ROM Hack Ninokuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi - Translation Project

[Jefelin]

Well here is the first sample of my work, video game first full translation into English. Enjoy ;P

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ektZ4W4dj8[/youtube]

 

[Jefelin]

@Auryn: it shows that you Sceta, well you have every right, it is true that the project is too big and there CHANGE LANGUAGE files, but I've already made ​​it clear that my main goal will be to translate the dialogue and the main story, then if all goes well and I get lots of help and will make a second version with menus and other included. Ete project is very hard to perform by a single person, but someone would have to be first, I hope to have thrown a stone into a lake for the entire route waves.

You seem to know the subject, rather than doubt both could facilitate or tell me how to find the texts, the translation I'll see.

 

[rastsan]

@mrgone: Thanks for your help, I think I will be good for the English version, could spend the script in English and you correct the style, and also a lack of beta testing for possible typos, not yet anyway, this will begin once the videos are translated (hopefully in about 2 days or so), so I count on you friend.

@rastsan: I know, I think I will use NFTRedit for it, the problem is that you must also change some values ??exadecimales, I have yet to find a way, for now I will focus on videos.
As for the video game brings the independent subtitles to the video so it is easy to modify

@pleonex:Huge thanks for your support and hope that together we can help translate this wonderful work of art, and why not one of the mjor games that have been done on the DS, if not the best.

@justin05: thanks, hope it helps somehow

@all doubtful: As Auryn says the book or it is needed is not a big problem, there are guides and videos nuemerosas internet which detail how and when to use spells, my main goal is to make the story understandable to enjoy this game as it deserves, the book obviously I can not translate, at least for now, so we have to make do with what is or wait for Level-5 brings us the English version at least the PS3 version.

Oh good It means that I just need to figure out how to add that routine to other games to they can be subtitles too... (inazuma eleven2 does it the same way now I have one more game to compare to)

If you need help with the nftr's send me a table of the spanish characters you need to add and the nftr's you need to change I will be happy to do it for you.

Actually the hex table for the nftr isn't that hard to change. Use the nftr editor in crystaltile2 (there is plenty of guides on how to do this). Though I have a feeling you are confusing things over the hexa decimal values.... say 20 is supposed to equal (space), it doesn't have to. If your spanish keyboard has a slightly different value then say mine does it won't be a big deal to just change whatever the hex value of those english characters are that hold the same hex value into the spanish ones you need. What you may need to do though is make sure you click the spanish support when making the new font instead of japanese. The problem with this is that you may actually get rid of the japanese in your nftr completely and you may have no choice but to translate the game completely. On the other side of this I have seen and do know of several spanish nftrs. So it also will not be to much trouble to "merge" those/that font with the ones from this game.


Don't let them talk you out of this. If you are ready to dedicate yourself to this project then go for it. If I may make a couple suggestions; When you can extract the text that needs translating use google docs to post it/them as (a) spreadsheet(s) - spanish version/ english version. then all you have to do is give your translators the link(s) to that. Same goes for the images that you need to have edited. Just use a rar/zip/7zip/etc to share them....

 

[penguin673]

The book is the least of your problems. There are scans all over the Internet, though they are kinda ghetto. IIRC, you only need to know one or two spells to get past the protection.

Anyways, I've done some probing into the file ever since it came out last December. I'm not very good at assembly, so I don't have much to report, but I hope this will help this get started.

• The movie captions are stored in plain text (SHIFT_JIS) under data/data/movie. Those should be simple enough.
• The script files are stored under data/data/map/script. I haven't completely figured out the script file format, but I know about half of it:
  • There's a header. For ho001t.bin (the very first map the game loads after the first movie), it goes from 0 to 8D9. I don't know how to parse this.
  • The rest of the file are blocks. For example, 8DA to 8DD (00 00 00 00) is probably the block ID and 8DE to 8E1 (57 03 00 00) is the block size for the rest of the block (0x357). I don't know what 8E2 to 8E5 (0A 09 19 00) is supposed to be, but all blocks have that string after the size. The next blocks start at C39, 1282, and so on.
  • After the first 12 bytes, the blocks consists of small parts. The parts start with a single-byte ID and then one or two byte values that give the size for the rest of the section.
  • Sections that start with 05 are dialogue parts (they seem to have two-byte sizes). The first line is in A14. There seems to be a further container for the strings that starts with 01 and have a two-byte size value too.
  • To review, if you want to edit the big-endian SHIFT_JIS string that starts at A1A, you need to edit the little-endian sizes at A18, A15, and 8D1 accordingly.
• memcpy/strcpy is at 0201F250

That's all that I know. I'm afraid to say that I'm busy to participate in this project, but I hope that I've pushed it slightly forward. Good luck!

