As some of you may or may not know, NIS America is currently working on a patch that aims to improve the translation quality of Ys VIII, which was bad enough that the president of the company issued a formal apology to fans in October. The re-translation is so extensive that all of the game's voiced dialogue, besides attack grunts and the like, are being completely re-recorded and NIS has recently been sharing some clips from the new dub on their blog. You can listen to them here and here.
I found the clip for Catherine, now being called Kathleen, especially surprising since her personality is almost completely different in the new dub. She acted sort of calm and direct in the original translation but is now a lot harsher in tone. Here is the scene from the clip in the current game for comparison. I thought she sounded so different at first because NIS was trying to punch up her dialogue but I looked up a translation of when Falcom initially announced her character on Gematsu and it mentions that Kathleen has a "frigid and sharp" personality and even has a quote where she calls Adol a "redheaded punk". This was a part of her personality that didn't come across at all in the current translation and really highlights just how much was lost in the original English script. It kind of makes me want to play through the whole game again when this patch is released just to see how different it will be.
What do you guys think of what NIS has shared of the new dub?
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