ROM Hack Metal Max 3 Translation Project

[Terithian]

I made the thread, but I can't find any way to do it. If it is possible, it would probably have to be done by an admin. The name of the thread is in the actual URL after all, so it's not something that should be easily changed.

EDIT: By the way, Lilfut, if we're collaborating on different parts of the translation, we should collude and come up with a common list of character and location names, particularly characters, since they pop up in places like the enemy list and some can be interpreted or spelled different ways. I'd say we should just come up with some master list of character and location names that we can refer to for consistency.
Also, I wanted to ask a question to anyone that reads this: there are some enemies that are basically just a person in a vehicle, and the name of the enemy is just that person's name and a 号, meaning model or whatnot of a vehicle, like in ドミンゲス号. Just translating this as something like "Dominguez's Car" sounds bad, so does anyone have any suggestions?
EDIT 2: Any suggestions for "シェリドラ77" (sheridora 77)? It's one model of a type of vehicle. The other models are named after animals, like the Buffalo 77, the Ostrich 77, or the Condor 77. I'm stumped and searching the internet gets me nothing but autocorrected to Cheryl or links to sites related to Metal Max.
EDIT 3: Well, I've finished a preliminary translation of all the item names. They may change as I do the descriptions and test them in-game, but they're all in English and fit the character limit now. I put the .txt file on Google Drive here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwtIKwiAG7AJeXlCR0l5cVA5VGs/view?usp=sharing
All the vehicle models were the hardest part. I spent several hours studying everything from Greek mythology to Russian folktales to old Japanese tokusatsu movies.

 

[Lilfut]

I would be willing to help with a consistent list of names, yes. I'm already thinking Dr.ミンチ should be Dr. Mortem - it's consistent with the official Metal Saga translation and it just sounds good.

 

[Terithian]

I would be willing to help with a consistent list of names, yes. I'm already thinking Dr.ミンチ should be Dr. Mortem - it's consistent with the official Metal Saga translation and it just sounds good.

I suppose you can if you want. I prefer a more literal translation, myself, as Dr. Mince, as in mincemeat, but both are fine.

 

[Lilfut]

I guess this is an open question - Metal Saga had an official translation shortly after its release, should we be going for consistency with it?

 

[Terithian]

I don't really agree with all the localization choices made in Metal Saga, myself, but I have been referring to it a couple times when translating item names, just as inspiration. There aren't too many things to make consistent, anyway. The main ones are just Dr. Mortem/Mince and the monkey clan, I think. There was no real consistent direct translation for サルモネラ, since it's a pun on "saru" (monkey) and salmonella. The enemies in the Monkey Mountain area that I assume were called the サルモネラ clan in Japanese were called Chopper Chimp, Chimpyro, Postal Primate, and the boss, Granddaddy Kong.
The fan translation of MMR for the SNES just "translated" literally as Salmonella, but that's definitely the wrong way to do it.

EDIT: I made an initial name list. It's definitely missing a lot of character names, but there should be all the location names on it. Feel free to add or change anything. I put notes and question marks on anything I'm not sure about. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwtIKwiAG7AJUWRkcGpwbjUwODA/view?usp=sharing

 

[Lilfut]

Some thoughts...

I think コーラ should be Cola - I have no idea if this was the intent, but it sort of lines up with the food-themed names a lot of video game princesses have.

I thought ホアキン was meant to be Joaquin?

アトゥック made me think Attuck for some reason.

In its most famous gaming usage, the Castlevania series, ベルモンド is translated as Belmont - I don't know if that's what they were going for, but it's something to keep in mind.

"Sabromeo" matches the flow of サブロメオ better, I think.

ギーター is pretty clearly meant to be "guitar" - maybe go for some foreign translation of the word?

I want to say "Sintipede" is an equivalent pun to ムガデス.

Babyrock sounds less like it's supposed to be "Babylon".

Unrelatedly, since we're probably going to be doing MM2R after this, how are we going to translate the クルマ/バイク split there? "Car" doesn't cover tanks which are also under the クルマ umbrella, and "vehicle" sounds confusing as a separate category from "bike".

 

[Terithian]

I don't really like Cola, myself. It sounds a little dumb, especially for such a major character, and Cora is a more common human name, unlike Cola.

Joaquin or Joachim, either works, but you're right, Joaquin is probably better.

