Talk:Ted Woolsey

Ted Woolsey has been listed as one of the Video games good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: June 20, 2020. (Reviewed version).

This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.

If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.

Biography: Sports and Games

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	Sports portal This article is supported by the sports and games work group (assessed as Low-importance).

Square Enix Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Square Enix, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Square Enix-related merchandise and video games on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Square EnixWikipedia:WikiProject Square EnixTemplate:WikiProject Square EnixSquare Enix articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Video games Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Video games, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of video games on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Video gamesWikipedia:WikiProject Video gamesTemplate:WikiProject Video gamesvideo game articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Summary of Video games WikiProject open tasks:

Summary of Video games WikiProject open tasks

AfDs

Kelly Metzger (4 participants)
David McGarry (2 participants)
Stumble Guys (8 participants)
Do You Like Horny Bunnies? (8 participants)
Carlos Pesina (2 participants)
Atlus USA (4 participants)
Danny Mastrogiorgio (2 participants)
Police Trainer (2 participants; relisted)
Beam Invader (5 participants; relisted)
Sephiroth (20 participants; relisted)
The Boss (Metal Gear) (6 participants; relisted)
Silfade (3 participants; relisted)
Balloon Brothers (4 participants; relisted)
Enigma Engine (4 participants; relisted)
ClanLib (8 participants; relisted)

Merge discussions

Other discussions

No major discussions

Untitled[edit]

A partial list of games Ted Woolsey is credited with can be found at:

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,40944/

Final Fantasy Legend III?[edit]

I seem to recall reading in an interview with Woolsey that his first project with Square was in fact Final Fantasy Legend III (aka SaGa III), the B&W Game Boy game.

Here we are; it's the Gamasutra article. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php?story=6361

69.70.158.197 17:14, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interview with Ted Woolsey[edit]

Please listen to this interview for information on the translation before insulting Ted Woolsey. Episode 16 (it's at the end of the episode). --Corilof 00:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mistranslations[edit]

It might be worth mentioning a few of Woolsey's mistranslations of katakana. I think the most notorious is the "Ultima Weapon" of FF6 becoming the "Atma Weapon". There's even a joke referring to this in FFX-2 (in Shinra's Database). I don't know if these mistranslations were accidental or because of space limitations though.

It's worth mentioning, but it should be done carefully, IMO. Mentioning the differences is valid, but without sources we shouldn't speculate on the reasons. – Seancdaug 04:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vying for the most notorious bad FFVI translation is when "dinosaur" was translated as "frightful dragon" (which is what the Japanese word for "dinosaur" literally means). And don't forget that 1/144 ship which is really a 1/144 scale ship. (Not sure if the number was 144 here) Ken Arromdee 04:25, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think a lot of names were purposely changed because, at the time, Final Fantasy wasn't mainstream yet, so they didn't really think they needed to preserve the cross-references. For example, "Soul of Thamasa" became "Gem Box" (and was subsequently mistranslated as "Samantha Soul" in FF8), "Three Stars" became "Economizer", and "Tonberry" became (ugh) "Pug". Still, given the times and the situation, I can understand why they translated FF6 the way they did. It's only in hindsight that people look at Woolsey and see him as a "bad" translator. In fact, I think few people realize the good work that Woolsey actually did. Viltris 19:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's a difference between a change and a mistake. Translating dinosaur as "frightful dragon" (particularly in a game where you're searching for dragons), or the 1/144 ship, are mistakes, not changes. Atma Weapon was more than likely a mistake too--he just didn't recognize that its name was supposed to be something understandable in English. Ken Arromdee 13:37, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I actually can't remember "frightful dragon". Can somebody post a screen shot or a link to a script to remind me? Viltris 21:50, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would rather hypotesize that Atma Weapon is an artifact of a 10 or 11 byte limit for the item name lengths. UltimaWeapon requires 12; it doesn't fit. --Bisqwit 12:57, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then it would have been shortened to UltimaWeap, UltmWeapon, or Ult.Weapon. The only reason one would use "AtmaWeapon" is if he didn't realize that the original katakana meant "Ultima Weapon". 87.11.3.46 19:52, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One of Woolsey's more famous mistakes was not recognizing Biggs Darklighter being the companion of Wedge Antilles in Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger. This was notorious enough that it was one of the few mistakes corrected in the PSX port of those games. I feel that some of his random name changing affects repeated themes in the games, hiding the equivalence from English-speaking players. For example, FF6 had Cait Sith, and Midgar's Orm, the snake near the chocobo farm in FF7. Ted also made weird decisions, like in Breath of Fire 1 how Myria/Miria was arbitrary changed to Tyr even though that is a Norse god not goddess. -- Myria 05:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody might want to include the information included in this podcast at some point--among other things is an interview with Ted Woolsey.

Add maintenance category[edit]

Per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 21#Category:Missing middle or first names, Category:Missing middle or first names has been added to this talk page.—DomBot / ChiDom ^talk 09:13, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Ted Woolsey/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: ProtoDrake (talk · contribs) 16:15, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As I don't feel any conflict of interests here, I'll take this review. If you don't hear anything by next Saturday, please ping. --ProtoDrake (talk) 16:15, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Axem Titanium: I've had a look through the article, and I don't see any issues with this article. Sources seem fine given the circumstances, image seems fine, and it was all quite legible and understandable. Pass. --ProtoDrake (talk) 07:43, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review! Axem Titanium (talk) 20:15, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]