ROM Hack Ninokuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi - Translation Project

[GHANMI]

Besides the English title screen design (by ouioui) being reused for the Spanish version and some of the font work (but mostly it's their own thing), as well as map/NPC/what-does-each-file-do lists used to improve the extraction tools.. and various technical side stuff I may have forgot about - nothing much really.
They (rather, specificallu pleonex) did the bulk of the ASM work and the text dump - a really good job. We did fill in some blanks (files forgotten from the dump, and I'm sure we're still missing some - but they may be unused files)
Translation-wise, they are completely separate projects.

Now that I remember it, we did get in touch about a puzzling feature in the DS game we couldn't make sense of - the password for each Imagenie/Imajin/familiar you raise that's not used by the JP PS3 version either (which has absolutely no mention of passwords) - what is it there for? We couldn't find an answer (it's also probably the only part which will stay untranslated in the game), so if anyone has a guess (or maybe knows about the mobile versions of Ninokuni) we'd really appreciate that.
And an odd set of files - that turned out to be useless debug event lists.

 

[Kohmei]

It seems there's very little written on that even on the internet, but I found this: http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.j...=A2RAEEbFfy1Uaz4A_XdNqfZ7?fr=rcmd_chie_detail
Where the answerer says it's probably just so you can tell apart the imagens if you have more than one of the same type (?) I haven't actually played the game yet so it's all without context to me.

I've been going under the assumption that you are Jefelin, so this changes a great deal. Obviously I need to play the game first before I can be of any help, but once I finish that I hope we can start a new page. I must have appeared strangely unreasonable and I am very embarrassed at this moment.

 

[Auryn]

I love how quickly tides change on the internet LOL

I wanted to say 2-3 things semi connected with what you 2 are talking about.

If i take a look at the last year before the release of AAI2 and what i did as a leader, it's just something everybody would laugh about.
I had such good people as translators, as editors, as inserters and most of them grow out of the little shell they was in when they joined the group to go over their own limits.
Probably the most good example about this is Mrichston that when he joined the group, if my memory is not wrong, never ever used an hex editor and at some point he had already found a workaround for a space limit on the text even before I had time to check what was up.
What i want to say with this?? I don't really think you need a "big boss" in a translation project if you have a good team that can organize themself. I believe that have maybe a person around that is called the boss and maybe decide to close a discussion when the team leaders are loosing their time and fight about something they can not find a solution to make everybody happy, is something useful but it could be anybody inside the group as well.

Another little thing is why there should be a problem when taking a look to a translation to make a translation?? I am fully aware of the mistranslations that can happen if making a translation of a translation of a translation but why I can not take a look to see how somebody else with another knowledge of the japanese (in this case) and see how he translated / adapted / localized that part of the text?? Maybe that person as a more deep knoledge of me of japanese.
Just to make an example I will take Hachiko: maybe my knowledge of japanese is more school / text based as history of Japan so I will end up maybe knowing that it's a dog name but I still ignore the story behind that name.
Another language translation could bring me on the right track and even maybe find out that there is a western counterpart of Hachiko in Europe / USA.
For who doesn't know who Hachiko is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachikō

Last but not least: perfection. I remeber the time when i was playing games on NES / SNES / GB / GBA and things like "STR", " AGI", "MAG", "ATT" etc... was accepted and nobody ever dared to say any bad word about it.
Where are those times??
Sure, gaming itself has changed, the amount of text has changed, the styles of the text has changed but dammit!
There was a time where i (and many others) was happy to play a game in english even if it was trucked, bad translated, sometimes even hard to read or understand but it was better than the unreadable japanese!
Why now a day we need all games to have a nice VWF?? Why do we have to make 10 pass of spell check to eliminate all typos (thing that many professional companies don't do even if they get payed for it)?? Why do every translation should be worth to be the next best seller book on amazon??
Don't get me wrong, aiming for the best, the perfection and so on, is good but never forget that we are only "Normal guys" with a "strange hobby". So all the people out there that are saying something bad about a translation, shut up and do it yourself if you really think you can do it better (i am talking in general Kohmei and not about you).