I thought about Belmont, but I wasn't sure since Belmont, Belmond, and Belmondo are all legitimate names. Whichever you think sounds best.

You could do Sabromeo, but it loses the joke of the three siblings' names being puns mixing the stereotypical Japanese first, second, and third son names, Taro, Jiro, and Saburo with Romeo. If you can come up with a similar joke that gets the same idea across in English, I'd say go for it.

Yeah, I though it was supposed to be a play on Guitar, since there's another character named Tambourine, but guitar is usually written ギター rather than ギーター, so I wasn't sure what to do with it.

Oh, I like Sintipede. Sounds a lot better than what I came up with.

I seem to remember there being something in the game that clarified whether it was supposed to be "Lock" or "Rock", but until someone finds that, I'd say we go with Babyrock.

You're right that "car" is clearly wrong and "vehicle" doesn't exclude bikes, but I honestly can't think of or find any word that works better than "vehicle" to encompass all buggies, cars, buses, tanks, and whatever else there is. We might just have to accept non-bike vehicles just being called "Vehicles".

 

[Lilfut]

Cola sounds pretty dumb in a void, but I don't imagine it would take long to get used to as just the character's name. It's also the only accurate translation of コーラ, since Cora is just コラ.

"Tom, Dick, and Harry" is a pretty common arbitrary group of 3 male names in English, maybe find a way to combine those with "romeo"?

Maybe Geetar to get across the odd pronunciation? It may be a regional thing, but that's a sort of exaggerated way to pronounce "guitar" where I'm from.

I thought of maybe 2-Wheel and 4-Wheel as バイク and クルマ respectively? Might be something to think about, idk. Ways off, in any case - for the graphical stuff in this game I just had クルマ as "Vehicle" since the クルマ/バイク separation doesn't exist here.

 

[Terithian]

A quick search of a Japanese dictionary also comes up with the names Colla and Kola for コーラ, but I've been doing some research and I didn't realize that Cola is actually a real name. The drink has just poisoned the well for anyone to take it seriously. I still think Cora sounds better (although maybe that's just because that's what I've been calling her since I first played the game a couple years ago), but if you really think Cola is the best name for her, I guess it's fine.

I could think about trying to find puns with common trios of English names. I don't know if Tom, Dick, and Harry would work, but I'll think about it and maybe do some research on other common name trios.

Geetar sounds good to me.

2-Wheel and 4-Wheel could work, but I think just Vehicle and Bike works fine, since the presence of both makes it clear that bikes don't fall under "Vehicles". Anyway, like you said, that doesn't really matter until MM2:R anyway.

 

[DarthNemesis]

ツリシ could be 釣り師 (fisherman)
ネツィブ・メラハ is probably Nezib Melach (pillar of salt)

 

[Terithian]

Could possibly be fisherman. A little odd since it's a mountain pass in the middle of a wasteland, but I think there was a pond or something at the top, beside the old motel.
Also, I'm sure you're right about it being Nezib Melach, if that means pillar of salt. I remember Olga Mode explaining that the name had something to do with the pillar of salt.

Also, Masudora Lab is supposed to be a reference to a mass driver, or electromagnetic catapult. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver) How should that be named in English?

 

[Lilfut]

Massdriver Lab is boring but effective.

 

[Terithian]

Alright, I'll go with that. Also, is it Sombrero Bill or Sombrero Building? It's a little building in Elurus that you can warp to with the Dog System, but my save file is past it and I can't remember what used to be inside it. Also, while testing, I discovered that location names have the same 11 character limit as items and monsters, so I'll probably need to shorten some names to fit.

EDIT:
Well, I'm translating item descriptions now. It's a lot tougher, but a lot more fun. Sucks that I often have to cut out details to fit in the 62 character limit, and that line breaks (\n) count as two characters, not one like they do sometimes. Some of my favourites so far:
VM-X: "Magical, charming, demonic medicine."
Taco Pile: "A heaping pile of tacos, enough to satisfy a man's appetite."
Antenna Water: "Water purified in Beacap. Purified so you don't die from it."
Fried Slime: "This gem consists of slimy cells, exquisitely fried."
Happy Drink: "Drinking will not only make you happy, but restore strength!"
EDIT 2:
RPG7: "Simple, recoilless gun. For everyday home use."
DD Pineapple: "Grenade with more gunpowder than a frag grenade. Do not eat."

