from chinese gamers would have ugly labels on them, like "金馬鳥" instead of Golden Chocobo.
And translated, it can mean golden HORSE-DICK.
I honestly think Artefact did this article so he can post that gif.
lol anyway.
they should rename the game as well : "FAIL FANTASY"
I wonder if Blizzard is willing to try their luck in Japan now.
I find it strange that they have avoid selling their games in the Japanese market.
Given the number of disgruntled FFXIV players, they should try to pushing WoW in Japan.
There is "money on the table".
Oh dear, it is just getting more funny all the time.
I think they can be call OSTRICH.
Anyone else see an archer wearing a chicken suit with high boots on in that pic?
Of all the changes they had to make, why didnt they just make a chocobo with teeth, huge talons, red in color and a thirst for blood?
Hmm, I'm used to seeing funny Japanese-->English translation mistakes. Japanese-->Chinese mistakes are a new one though.
I'm sure they just thought everyone would be too dumbstruck by the graphics to actually read anything anyway.
I can finally stop collecting Final Fantasy games at least. SE is just money hungry now. I just didn't expect them to risk pissing off their own people like this. Most Japanese people I've known over the years have a deep hatred for the Chinese. This should be fun to watch play out.
What the fuck Square Enix? What the fuck?
Counterpoint! http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=23333
And seriously guys, why is everything you write about FFXIV so terribly, terribly negative at the cost of accuracy?
馬鹿野狼！！
In all due seriousness, the Japanese players are ticked with Square Enix since they outsourced FFXIV's production to China. That's the real reason behind their outrage since the Japanese players in general come across as insanely xenophobic. They literally felt *cheated* when SE released FFXI worldwide since they felt it was *their* game.
Game's good, deal with it.
Low quality and made in china. Will be the last final fantasy version I bought and I bought every single part of it.
I'm not a fan of the ff mascot chcobos but changing there names was probably the most stupidest thing especially for horsebird.
gif ruled, this is like deleting slimes from dragonquest, chocobo is a mascot of FF. guess its getting old eh
lol what the fuck?
Well the issue is that the game was actually chock full of CHINESE words which didn't even make sense ordinarily in Japanese. It's not even that the kanji were complicated, though some were, it's just that they flat out used compounds and terms that do not make sense in the Japanese language and are straight from Chinese. It looks like the Japanese version was a badly localized version of a Chinese game.
I was a skeptic at first but I'm actually starting to believe that this game IS developed in China and for the Chinese market first and foremost. That explains everything.
Hiroki motherfucking Kikuta likened Squaresoft of the good days more to a group of college buddies making video games for kicks. I cannot imagine the soulless corporation Square-Enix being a sliver like that. Enix seemed better on it's own too. Quintet made great games. Most of the important people involved in anything good from Squaresoft left the company. Maybe the company changing buildings had something to do with it. That's why Nobuo Uematsu quit.
Outsourcing to Korea and China is killing Japanese anime and video games in a number of ways, and the idiots keep on doing it, but most Japanese are making garbage themselves. Besides, it's not Japanese if it's not made in Japan.
ROFL is this like a professional bullshit site?
Why so butthurt, SE-fag?
I totally don't want to start calling cute chocobos, "horsebirds". It makes them sound like some freak failed experiment.
Even Pokemon comes up with better names than that.
Call them "11 Exp Monsters"
I give you the ffxiv horsebird fanart
http://imageboard.neko-sentai.com/post/view/29463
I hope you all realise this website makes up alot of bullshit right?
Horsebirds....what the fuck? What kind of drugs were the people at square smoking?
Actually I take that back...what drugs WEREN'T they taking when they came up with that name? That said...that gif is indeed lol worthy.
little by little Square-Enix is killing themselves as a gaming CO. how i miss the old days...
I know for one Chocobos were known as 陸行鳥
Land-sailing birds in Chinese traditionally. Definitely not horsebirds, unless some crappy translators had never played FF before.
Chinese developers maybe...
Maybe this is what they ment by "Western" developers
Horsebirds? You mean Horseclaws! Those mounts that Yupa had in Nausicaa of The Valley of Wind!
Toriuma (horsebird) is what they call them in Nausicaa ("Horseclaws" in the manga translation). Perhaps they decided to make it less obvious a rip-off of Miyazaki finally (with the nod to the popular ChocoBall mascot popular when FF first introduced them).
as a chinese, i find those names very stupid
I don't know what is worse...
Square Enix making all these mistakes, or Sankaku reporting all these mistakes.
Before finding Sankaku (roughly 9-10 months ago) I mostly never had any bad opinions of Square-Enix, or FF, Or ect...
What was my favorite non-Nin10doh developer, now has some pretty bad opinions coming from me.
No Final Fantasy fan wants their Chocobo's named to Horse Birds. :\
How do you just go and change a 20+ year icon like that?