 

[Auryn]

I am normally not a pessimistic person and normally try to help new people with my experience and many times i was surprised on how well some of this new people have done in little time but I am realistic now.
If i look at Jefelin own writing

I have little hacking experience ...,

at the biggest game that is been released on NDS till now and the fact that he didn't find text in plain Sjis ... it's useless to continue to support this project.
This project need a group working on it with programmers that make some tool to work with those archive and an extended study of the format used in the game.

@Jefelin: there is only 1 recipe for translating a game:
- study the whole file structure
- study all the file type you encounter
- basically open all the files in your game
- find a way to work best with the files you have and if needed, take advantage of existing tools or you have to find somebody that create those for you
- do all the text translation
- do all the graphics translation
- do all the hacking needed
- hope everything still work.

You asked me where the text is, i can't answer you because I don't know.
penguin673 told to you it's on data/data/map/script but it's useless to you if you not find a way to expand the place for the text and you can only do so if you fully understand the format of that archive.
Personally I doubt too that the whole text is in that folder but yes, i confirm, there is some there.



but what i see is that the game is extremely intricated too because the header penguin673 was talking about is probably connected to files in other folders:


So as conclusion, you still want to try to translate this game even after you see the odds??
Ok, i can accept that so now start to study the file structure and each file, find out what a n2d, n3d, tmap or bin contains in this game.
When you know what it is inside, you know what are the folders/file important for the translation. Later you can start work on the game.

 

[Jefelin]

@rastsan:Thanks for offering your help, you will definitely benefit your work, I can not give you a comparison table because I can not see the Japanese characters in a hex editor, do as I will give

@penguin673:It's a shame to walk busy, it would certainly be of great help for this Projected finish successfully, however you can always make discoveries and aid small neck hurts, I looked at what I've said, but do not know if these are the dialogues is true that no text but I think that refers to cartelesque appear on maps and small expressions, not dialog boxes.
And sorry for my ignorance worse there are many things I do not understand what I have put him, among other reasons, failing to see the Japanese characters in the hex editor, sorry

@Aurynbviously I can not do it myself, but that's the community forum and not you, to everyone in the extent possible assist.
I do not want a preacher, but to all people who say they are realistic, I usually say something "reality is whatever you make us."
If ever this project goes ahead it is not for lack of desire or support for a lack of time, and I take this as a hobby in my spare time, but I will try to finish as far as I can.

And yes, I can be new to this, but I bring my knowledge and my translation, philological, as well as my skills with the software, and my friend pleonax their advanced knowledge in rom-hacking, so no problem, and in fact we are moving to find texts and so on, so I encourage anyone who wants to play this game in English and Spanish to join the project, the more people better ^ _ ^

Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Mad?shi (The Black Mage-El Mago n****) can be a reality if you really want to be.

Well good news, I have translated half of the videos you have the game in a couple of days will be all.
A petition, there is someone in the community who knows Japanese and want to develop a script in English of the game, it certainly speeds up the development of the project, besides that could be translated into other languages ??more easily.

 

[Normmatt]

@rastsan:Thanks for offering your help, you will definitely benefit your work, I can not give you a comparison table because I can not see the Japanese characters in a hex editor, do as I will give

@penguin673:It's a shame to walk busy, it would certainly be of great help for this Projected finish successfully, however you can always make discoveries and aid small neck hurts, I looked at what I've said, but do not know if these are the dialogues is true that no text but I think that refers to cartelesque appear on maps and small expressions, not dialog boxes.
And sorry for my ignorance worse there are many things I do not understand what I have put him, among other reasons, failing to see the Japanese characters in the hex editor, sorry


Well good news, I have translated half of the videos you have the game in a couple of days will be all.
A petition, there is someone in the community who knows Japanese and want to develop a script in English of the game, it certainly speeds up the development of the project, besides that could be translated into other languages ??more easily.

I can see this project going no where with you as a translator atleast for the english translation. No offense but your english is worse than google translate.

 

[Jefelin]

@Normmatt: Thanks for the support, you could create constructive criticism and help.
The first version of Ninokuni will be in Spanish, my English is half so many other phrases and I can not adapt, if someone wants to be part of the project for the English version and adapt the style and expressions create a quality translation, Spanish I can promise you it will be

 

[mrgone]

to summarize all that

- the main translator primary language is spanish, so the english script has to be checked and proofread. i offered my help with that.
- only the videos are translated or in the process of being translated
- the script has not been located/extracted
- a hacker is not part of the project at the moment


did i forget something?

 

[Jefelin]

@mrgone:
A concise and accurate summary, it is so completely understood, thanks

And I only have 7 videos to translate (so far no problem and I have used English as the basis for some videos from youtube, from now on will have English subtitles to be reviewed and corrected to not have mistakes, I count on you mrgone) that have all translated mp will send you a script to correct ;P

 

[rastsan]

I can confirm the n3d files are containers for graphics or such if you look you will see BMD0 in some which is a sure sign of graphic in others if you fiddle with the offset/ depth (gba8bpp, gba4bpp) you can clearly see graphics. Its just a matter of having someone figure it out. As to the nftr that will not be a problem to add spanish support to them.