Also, odd thing: some items obviously reuse the same description, so it's only in there once, but the Quantum Dolls (1-79) all have unique entries, despite them all being the same. As a result, "量子力学による特殊な人形型の装置。構成部品を組み変えることでさまざまな効果を発揮する。" is repeated 79 times in a row. Thank god for Notepad++'s replace function.

EDIT 3: What should the minigame "戦車でワンワン" be called in English? I just got to the item that lets you play it anytime in the descriptions. I have "Tank Arf Arf", but that doesn't sound great.

EDIT 4: Oh my god. While translating, I found a couple items I never got in-game. The Amagami Decal and the Kimikiss Decal. I immediately looked up how to get them and put them on my tanks. They are simultaneously two of the worst and best things I have ever seen. I never thought I'd see a giant, heavily armed tank with a dating sim character's face plastered on it.

Spoiler

 

[MetalFan]

Sounds great, I already have inserted more than 50% of the graphics. I've been watching the limitation of 11 characters and still nothing.

 

[Lilfut]

I feel like ワンワン in terms of stuff like 戦車でワンワン and ワンワングルメ should just be called "Doggy". "Doggy Tanks" and "Doggy Gourmet", respectively.

I sent MetalFan a WIP of the starting area dialogue to fix any bugs it might have. I fully translated the scene where you meet Cola and Joaquin and fight Raoul and Toledo. Translating the dialogue is super-fun - especially when it comes to delinquent/thug speech. I can't wait to get my hands on Ted Broiler in MM2R.

Also, one of the books in Crying Mama refers to the 大破壊 - I assume that's going to come up a lot throughout the script (given it's referenced as a string like the character names), how do we wanna translate it? I'm thinking "catastrophe".

Edit: Holy fuck, that decal. Is it a reference to something specific, or do you just get a random anime girl on your tank?

 

[Terithian]

I did translate ワンワングルメ as Doggy Gourmet, but I was just unsure if I should do the same for the minigame. I guess Doggy Tanks sounds alright, though, so I'll go with that.

Yeah, the dialogue is fantastic. It's a big part of the reason I wanted to translate this game in the first place.

In regards to 大破壊, I was thinking of following Metal Saga and calling it the Great Destruction. That's how I translated it for the description of the Healthade Z item: "Sold before the Great Destruction. Supposedly heals all ills." I just hope that name isn't too long if it's handled like character names. If Catastrophe fits and Great Destruction doesn't, that'd probably be best.

The two decals, the Amagami Decal and the Kimikiss Decal, are references to the relatively well-known dating sim games Amagami and Kimikiss. I've never played them, but I think it's safe to assume that the characters put on your vehicles when used are popular characters from those games. They're basically entire special paint jobs, not just decals, unlike the name. My tank in the screenshot had a stars and stripes pattern on it before I used the item. To get them, you have to go to two specific vending machines in the basement of Rusty Maiden and enter a special code on each, after which you can buy as many as you want. The codes were given out as some cross promotion for the franchises, I think, but they're pretty easy to find online.

 

[Lilfut]

Yeah, I know about the Lost Password stuff. Should we put those in like a text document accompanying the patch, by the way?

 

[Terithian]

I figured you would, I just put that for anyone else who might want to know.
Putting the passwords in a readme file is what I was thinking, too. Probably a good idea, since people who don't know any Japanese might have trouble finding them on things like the Japanese wiki.

 

[Lilfut]

Paging DarthNemesis: apparently MetalFan's been having issues with your tool re: pointers (no clue why he couldn't post this himself, but whatever)

 

[Terithian]

I tested it a bit, and I believe the problem is character limits, again. Once it hits a certain character limit (seems to be around 59?), it seems to skips a character for some reason and forces the rest onto a new page. Anyone writing dialogue will just have to add more pages as necessary to fit everything in. At least it seems easy to do by simply adding in a "\0" for a page break, just like the "\n" line break, as far as I can see. I just hope there isn't an overall character limit to each line. I just took a brief look through some of the dialogue, and the longest line in Japanese I found was 214 characters, so it should be fine up to there, at least.

Also, damn character limits. I've been writing all the item descriptions under the assumption that the limit was 62 characters. It technically is, but if I go right up to the limit, for some strange reason the character "袈" shows up at the end. I've attached an example. I guess I'll have to go through and somehow remove one character from all the descriptions that I wrote with exactly 62 characters.