Thats like changing Cactuars, or Moogles, or Tonberries, or Bahamuts, or ect...
Same here, thanks Saknkakucomplex4 open my eyes
Ignorance is bliss, faggot.
Personally, I didn't need Sankaku to let me know that SE sucks. I...just needed to waste 5 years of my life playing all their games before it finally sunk in that they were never gonna NOT be half-assed. Dammit Sankaku, where were you in 2003?
Oh well, nice to find another place that seems to share my opinion...not that that's terribly hard anymore. In fact, I think it's a lot harder to find somewhere that doesn't now. Aside from forums/subforums dedicated to SE (or one/more of their products), or "professional" (bribe-able) review sites of course...
try to judge for yourself...it does make good points at times, but many of the times sankaku exxagerates things...usually with the last few paragraphs...
But hey it gives us a good laugh...so why not...
So much fail coming from SE lately.
So much fail in Square-Enix lately but i never imagined they'd be china-quality fail.
They might aswell cancel FFXIV now. There is no coming back from that deep a pit.
YEAH! China own the world.
really? the last time i check china only own a big desert, one of the most toxic piece of sea and land. ooh and some medieval huts. chinese merchadising fever its like disco. you love it at the begining but eith time you search better things. you only read the post. everyone think china products sucks now
ann frgp xao. ap. x.nrbi yr go! ann frgp xao. ap. x.nrbi yr gov
All your base are belong to us!
I remembered Nausicaä When I heard Horsebirds.
Linear storylines, Chinese quality MMO's......SOMEONE in square enix needs to be sacked badly for letting this crap happen.
as a person with chinese as first language( and from Taiwan), I find it strange that the examples given above are in traditional chinese. China uses simplified chinese
However, the choice of the chinese character and how it sounds, does have the mainland china sound/flair/convention to it.
Can SquareEnix fuck up so badly that they not only fucked up FFXIV but they developed a game targetting mainland china in traditional chinese? That would mean they are not only retards, but Olympian level retards.
It is official, Final Fantasy is now a very generic jRPG with no identity or originality.
Oh wait... They never had any.
No, it is now a CRPG, since China pretty much replaced Japan here...
And yet even with all this, I have to wonder how many of the complainers on the Japanese side will still buy the game anyways? Yes, they have every right to complain, and no, no one would be surprised if the game sold horribly, but will they really follow through is the question.
I DIDN'T pay a cent for FFXIII, and I sure as hell ain't giving even a KB of HDD space for this shit.
I ain't a corporate robot. Unfortunately, many others can't say the same about themselves.
Well, they followed through with not buying FFXIII...
Technically "Horsebird" isn't even a correct name in Chinese either. Chocobos have always had an official Chinese name as "Ground Roaming Bird" since the 90's. That's what every long time Chinese Final Fantasy fans knew them as. This is gonna piss them Chinese fan off just as much.
'陸行鳥' In traditional Chinese, in case anybody wants to look it up.
It sounds much better that way in Japanese too.
I would think Land Roaming birds sound better, since ground sounds pretty close to 地.
Horsebird actually is easier to remember than Chocobo, but only because the image is so ridiculous.
It's not accurate as a descriptive name, so it could be better if they really need it to be memorable.
I don't think it needs to be changed at all, though.
The Chocobo birds were unique to FF. The name you would shout out in your own room when you ran into an area that had one or lots when playing the old FF games. Hearing this, you couldn't pay me to buy or play "FF'been around too long already'" at any price.
I played the (open) beta for about 30 minutes. After that, I deleted the game from my system. The graphics were reasonably pretty, but the UI was TERRIBLE: it was clearly made for a gamepad, not a keyboard/mouse. Add to this rumors of them doing lazy copy-pastes of environments with the fact it seems to be aimed at Chinese audiences, and this game is dead to me; there's no way I'll buy it, or recommend it to anyone else (the PC version, anyway).
What a total fuckup by Square Enix.
now thats being sinical if you're not into MMO's don't write shit......................................................but yeah the game sucks.
Then why didn't you play it with a pad?
It wasn't a particularly good experience, but didn't suck as much as I expected. It's actually quite nice to have a different MMORPG playing experience than in other games.
There were other quirks that annoyed me much more, like the harvesting minigame and the slow reaction to controls. Action RPGs can be a lot of fun, but don't take out the action by inserting needless delays.
It seems the game was developed almost completely in China to maximize profits. This explains just about all deviations from previous works, the names, the poor quality control regarding the map, the fatigue system... Chinese quality indeed.
Might as well change it to horse deer -> 馬鹿.
Oh wait...
you sir are awesome. I decree it!
How is the FF fanbase in China? Would FFXIV survive the market there?
Considering the way Squenix continues to fuck up it might soon be the only market for FF...