This last point is strongly connected to the perfection as well. Kohmei was talking about not native english people doing a translation. That is a good point because mostly native speaking people should write better than non native even if this is not always true. As example I know many western people that speak or write thai language better than thai people or look at myself at school times where I had the worse grade in my native language as all other languages I was learning at that time.
Anyway, I think that as a translator as us, you need to think about all the people that will play the game and I believe that at least 50% of the people that will play Ninokuni in english, will be non native english people because it's the only language apart japanese.
So doing a "perfect" translation in english could be more armfull as an imperfect one.
Sure this depends on the game. In the translation on AAI2 we needed to keep the high standart of an attorney/court language apart keep the level / references of the other games of the serie.
I don't know if the Studio Gibli usually uses a "child" language in their movies (in japanese at least) but the fact that the NDS version uses the furigana, show me that this game is intended for younger players.
Because of this, I believe an "imperfect" translation would not really damage this translation.
Anyway, i hope this project will continue with a lot of wind in the sails and as good and perfect as possible.


GHANMI: Well, if there is so much "useless" things, what about throw it away and implement the book??

 

[GHANMI]

GHANMI: Well, if there is so much "useless" things, what about throw it away and implement the book??

Well, you might be aware of the 2009 TGS demo version of Ni no Kuni DS (it was leaked online - but at this point it doesn't even matter)
That one has partial coding for the magic master book:
The spell section from the book is available digitally (they only included 10 spells or so, and even changed it from the final)
And there's a greyed-out button to consult the digital book as a whole but it's unavailable - and I must admit I haven't done much data mining as far as the TGS 09' rom is concerned.
Final rom has graphical remants for the pages containing the ten spells, a menu from the TGS2010 demo (never released online, yet that's the one covered by Western media the most back then) but nothing else from the Magic Master :/

One point just to be clear about the book:

All DS copies included the Magic Master book, in physical form.
Let's call it v1.0 - it's including hints to DS-specific puzzles and is needed to see the first ending and to finish various quests. And the spell drawings - they're obviously needed.
DS version had originally plans for a digital book from what we see from the pre-release demos and the cut content, by the time it was released it wasn't included.

All JP PS3 copies had an in-game digital version of the Magic Master book. (JP release got Asian release for Korea, untranslated)
I'd call it v1.1 - it removed DS-specific puzzle hints, and lots of pages with monster art and lore about locations no longer in the PS3 version.
It's useless on its own for the DS version.
Japanese collector PS3 copies also included physical Magic Master books bundled with the PS3 disc, but they were surplus v1.0 physical copies (at least the collector release for the initial print - Japan got later an enhanced re-release with more content that partially made it to the PS3 US version)

PS3 English, and EIFGS Multi-5 versions came up with a localized variant for the ancient language and some puzzles.
As a result, they went even one step further in removing/changing stuff in the v1.1 book.
I'd call it v1.2.
The collector editions for the Western PS3 versions had physical versions of printed v1.2 Wizard's Companion/Almanach/whatever Magic Master was localized to.

There are pdf rips of the Magic Master book online, extracted from the PS3 disc (hd05_en.adat).
If you own the game, you can follow the tutorials here and extract it on your own from one of the six languages it comes in:

http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7932
http://code.google.com/p/sticklove/source/browse/trunk/source/xentax/ripper/ps3_ni_no_kuni.cpp
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/998014-ni-no-kuni-wrath-of-the-white-witch/65249845

Or search for a pdf rip of Ni no Kuni Wizard's Companion online - it's copyrighted content, so it's against the TOS to elaborate more on that point.

Ultimately, the PS3 English version is useless on its own to finish the DS version, but it could be useful if it was completed with translated v1.0-exclusive pages that were missing or altered from later versions.

Speaking of copyright...
A mod in this topic back in 2012 brought to everyone's attention that sharing scans here is a case of copyright infringement.
As far as the English translation team is concerned, in case this project is ever completed:

We won't include with the translation patch scans for the missing pages, for copyright concerns
(it remains to be seen if we'll include a text translation for their text ... that may be useful for someone to recreate the book as it should be?)
The spanish translation team may have a different approach though to the matter (retranslating v.1.0 entirely)
However... we won't share here scanlations.

We still don't plan to re-implement the remains of the scrapped DS digital book to be fully functional (maybe as a "Press L to switch to the Magic Master thing"?) -
it's a massive undertaking since it would be programming in a functionality from scratch :/
It's not within the scope of the translation effort for now - though it would be interesting to see someone trying to fit in the Ghibli art from the book inside the game (130MB free space on the cart should allow for it).

We'll include a spoiler text document with the solutions for the runes and the three mandatory passwords (Cave of Trials, Genie Pot, Nameless Castle).

 

[Kohmei]

I spent a few hours "acquiring" every page of 1.0 a few years ago when I originally became interested in this game, so I will be using it to play the game. As for how to handle it in the translation, I'm on the fence between 2 ideas, namely: 1) a complete retranslation perhaps even including redrawn artwork, or 2) a simplified solutions guide that mostly just contains the spells and what's necessary to solve the game.

