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 Time for another pointless trivia about Final Fantasy VII, where I focus on translation issues and oddities that caused misunderstandings about the game and certain plot points, as well as just anything else interesting.

There's a point in the Temple of the Ancients where Cloud and Aerith have a very weird exchange, where Aerith reads out the words "Black Materia" one letter at a time, Cloud says "Black Materia!" and Aerith replies "Hey! ...Black Materia." The reason for this surreal dialogue is that it's an attempt by the localisers at translating a kind of joke that only really works in Japanese. Written Japanese doesn't use spaces, so it can sometimes be ambiguous as to where one word ends and the next begins. What happened was that Aerith read the phrase correctly, but inserted the space in the wrong place, so instead of "Kuro Materia" (Black Materia), she came up with "Kuroma Teria" (black-magic terrier). Cloud then corrects her with "Kuro Materia", embarrassing her.

Cloud's first line in the English localisation (after giving his name) is "I don't care what your names are. Once this job's over...I'm outta here." This immediately paints him as a standoffish, aloof jerk who only cares about getting paid. The Japanese version, however, had him use a more playful tone, which makes him sound more like a cocky, arrogant poser, with the implication that he thinks he's better than he actually is. The remake changes the line to "This is a one-time gig. When it's done, we're done.", which the English voice actor plays with a certain degree of warmth, indicating that Cloud doesn't mean it in a harsh way.

One of the major plot points of the game got muddled and obscured by the localisation - namely that the Sephiroth the party was pursuing throughout Disc 1 and who murdered Aerith was not actually the real Sephiroth, but pieces of Jenova shapeshifted to look like Sephiroth and being controlled by Sephiroth's will. The real Sephiroth spends most of the game in the Northern Crater, having washed up there after being thrown into the Nibelheim reactor by Cloud. This is why all the encounters with Sephiroth end with the party fighting a Jenova boss - those are meant to be the true forms of the "Sephiroth" in the encounter. While this is all spelled out much more clearly in the Japanese version, it's incredibly easily missed in the English localisation because it's reduced to only two lines in the Whirlwind Maze:
Cloud: Jenova's cells... ...hmm. So that's what this is all about. The Jenova Reunion...
Tifa: Not Sephiroth!? You mean all this time it wasn't Sephiroth we've been after?
Cloud even follows this by saying "I'll explain later", only to then never do so.

In a flashback, if the player has Cloud check Tifa's drawers, he finds something that the localisation calls "Orthopedic Underwear". The more literal translation is "Slightly Stretched Underwear", but the word being translated as "stretched" - senobi - is used in a more idiomatic sense, sort of like how a child would stand on their toes in order to appear taller. The implication was that Tifa was wearing underwear designed for women older than her, in order to appear or feel more grown-up, so a more accurate translation would be "Kind of Trying to Look Grown Up Underwear", or for a smoother localisation, "Sort of Granny Panties".

Zack and Aerith's relationship is described very differently between the two versions. In English, Aerith says that Zack was her first boyfriend. Cloud asks if they were serious, and Aerith denies it, responding that she only liked him for a while. In Japanese, she says that Zack was the first guy she liked, to which Cloud asks if they were dating, and she denies it, claiming that she only thought for a while that it would be a nice idea.

Contrary to popular belief, Cloud and Tifa were not childhood friends. Both make it clear in the game (in both versions) that they didn't really know each other very well, with their first time meeting being when Cloud suddenly called Tifa to the water tower to announce that he was joining SOLDIER. Before then, Cloud was simply a loner who had a crush on Tifa but was too shy to approach her, while Tifa simply didn't pay much attention to him as she had her own circle of friends. And speaking of which...

