Would it be easier to check the gestalt japanese text, compare what's different, take what's the same then just copy/paste the official TL into those spots?
This is, of course, assuming the official translation was already accurate-enough.
And this re-localization doesn't seem to make the goal of a direct translation, so for minor scenes that lack dialogue- such as Side Quests or random blurbs, is the effort to translate it all to get a slightly different result that conveys the same thing worth it in the end? This is of course that the project was intended to redo all those minor dialogues.
Taking all that to consideration, this doesn't seem like such an arduous task if someone can supply the Gestalt japanese scripts and Gestalt english scripts to compare with the Japanese replicant scripts. I could be dead wrong, of course, but this doesn't seem too impossible.
Gestalt Japanese would be difficult to obtain. There's only a few copies on Ebay and all 60$ with shipping. Plus I personally don't want to play the Gestalt. I finished Replicant, read a lot about differences in dialogue and read some news articles, too... it just feels like Square Enix forced Cavia to change the vision of the game just to appeal to mass Western audience. Even nowadays with Japanese games booming in sales in NA and people caring about original audio and everything... do you think if Automata did not have 2B and her sexy appeal, if the game was focused on 9S and 2B was just a side character like Kaine, would it sell well? I doubt it...
I'm not saying that 2B is all about being sexy, of course. I just mean that the fact that she does have sex appeal is what pushed the game to the masses because Replicant and Automata are equal in their quality, even cut-scenes look damn great after all these years... but Automata has a sexy main-heroine and essentially to get popularity this is all you need in our meme-culture time. Not that I mind her being sexy... just a real shame that Replicant did not make it here and all this happened...
Square Enix is still a samurai company - borders closed off, not paying attention to what's going on in the world. And when they do... they just copy-paste what's popular and add a bit of flavor. Like Sleeping Dogs game which is basically Yakuza but more action, like Tomb Raider which is Uncharted but with a woman, like Just Cause 4 which is older GTA games...
And their localization practices are still awful. They didn't even bother to tell people that Dragon Quest is supposed to be played without any voices; they didn't include Japanese audio in most re-released Final Fantasy games, Drakengard 1-2 came out English only despite the brilliant voice work of Japanese seiyuu and Drakengard 3 had a paid DLC for J. voices... and even if you buy it, you cannot play the downloadable story-content with J. audio. How does it make any sense?
Then I also read some info that was published by Famitsu, some leaks where they said Replicant might be cancelled when Gestalt for Xbox in Japan was announced... And I mean they did admit that father Nier is there just because West would not like shonen Replicant. It's not a secret.
Sooo... what I mean to say is that I am 100% sure that Gestalt happened as a compromise between Yoko Taro and Square Enix, one of those Yoko Taro's "we decided this over beer in a bar" things. The ending doesn't feel right to me and older Nier doesn't feel right to me... it's there just because the business said so.
As you know, Replicant's translation is basically Gestalt with occassional change to "Brother" and "Sister", but the core dialogue was not changed. Father-Nier is extremely rude to people and even if you don't know Japanese fluently, you can figure out that the Niichan did not say what the text says. Then there's the question of story-lines: some things just absolutely do not work. Like time-skip - it makes zero sense to make a time-skip for father... like Kaine relationship, like hints of Emil being interested in Nier... it all makes zero sense if you replace kind brother (who was kind even after the time-skip) with a grumpy "mature and gritty" papa.
This is all extremely sick to me and I do not want to experience it the same way again...
Shortly speaking, I am currently waiting for one person who agreed to help to provide me some updates. I'll give them a few weeks and if not - I'll just start doing it by myself. I will try my best to replace the instances of text that don't match up, I will add all the honorifics and some unique Japanese words like "niichan", so basically fansubs.
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And yeah, I'm not sure if I understood you correctly... if you mean that we just take Gestalt's text and replace the Japanese while fixing mistakes, then that's essentially what has already been done - Replicant eng. patch is just a raw Gestalt with a few small fixes of "brother" and "sister" instances but text is mostly Gestalt and it's noticeable.
My goal is to translate it normally and we would keep the things that don't seem out of place, yes. I don't know Japanese but can puzzle out most things, I'm good at that. Plus since I perfectly understand the characters and spent time researching, I can make the necessary changes... but having a person who knows J. would be good, of course which is why I am still waiting for the one person who did contact me.
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What technical part? all the files can be edited with a text editor and work fine in game.
Looks like it, yeah. But it would definitely be better if there was someone with experience in that since this is all new to me.
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