Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children

Translation by FlameSamurai

Hey, everyone! This is my little page on my wonderful wife's wonderful little corner of the web. She's the one with all the artistic talent, so I don't usually have anything to put up to show to the world. Well, now I do. I have done a full translation of the movie "Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children". This project first started with me just doing a little touch-up work on one of the translations I had found, fixing the big errors that jumped out at me. But somehow I ended up copying the basic structure out of an ssa file, and writing my own translation from scratch. I'm still not quite sure when that decision occurred... Oh well. About two months of working on it off and on, it's done. It's been a very enjoyable project, and has been great Japanese practice.

I was worried for a little while, around November, that I wouldn't get it done in time to be of any value to anyone, because Sony and Square-Enix might have actually released the movie in North America before I finished. Well, apparently those fears were rather groundless. So my subtitles may be useful for several months to come, until Sony and SE-USA finally get an official translation out.

I would like to take this opportunity to voice my position on the whole mess. First off, people shouldn't blame Square-Enix Japan for the North American delays, or the erroneous release dates. There's no reason to believe that Nomura or SE-Japan has anything to do with the delays. Also, I'm not really sure that SE-USA can be held accountable for the erroneous release dates, though they probably could have handled the situation better. I'm tired of people treated companies like people. I'm also tired of people ignoring the fact that within companies exist a large number of people, who have independent views, and sometimes conflicting information. Sometimes the acts of one employee, or a group of employees, can seem to represent the acts, views, and promises of the entire company. However, should the company be held to an erroneous claim by one of their employees that they cannot possibly meet? I believe it most likely that that was the case with the release dates Square-Enix USA has reportedly promised. Anyone who has worked in a corporate environment should realise that mistakes happen, misinformation gets distributed, and the company has to decide how to handle it. Square-Enix USA unfortunately decided to try to cover up the misinformation, instead of publicly blaming the employees responsible.

Maybe this is how it happened, maybe it isn't. Cut them some slack, it's done when it's done. Sure, they should explain their delays. We'd all probably have more respect for them if they would admit what the holdup is, and apologize for the delays. That's what people seem to be expecting them to do, and that's what we might reasonably expect SE-Japan to do. But this isn't SE-Japan that we're dealing with. This is SE-USA, and they're American businessmen. I don't think a polite apology is the norm here in America. So if people would just separate the two branches of this incredible company in their minds, then maybe the whole thing would make a little more sense.

All right, I'm done ranting. Guess I haven't ranted in a long time... Anyway, here's the subtitle file (ssa format, should be displayable with DirectVobSub, VSFilter, Media Player Classic, etc.). Enjoy!

Oh, and if I haven't put you off too much with my ranting, or even if I have, why don't you check out the rest of the site while you're here? My wife's a lot nicer than I am, despite what she says. She's a big Final Fantasy fan, and draws a lot of cute stuff.