Final Fantasy VII · PlayStation · 1997 · Japan → North America
One of the most important RPGs ever made reached the West through a rushed translation handled almost single-handedly by Square's sole in-house translator, producing beloved errors like "This guy are sick" that have become part of the game's legend.
When Final Fantasy VII launched in the West in 1997, it was a landmark event that introduced millions of players to Japanese role-playing games and helped make the PlayStation a success. Yet the English script that carried this monumental story was produced under conditions that almost guaranteed problems. The entire translation was handled by Michael Baskett, Square's only in-house translator at the time, working largely alone with a localisation coordinator but without the robust editorial process, team support, or communication with the Japanese developers that a project of this scale demanded. The technical circumstances made the job harder still. Baskett had to work with fixed-width fonts and enter his translations in double-byte Shift-JIS encoding, an environment in which ordinary spell-checking tools did not function. He was translating an enormous, complex, sprawling narrative with limited context about how lines connected, no easy way to catch typos, and a punishing schedule. Under those conditions, a scattering of errors was inevitable, and several of them slipped into the final game and became famous. The most celebrated is "This guy are sick," a grammatically broken line delivered in the slums of Midgar that has become shorthand for the entire era of rough Square localisation — so much so that a history of the company's translation efforts was titled after it. Other notable mistakes included Aerith's father's equipment being mistranslated so that "Sexy" or "grown-up" underwear became "Orthopedic Underwear," along with various awkward phrasings and inconsistencies scattered through the lengthy script. None of these errors were catastrophic, but their oddness lodged them permanently in fan memory. Crucially, the flawed translation did nothing to diminish the game's impact — Final Fantasy VII became one of the most beloved and influential titles ever made, and its rough English acquired an affectionate, nostalgic quality rather than a scornful one. The errors are remembered fondly, quoted as in-jokes, and treated as endearing character quirks of a formative gaming experience. The episode highlighted how under-resourced game localisation still was in the 1990s, even for a flagship release, and it became a catalyst in the story of how Square and the wider industry gradually professionalised translation into the far more rigorous discipline it is today.
The root of Final Fantasy VII's translation quirks was simply a lack of resources. Michael Baskett, Square's only in-house translator, carried essentially the entire script alone, without the editorial layers, collaborative review, or developer communication that such a vast narrative required. Compounding this, he worked in a technical environment — fixed-width fonts and Shift-JIS double-byte encoding — where standard spell-checking tools were useless, so even simple typos could slip through undetected. That a single person, under a tight schedule and with minimal support, translated one of the largest and most important RPG scripts of the decade makes the relatively small number of memorable errors more a testament to the difficulty of the task than an indictment of the translator.
Rather than tarnishing the game, Final Fantasy VII's translation slips became cherished pieces of its identity. "This guy are sick" is quoted so widely that it lent its name to a history of Square's localisation efforts, and oddities like the "Orthopedic Underwear" mistranslation are recalled with affection rather than derision. The game's overwhelming quality and emotional impact meant its rough edges read as endearing character rather than failure, and they now function as nostalgic in-jokes among fans. The episode also marked a turning point: the visible strain of under-resourced 1990s localisation helped push Square and the industry toward the professionalised, team-based translation processes that would follow, making FFVII's script both a beloved artefact and a milestone in the maturing of game localisation.