1) would be the most elegant and complete solution, and it should also violate no copyrights. I specifically haven't even looked at the PS3 version (or played the PS3 game, for that matter) for this very reason, as that way the only thing I can possibly write is of my own creation, and not someone else's. The question is whether or not it would be worth the large amount of time necessary to achieve it, as how many people would even bother to read it? Not to mention a large percentage of the book would be redundant information already available for someone to read in the "official" version, which anyone really interested probably has already done.

2) seems cheap, but effective. Also easy. Most people probably do not want a huge reference guide to lug around while playing anyway. I know that I, personally, rather despise having to have supplementary materials to play a game, as it's distracting and immersion breaking.

It's certainly an interesting problem that really comes down to pragmatism. If most people just want a solutions guide, then it's a waste of time to translate an entire book.

As for "perfection", I understand what you are saying. I am not the type of person who would translate an 8-year-old saying 「こんちわぁ！」 as "What an immaculately spectacular day we are having, my good chum!" because it would simply be a bad translation. The thing is, when a translation calls for something imperfect, will the proofreader know that it does? Will someone reading it try to correct me without realizing I deliberately made mistakes as part of the translation? I had a similar problem with an editor on a manga short I did where I was trying to make one of the kids sound uneducated, and the editor went and "corrected" everything that I had carefully plotted out. How it affected the overall impression of the story was probably negligible but it still bothered me quite a bit that someone changed something that was as I intended it.

Back on the subject of the magic master, it occurred to me that the game's script could theoretically be altered in minute ways to make referencing the book completely unnecessary, by making the NPCs directly provide the solution or hint to it (as an example). This would be a much more liberal approach as it would obviously change the game pretty dramatically, but it would create a contained experience.

 

[GHANMI]

The current plan is to leave the in-game text as it is in Japanese ("Open your Magic Master, page 54, spell 46 and connect the following dots this way (...)") but have the solutions spoiled in a text walkthrough. I have already a late draft for that walkthrough, it's almost complete covering everything needed save for a puzzle involving the map, redrawn runes, and solutions for the Wi-Fi quests / and the quests (already preserved, don't worry ) - a link.

Rewriting the in-game script to remove Magic Master references isn't something I'd be comfortable with (and I don't think it will be even possible with the dream world quest for example). Some of the stuff that seems just lore in the PS3 version is what you'd need to search for in the DS version to solve various riddles that just say ("I heard of something yellow and feathered. Maybe you can find more about it in the book?" the book gives you the name but not much else, but then you can use it and find more hints in-game...)
The item list, the monster list, the map, the drawing, the page decorations, even the folk tales are important.
Something will be lost that way.

The optimal way to make the DS rom self contained would be to implement a digital Magic Master in-game - something very possible znd already done in the PS3 version but massive, and not considered by us atm.

As for "perfection", I understand what you are saying. I am not the type of person who would translate an 8-year-old saying 「こんちわぁ！」 as "What an immaculately spectacular day we are having, my good chum!" because it would simply be a bad translation. The thing is, when a translation calls for something imperfect, will the proofreader know that it does? Will someone reading it try to correct me without realizing I deliberately made mistakes as part of the translation? I had a similar problem with an editor on a manga short I did where I was trying to make one of the kids sound uneducated, and the editor went and "corrected" everything that I had carefully plotted out. How it affected the overall impression of the story was probably negligible but it still bothered me quite a bit that someone changed something that was as I intended it.

Editors who have no real grasp of Japanese, or rather, consideration for preserving the original meaning, editing the tone as they see fit is always a recipe for disaster, but something very common back from Earthbound sections being reworded "more naturally" to become the opposite of the original message, or more recently, what Tales of Hearts R is shaping up to become (characters having sudden mood twists talking in a rude/angry/sad way when they very obviously shouldn't be even listening to the JP audio they left in)

Auryn I'm really frustrated by the bizarre fixation to have variable width font everywhere, often presented as the absolute deal breaker that makes or kills a project.
Dragon Quest 3 SFC was delayed for so long because of the VWF implementation, and to my surprise, while I was examining it I found out they set all letters to 6px, effectively making it a fixed width font - bu they still went through the hassle of implementing a feature they didn't even use - what's the point?
Why is everyone refusing to just get the 12/16px FWF JP font to show as an 8px fixed width font even when the game is so badly coded text engine-wise it's not worth the trouble (and it's not like an 8px font needs to be ugly - Metroid Fusion and Boktai had fonts I wouldn't have guessed were fixed-width) and their text is well within the 25 char per line limit?

