https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Censorship#Final_Fantas...
I don't think any of it is sinister, but I remember finding out about changes that watered down the game and being sad about them. It's neat that people are trying to fuse together what most people consider the good translation with more of the original intent.
Some bits of it are a bummer: Relm used a tone of speaking that was not appropriate for kids in Japan. Choosing to "clean up" her language too much alters the story.
If you play the fan translation of Mother 3, there's similar effort that goes into preserving Kumatora's crass vocabulary that I really appreciated. She swears somewhat infrequently and makes a number of offhand comments that don't necessarily feel unnatural, but certainly wouldn't get approved in a first-party North American release. It's a great little touch of flavor that helps contrast her character more from the more timid Lucas and duty-bound Duster, plus a generally enjoyable curveball for a game that's earlier hours are dominated with less personable, stoic villagers.
I honestly don't see how one could in good faith mistake a translation for a re-interpretation. What's next - because translation is somewhat subjective, that means anything goes?
It's almost hard to draw an analogy to other art forms, because they're considered legitimate and no one tries to do this to them. When Cien años de soledad became 100 Years of Solitude, its depiction of sexuality and themes of incest weren't excised to appeal to more conservative anglo sensibilities. When Parasite caused a sensation in the west a couple of years ago, the version we saw didn't somehow try to pretend it was set in New York or rename Kim Ki-taek to Fred Jones or something. Even genre fiction usually gets treated better than this - something like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo lost its somewhat unwieldy original Swedish title (Män som hatar kvinnor, "Men Who Hate Women") but otherwise remained defiantly Scandinavian.
Now, I agree that nothing in FFVI specifically is all that bad (the translation has plenty of other issues though), and I agree that some people get unnecessarily bent out of shape about it; changing "pubs" to "cafes", or covering up nude statues or whatever is stupid but doesn't fundamentally change the game. But it's still stupid, and disrespectful to the original work.
I suppose you might interpret "Faust" as possibly referring to the general legend of Faust, but OP was almost certainly referring to Goethe's Faust, "considered by many to be...the greatest work of German literature" [3]. Likewise, as proof by existence, here's the original (in two parts) [4], [5].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad
[2] https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/%CE%99%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%AC%CF%8...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%27s_Faust
[4] https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Faust_-_Der_Trag%C3%B6die_ers...
[5] https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Faust_-_Der_Trag%C3%B6die_zwe...
This conversation is about whether it's "sinister" or not, as you put it, to make "all sorts of minor changes in the text and images to better fit regional tastes and cultural norms", and whether to call those changes "censorship". jevoten believed that these changes were, in fact, sinister, and explained why - arguing by analogy that making similar changes to works in other artforms to satisfy prudish sensibilities would be viewed as heretical. You then, seemingly, played inexplicably ignorant and focused on the fact that the particular works that they chose as examples were based on mythologies that have inspired other, independent works. The only way your confusion here makes any sense whatsoever would be if you were literally unaware of the specific works they were referring to, particularly when you said that there was "nothing resembling" an original Iliad or Faust, so, taking you at face value, I demonstrated their existence.
As for the question of what constitutes "censorship" - maybe that's what you perceived as the significant part of your comment? I suppose that'd help explain some of your frustration, not that it'd justify your bad faith argumentation or personal slights. Censorship doesn't need to be handed down by official government censors or something - it can be self-imposed, or imposed by copyright holders against the wishes of the original creator, due to political, social, or economic pressure, which is clearly the case here.
That said, most of the censorship in this game had little to do with "cultural norms" and a lot to do with Nintendo of America applying extremely strict standards to games, which itself had as much to do with politics and market maneuvering as it did American culture:
https://www.filfre.net/2021/04/the-ratings-game-part-2-the-h...
> Senator Lieberman: So, people actually complain that they can’t have the more violent game on the Nintendo system? > Howard Lincoln: That’s correct. Letters and phone calls say, “Leave in the violence! You’re censoring!”
Good old Brock and his homemade jelly donuts
>Kefka's line when the party flees from him on chocobos was changed. In the Japanese version he says "ヒーーーー くっそ！ このかりは必ず返しますよ！", literally translated to "Arggg.... you scums! I will definitely pay you back for this!". In the overseas release, depending on the version, he either says "Son of a submariner! They'll pay for this..." (SNES/PSX version) or "Son of a sandworm! You'll pay for this..." (GBA/PC/iOS).
Wow, yeah. I don't care about that level of "censorship," especially from a "news" point of view.
The uncensored images are pretty tame, too, as in a woman in a sheet having her hips and butt partially uncovered vs. covered.
So, I'm glad people put in the effort to clean up little things like this. I'm still confused why this got upvoted.
One of my favorites from the same game... When Figaro Castle is set on fire, one of the imperial guards says "Fire! Fire! Heh heh heh..." implying that he is Beavis.
Intent of the original writers should take priority over the translator wanting to put their attempts at jokes in.
In this case, kuso (lit. “shit”) is like “damn” in English. I think the bowdlerized versions of “SOB” are actually appropriate
IMO this hack is only partly about censorship, and largely about fixing mistakes and limitations.
I love Woolsey's localizations and would rather have his than a fully accurate translation that loses its charm. But the FF6 translation was also done by a single person with limited information about the game, so there's a fair number of errors. So, I like the approach they took there where they fixed mistakes without losing the flavor.
On top of that, they fixed limitations in string length, allowing for more accurate names for spells, items, enemies, etc.