Well, FFXIV is most likely gonna be successful in China considering China's own regulation regarding "fatigue system" on MMORPGs. They must've gotten used to it by now by playing other MMOs.
However, the world is not following Chinese rules. What's the point if they're successful in China but not everywhere else?
Quoting AVGN: "What were they thinking??!!"
"Well, FFXIV is most likely gonna be successful in China considering China's own regulation regarding "fatigue system" "
No, it's like a rule. Just because Square decided to put it in FOR THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD something that every mmorpg already has in China will not make FF14 sell better. Real companies do the regional versions to match the market, but they're being fucking lazy fucktards.
China has different servers than the rest of the world. SE said it is to stop gold farmers.
Considering the entire world plays on the same server, it wouldn't be fair for FFXIV to limit only regional areas with fatigue. I am completely fine with the fatigue system, and the renaming of the Chocobo (while distasteful) IS a regional thing. I fail to see how you can complain.
Once China has all the money (which will be soon), the world WILL be playing by Chinese rules.
To get ready, learn how to say "Welcome Chinese masters" like you mean it.
Watch out for Chinese eels. They'll be up your asshole in a second if you're not careful.
They may think China will be the world. What would you expect from a country with more than 1 billion pop ?
Horsebirds? WTF?
Oh fuck this, let's keepin callin them Chocobos anyway!
We still would、it is only like that in the JP version。
Should be called ridechick.
Know what? I think I might buy it just for lulz. This could be some limited edition stuff!
Imagine that, after they corrected the names and the old production is stopped, you'd be among the few in the world who have that funny version!
FFXV name examples:
Ifrit ---> Bullman
Doomstrain ---> Thomas the Tank Engine
No ---> Do not want
adding:
Shiva ---> Naked Ice Queen
Odin ---> 1 Hit K.O. Swordsman
Omega Weapon ---> Will-pawn-your-ass-if-you-ain't-ready
combined with a justaway and you will get the ultimate boss! D:
You should also put in a Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong cannon somewhere along the new cast.
its so refreshing to hear some Gintama references once in a while
R.I.P. SQ
Yes,Squaresoft is no longer active, it made a Jointventure with ENIX and it's called Square Enix...
At least the Enix side is still doing good.
That gif cracked me up tho xD
Adding wings to the poor creature would looked better.
>Why have we only heard of endless failure coming out of FF14
FF was awesome because its the brainchild of Japanese creativity, partly inspired by Western fantasy.
Now it's developed by xenophobic Chinese. The result should be no surprise.
the pic should have been an unicorn with wings.
That would be a real horsebird
@Fonzer that's right, you reminded me... WHEN'S THE 2ND GUNDAM UNICORN MOVIE FINALLY COMING OUT!??!!
it's killing me...
Horsewings sound mighty delicious tho xD
And Moogles get renamed as Flyingfurballs while Mages become AbraCadabra.
If they'll continue the trend then they should give every Cid a stable last name like "Cid Ishbakahghein."
I bet their theme song will be renamed to "Mambo de HORSEBIRD" as well.
If this continues, Square-Enix is going to be burried in horsebird's bullshit...
Why have we only heard of endless failure coming out of FF14
Seriously...
special move HORSEBIRD
and what about Biggs and Wedge?
Squarefagnix has descended to the bottomless pits of retardedness.
Ah, you mean China.
So true, Squarefagnix as by "Anonymous" is losing its touch on Final Fantasy games.
Creativity...innovation...are forgotten skills of the FF teams.
BUT, the Kingdom Hearts team is still on top of their game. KH now I can say beats the shit out of the current gen of FF titles.
uh you too by actually caring about this shit.
The only thing that would make up for this terrible attack on a once amazing franchise, would have to be a HD remake of FFVI.
I'd be happy for VI, VIII or IX. RIGHT NOW, SQUARE!
FF VIII lol wut
I can understand the other choices but VIII sucked balls.
As badly as I would love a FULLY HD
redone 3D FF6, I too, would be afraid
of what the current SQUARE would do
to such a remake.
Oh who am I kidding...
SQUARE would definitely F*CK it up.
Seeing SE fuck up the old GOOD ones would be nightmare.
I actually would not want that. The current Square Enix would find some way to screw these classic games up with "improvements".
I am afraid of remakes after this
Nothing would be worse than a chinese remake of the epic classics
make that sQueerenix
Last I check, a "horsebird" is a pegasus, not a yellow-feathered ostrich. Them's be a chocobo. Or, in WoW, a Hawkstrider. XD
Going, going, going, aaand... OOOH THIS GAME'S JUMPED THE SHARK! There's no turning back now!
The only good thing to come of this renaming is the gif above. Squareenix should seriously get their act together. Their franchise names won't save them forever, and they seem to get worse by the day.