 

[Auryn]

OMG, i didn't know all those changes on the book. I have the Japanese NDS version including the book, the PS3 PAL normal and limited edition but I admit they are still in the bag of the gaming store and mint LOL.
I admit that i never played the demo and actually played about 1 hour of the normal NDS version.
My question about implementing the book was just because i suppose that the book is images on the game and probably expand how many pages it contains, would be easy.
On the other hand translate the book is a work on itself

About the copyright problem of the pdf, there is nothing on the way (to my knowledge) to make a patch that is applied to a pdf

@Khomei: That sound that the group there missed an important point to make before even starting translate: guidelines for the translation.
There are some internal documents we had in the AAI2 translation group that listed name conventions, accents, etc.. of each character.
Part of that can still be found on the backup CR forum in the thread "Speech mannerisms".

By the way, I just stepped on a nice youtube channel the other day for people that want "professional" advise how to do a translation of a game or improve the way you do it.
The "Game translation on a shoe string" is the most interesting: https://www.youtube.com/user/GLOC247/videos

 

[Nikhl]

btw the spanish website no longer works

 

[felixsrg]

btw the spanish website no longer works

The Spanish translation team had to change their name, so they also changed their website, here you go: http://gradienwords.tk/Ninokuniproject/

 

[Jefelin]

So, I'm not sure if I've come full circle yet but I'm going to try to wing it anyway, in that no, I didn't mean insult to the Spanish team, but it seemed to me (thanks to my bad assumptions) that the Spanish team was just kind of hanging around waiting for a sucker to show up, pop in his work into the Spanish version, and put "By Jefelin and co" into the credits as a way of doubling your investment. That seemed really unfair to me, but if it turns out I was completely wrong, then it was my fault entirely. I still think our aims are rather incompatible, but I will keep things in mind as I proceed with evaluating the prospect of translating this.

Hi, I´m Jefelin.
In 2011 I started this project, since then I'm working day after day to achieve my dream. I and all my team.
The spanish translation finished this year, in February to be precise. Since then, I'm working 6 months to to rebuild, edit and create the wizard´s companion, because it is totally different to the ps3 version.
Today, Monday, October 27, 2014, I'm still working to launch the translation next year, for this reason, I can´t tolerate any of your words because you have doubted my work and that of my team without knowing anything.

Sorry, my english is not as good as I would like

Greetings to all

 

[pleonex]

Let's calm down.
In the Spanish translation we have been working hard since the first day, we had not stopped since we started. The translation of this game takes so much time. Just for fun, time ago I did some statistics: our Spanish translation has 200.000 words (without counting the Magic Book because since that were images I couldn't make a script to count words). That is, our translation is like (approx.) a 800 pages book + 150 pages of Magic Book.

Yes, it's hard but at the end it's amazing to see it in another language
So, let's try to make a good use of this thread and try to continue the Ni no kuni translation, we need a lot of help

Regards!

 

[StorMyu]

Good Luck Pleonex and the spanish team

 

[GHANMI]

Hi, I´m Jefelin.
In 2011 I started this project, since then I'm working day after day to achieve my dream. I and all my team.
The spanish translation finished this year, in February to be precise. Since then, I'm working 6 months to to rebuild, edit and create the wizard´s companion, because it is totally different to the ps3 version.
Today, Monday, October 27, 2014, I'm still working to launch the translation next year, for this reason, I can´t tolerate any of your words because you have doubted my work and that of my team without knowing anything.

Sorry, my english is not as good as I would like

Greetings to all

It's a pleasure seeing you around here again
I'm really sorry the situation devolved into misinterpreting the Spanish team efforts due to the English translation being stalled for now (something you're not even involved with), especially after the first drama about that youtube video text and the really unwarranted negative responses for what was supposed to be a technical proof of concept video. I really wish you'd drop by here more often.
Really happy to hear the game proper was already finished in Spanish, I'm eagerly waiting for the release since that would be the ideal excuse to dust off my Spanish a bit
And good luck

 

[Pablitox]

At this rate, who can cast into doubt the spanish team efforts? I was there since halfway through and the progress those guys have made is humongous!

I mean, there's this heavy text game, which is hard to do and even includes a long book which has to be understood to play.

These guys are the real deal, and I hope to hear more projects from them (Well, I'd recommend the Summon Night 1 and 2 for the DS for translation, but that's asking too much, lol).