 

[Auryn]

the n3d are all 3d graphic containers
the n2d are all 2d graphic containers similar to narc (i didn't try to see if they are compatible) with each their NGCR/NSCR/NCLR inside

This game is well structured and almost readable from the file structure but like every game that look easy to hack at first, it will probably be difficult at the end (see those text containers).

 

[mrgone]

looks like the ps3 version will have the magic book as in-game item.
in my opinion this prooves that they won't bring the NDS version to western audiences.

 

[Jefelin]

Right, I can bet 90% that this game will not released USA or Europe.

@Auryn:
Yes looks set to be the most difficult ;P

@rastsan:
In fact I'm working on sources

 

[Densetsu]

I can see this project going no where with you as a translator atleast for the english translation. No offense but your english is worse than google translate.Actually, if this video is any indication of his translating ability, I think he would do a great job.

QUOTE(Jefelin @ Oct 3 2011, 07:38 AM) Well here is the first sample of my work, video game first full translation into English. Enjoy ;P

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ektZ4W4dj8[/youtube]

The translations are accurate, and the English even reads like actual English and not just "Japanese translated into English."

If I had to nit-pick, at 0:50 where Oliver says "Oh, really? So he finally did it..."

The Japanese phrase "??????????" (saa, te ni haittanda) means "So he (finally) got/received it."

But you may be basing your translation on context that I don't have since you've played it and I haven't, so your translation (So he finally did it...) could be correct.

To be a really nit-picky ass, I could say that the "M" in "Good Morning" doesn't need to be capitalized (0:36). And the "y" in "yesterday" should be capitalized (0:45). She begins by saying "????????" (a, sore to...) which means "Oh, and..."

But overall, nice work

I'm busy with Blood of Bahamut right now (among more pressing real-life obligations), but when BoB is finished, depending on how you organize your project I would love to help out with this.

I'm working on importing the game from Japan (going through Japanese friends to avoid paying the ungodly prices--PlayAsia charges $85 for the game + $30 for shipping). No promises, but time permitting maybe I can translate the Magic Master book that comes with the game and make the full translation available.

 

[Nagato]

Deleted.

 

[Jefelin]

News:
Absence of savegames, I found the AR for this game, so you can complete a quick and easy way, it will great for the beta testing phase, and especially translation, please some Japanese (there are millions in the world) I ask for assistance to develop a script in English in this game.
If someone is really interested I'll give the codes mp.

@Densetsu9000:
You know Japanese?, because that would be a blessing.

To make a good translation as you say I need to see the context of play, japanese is a language very different from English is Germanic root and Spanish comes from Latin.
In the translation of that video helped a friend, I translated from Japanese into English and a friend Basner corrected all the style in the video, I think we could do a good translation into English, I can only do it in Spanish, sorry .

And I'll be happy to lend me your help, you'd be a very important part of the team, especially for the English version

@Nagato:
You've been very right about that, but anyway this game will be translated, he deserves.
Look at the files you advised me to see that I find.
As for the book I have a complete guide to keep you jamming

 

[Densetsu]

If anything, I feel like some hacking should be done to the spell system so you don't *need* the book because the book is what stopped my progress significantly and frustrated me most. In particular I remember being in the waiting room at the optometrist's office playing the game and then my progress was stopped dead in its tracks because I didn't know the spell I needed to progress.I can see your point, but I'm all for enjoying the game the way it was meant to be. If the book is already out there in PDF form, this should be a non-issue. But then again, reading a PDF from a computer screen is different from having a portable-sized hardcopy of the book.

Maybe instead of completely hacking the spell system, a cheat code could be used to bypass it?

That's probably because it is someone else's translation.

I would be offended if someone took my translations and passed them off as their own.

Well here is the first sample of my work, video game first full translation into English. Enjoy ;P

QUOTE(Jefelin @ Oct 5 2011, 07:20 AM)

In the translation of that video helped a friend, I translated from Japanese into English...

Did you actually translate that video? Because for obvious reasons I will NOT help anyone who steals other translators' work without crediting them.

I didn't read the rest of this thread but went straight to watching the video because it's a quick and easy way to assess someone's translating abilities (since you can't cheat and Google-translate audio). But taking a better look at this topic and considering that others have little faith in the success of this project (and in light of the video Nagato brought to my attention), I think this translation might be in need of some new management.

 

[wasim]

i'd rather wait for the US release tbh

I doubt that happening anytime soon.

its better to play the US game rather than playing the translated as there wont be translated audio....

 

[xuliko]

I think that speakers english and speakers spanish work together in the project.
There are many people that know japanase. I don't know Japanese, but I know
to translate English to Spanish. I have studies of traslation.