During the flashbacks in Cloud's subconscious after he and Tifa fall into the Lifestream, in the English version, Cloud says "I really wanted to play with everyone, but you never let me in the group." This makes Tifa seem like a bully who deliberately ostracised the lonely, socially-awkward kid in town, but the reality is quite different. The Japanese line translates more accurately as "The truth is that I wanted to play with everyone, but I just couldn't ask to be let in", making it clear that the problem was Cloud himself being too shy to ask to join, rather than Tifa deliberately shutting him out. The remake rectifies this by showing an extra flashback scene where Tifa asks Cloud to join her and her friends, and becomes upset when he silently ignores her out of disaffected shyness.

Cloud's catchphrase, "kyoumi nai ne", literally "not interested", was translated in many different ways in the localisation, such as "don't care", "don't really care", "not my thing", etc., which had the effect of obscuring the fact that he even had a catchphrase in the first place. This may, however, have been a deliberate choice - while "kyoumi nai ne" does literally translate as "not interested", the "nai ne" softens it, indicating it's meant in a cheeky, playful way rather than a harsh way (though it does still come off as rude even so). Later portrayals of Cloud would more consistently translate it as "not interested" (aside from one time in Kingdom Hearts where it's translated as "I think I'll pass"), which many English speakers assumed was an attempt to play up and canonise the fan interpretation of Cloud as disaffected and aloof, whereas it was actually just an attempt to be more accurate to his original character. 

Some Limit Break names got mistranslated. For instance, Climhazzard was meant to be Climb Hazard, and Ungarmax was meant to be Anger Max (this one got fixed in the PC version).

In the original version, Cait Sith speaks with a comically-exaggerated Kansai accent. This is later revealed to be Reeve playing up his own accent, which he normally hides at work in order to appear more professional. The localisation removed any trace of him having an accent entirely, which renders a scene where he panics after realising that Scarlet and Heidegger overheard him talking incomprehensible in English, as he wasn't saying anything incriminating at the time. In the original version, they caught him speaking with his accent. Later portrayals would fix this by giving Cait Sith a Scottish accent in the English dub.

"Sephiroth Copy" got localised as "Sephiroth-clone" in the original. This was probably because they thought "copy" would sound too silly, but it was a rather misleading change - the Sephiroth Copies are test subjects who were injected with Jenova's cells, creating a similar effect in them to that of Sephiroth, rather than them being actual genetic copies of Sephiroth as the word "clone" implies.

In the Japanese version, whenever Cloud was being controlled/manipulated by Sephiroth, he would start speaking in a different, more formal way, to indicate he wasn't himself. The English localisation removed this aspect and had him still speak in his usual way during these scenes, which seemed to indicate that he was being influenced rather than outright controlled.

Cloud's condition was called "Mako poisoning" in the localisation, which makes sense, as Mako energy is an allegory for nuclear power. However, the Japanese term, "mako chuudoku", translates more literally as "Mako addiction", creating an additional allusion to drugs and drug abuse. This makes several scenes make a lot more sense, such as the flashback of Tifa finding Cloud lying in a gutter moaning incoherently, and Cloud's recovery later in the game after opening up to Tifa about his true feelings, since Cloud's problem was more a psychological one than a physical one. Crisis Core translates it more accurately as "Mako addiction", and in the remake Cloud is accused of being a "Mako junkie" by a passerby.

In the original script, Cloud had a habit of speaking with clichéd idioms, giving the impression that he was someone whose "own words" weren't his own. This aspect is still associated with him by Japanese fans, and is even referenced in Dissidia Final Fantasy. The localisation changed this to him using a lot of understatements and undercutting his own words, which isn't as memorable and hasn't carried over to any of his future appearances.

In the Japanese version, Aerith's speech patterns are very rough and tomboyish, which was intended both to match her low-class upbringing and as a humorous contrast to her girly appearance (imagine someone looking like Princess Peach but talking like Harley Quinn and you'll get more or less what they were going for). The localisation makes her speech sound more playful and almost cutesy, which kind of ruins the joke. The remake thankfully fixes this, having Aerith speak in slang in the English localisation and even swear ("Shit!") at one point.