 

[Auryn]

I love those discussions about "slow releases" (sarcastic naturally).
We had our deal of this discussions with AAI2 as well.
I wonder how all those people react when they see news like "Lagrange Point" for GB that has just been released after more than 10 years.
I would like to have the power to force all those negative people to do the translations themself!
The results could be very interesting

Apart that, we hackers/translators are all way to nice to too many peoples online.
The other thread where that guy asked what tools he need for the translation, didn't deserve an answer or deserved something like "if you need to ask, you are not up to the task".
All this just to say to you guys, don't care about what negative people say about your translation, you are better than them.
I know it's hard to not care but believe me, you can learn to ignore such posts/threads and just continue your way.
Spend the time doing your hobby and not fight with somebody online that will never ever admit he was wrong and listen to reason.

My best good luck wishes to both teams and hope to see a release soon

 

[Kohmei]

I already admitted I was wrong. I made one faulty assumption, and I'm sorry for that. I do think part of the problem is having to shuffle through this 30+ page thread trying to figure out who is doing what, in several different languages, and by several different teams, and that's part of what I pointed out: the English project lacks its own identity. As long as it's just an idea that exists in this thread, it's hardly even a project. It's an abstraction held together by some posts. I wasn't able to even accurately figure out who is in charge. What does that tell you? It's hard for me to believe you will be successful in attracting a competent translator to the project because of that.

I really feel like I'm just digging myself deeper here, especially when I'm up against people who don't understand English well enough to hear my intended message even when they're quoting me directly, so I'm stopping here. I never had anything negative to say about the Spanish translation project itself. As you so adequately put, I know nothing about it. I'm sorry for thinking you had anything to do with the English project. (Jefelin)

 

[Zkarts]

I feel I should jump in here.
It's true that Kohmei reacted quite harshly and lashed out on the basis of incorrect assumptions, but Jefelin, as you say, your English isn't the best, and that's fine, but I can imagine that if he thought you were the one leading the English translation that that would not benefit his faith in the project.
Although he might have overreacted, he was not attacking you for what you have done (which, together with the rest of the Spanish team, is quite impressive), but for what he thought you did and I don't think he is fully to blame for what happened.

As such, I agree that this thread is a long, confusing read and that searching for English translators starting from the 30th page is probably not the best move.
After reading back my conversations with Ghanmi about this topic (I thought that we didn't create a new thread because it was too similar to the current thread, but it seems I was wrong about that), the result of that conversations were the screenshots a couple of pages back as a proof of concept. Perhaps we were waiting for a demo with the translators we had (which was an idea at some point, until the translator disappeared...), but I'm not entirely sure anymore either. I'll take it up with Ghanmi and I think there'll probably be a new thread popping up sometime soon.

 

[Kurt117]

i wish someone could complete the english translation
it's one of the best games on ds and it's huge!
is it possible to translate from spanish to english? i know it's not gonna as accurate as a Jap to Eng translation but still its gonna be better than nothing

 

[Auryn]

GHANMI: I noticed that Ninokuni is missing on the stiky translations Index thread, maybe ask a moderator to add it. By the way i would ask him to close and maybe rename this thread (add "old one" or "archived") and be sure to be clear about it's the english translation in the new thread title.

Kurt
I believe only an unexperienced translator would do that apart that it still needs the spanish work and permission to do that.


Anyway, guys, if you know a bit of the translation scene, you would know that most of people doing this are students and as students, school come first.
For what you expect a significant progress on a translation while it's school time?? You can expect significant progress while holidays!
Sure there are people that do this that are not student anymore and basically could work on it every day but those people (including me) have other things to take care as example girlfriends, wife and maybe childrens.
Apart that everybody has more than one hobby and depending on the season or mood the one or the other hobby will take priority.
Never forget that what we do is actually a job some people get payed for and make a living out of it.
To give you an idea it's about 0.1Euro/word or 0.13$/word.
This ONLY talking about the translation and not about the hacking part, that one is even more expancive.
And we do it all for free in our free time!!!
This should be motive enough for everybody on the net to be quiet and just wait till the work is done and the only things that people should write are support messages or help propositions.

By the way, I want to make you remember that I am exactly in the same boat as many of you out there, i am not involved in this project and i am waiting for the complete work as well.
In the last month or so, i had really a lot of desire to continue some of my own project as well but real life work, sickness or other things just didn't make me do anything at all. Believe me, sometimes it's just as frustrating to be a translator/hacker and just not get enough time to do what we want as it can be for you to wait on a progress.

 

[Zkarts]

For those interested, there is now a English translation specific thread
Link: http://gbatemp.net/threads/ni-no-kuni-translation-eng.373770/