# Absolute Zero Translations is ceasing ALL work permanently.



## Reploid (Feb 24, 2018)

well, that blows.


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## Wuigi (Feb 24, 2018)

Bamco?


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## Meteor7 (Feb 24, 2018)

Wuigi said:


> Bamco?


It's a portmanteau of "Bandai Namco."


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## Blaze Uchiha (Feb 24, 2018)

W


Meteor7 said:


> View attachment 115464​Absolute Zero Translations is a relatively high-profile group of dedicated and talented individuals who create and release translation patches for titles in the "Tales of" franchise which have never seen a localization. Their team is comprised of throughhim413 (translator), Gemini (programmer for Tales of Phantasia), Kingcom (programmer for Tales of Innocence/Tempest), StorMyu (programmer), and Kajitani-Eizan (translator). They had multiple projects in progress up until now, but had been focusing mainly on Tales of Destiny DC (PS2). They post monthly updates for the progress made on their projects, sometimes including screenshots, with particularly good progress being made as of the last few updates. They had also recently created a Discord server for their fans and those interested in their projects, as well as started to stream their translation efforts/showcase their progress on their Twitch channel.  From the team's "about" page:
> 
> The lead translator and project manager, throughhim413, has released a rather lengthy post on the team's webpage detailing the end of their work on all their projects as well as an attempt to explain the decision. In short, they began translating those Tales games which only ever saw a release in Japan, not only to benefit the fans who wouldn't be able to play and understand them otherwise, but to drum up attention and interest for the franchise in western audiences as a means to try and support the series. He reasons that, as the series has now taken off in the west, with each new iteration seeing a localization and distribution on Steam, the team's efforts to draw interest to the Tales franchise are much less important, if not entirely rendered moot. Furthermore, he says he worries that any translation projects his team releases now might be disincentives for Bandai Namco when/if they ever consider localizing older titles, so in the best interests of the franchise, he has chosen to halt all work.
> 
> ...


Well I guess you could say that he succeeded in what his team originally set out to do, which was to bring attention the franchise, right? I mean if it is really starting to take off here in the west then I would say so!


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## WiiUBricker (Feb 24, 2018)

Oh well that’s disappointing. Was waiting for the definitive Tales of Phantasia version.


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## Chary (Feb 24, 2018)

I can sort of understand their point, but at the same time, going off Namco's blasé Twitter PR, they don't seem keen to retranslate games that didn't hit the west (the fan's tears for official release of PS3 Vesperia could fill a lake) and going off the wonked out PC version of Zestiria and the trash fire that was Symphonia, I don't really trust Namco even if they did manage to take on translating older games one day.


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## Deleted User (Feb 24, 2018)

It´s been a while since I last visited their Homepage. A bummer to see them stop translating. 

I was looking forward to the translation of Tales of Phantasia X  and Narikiri Dungeon X.


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## Shadow#1 (Feb 24, 2018)

looks like its time to pirate them when they release on steam


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## Jayro (Feb 24, 2018)

Well now we won't get anything... Thanks for everything and nothing all at once.


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## wormdood (Feb 24, 2018)

Meteor7 said:


> nor will old patches be available for download*". *


(forgive the one word post but . . .) fuck


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## the_randomizer (Feb 24, 2018)

Bamco bastards. This is why we can't have nice things. Abandoning the TOP PSX translation is a douche move, sorry not sorry.

TOP has never had a decent western release (no, GBA version was hot garbage), so yeah, this blows.


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## Spectral Blizzard (Feb 24, 2018)

Welp, fuck this shit.
Oh, god, "donating" to Banco?
This shit is about to get rea-


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## Meteor7 (Feb 24, 2018)

Chary said:


> I can sort of understand their point, but at the same time, going off Namco's blasé Twitter PR, they don't seem keen to retranslate games that didn't hit the west (the fan's tears for official release of PS3 Vesperia could fill a lake) and going off the wonked out PC version of Zestiria and the trash fire that was Symphonia, I don't really trust Namco even if they did manage to take on translating older games one day.


Exactly this. I admire the team's intentions, but they're assuming the odds of Bamco porting any of the ancient Tales games like Narikiri Dungeon X and Destiny DC are not absolute zero.


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## DeadlyAnGeL91792 (Feb 24, 2018)

9+ years waiting for a Tales of Destiny translation lmao. What a waste of effort on there part. So many people over the years that wanted to translate Tales of games and decided not to because Cless and Absolute Zero were on it, and now look smh. Hopefully they atleast leave all there tools somewhere so people don't have to start from nothing. His reasoning was BS...idc im not understanding...im salty lol. We might have already had translations for these games were it other people on the job.


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## Hells Malice (Feb 24, 2018)

the_randomizer said:


> Bamco bastards. This is why we can't have nice things. Abandoning the TOP PSX translation is a douche move, sorry not sorry.
> 
> TOP has never had a decent western release (no, GBA version was hot garbage), so yeah, this blows.



It's a "douche move" that they don't pour blood, sweat and tears for your enjoyment, for free?
Uh, hello? Entitled much?

It doesn't even sound like Bamco had anything to do with this. Throughhim just had a midlife crisis by the looks of it. Very weird move but I mean, they were his projects at the end of the day to do with. The existing patches are out there, and always will be. He just plugged the easiest source.

They hadn't even released anything in 5 years, so it's not like this is a massive blow to the translation community outside of taking down previous projects.


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## xtreme1 (Feb 24, 2018)

Hells Malice said:


> It's a "douche move" that they don't pour blood, sweat and tears for your enjoyment, for free?
> Uh, hello? Entitled much?
> 
> It doesn't even sound like Bamco had anything to do with this. Throughhim just had a midlife crisis by the looks of it. Very weird move but I mean, they were his projects at the end of the day to do with. The existing patches are out there, and always will be. He just plugged the easiest source.
> ...


I still find it to be a major blow. He had, what, 3 full translations patches of tales games under his belt? Not to mention was the central hub of knowledge for all tales related patches, seriously, everyone went to his forum for help with Vesperia, Graces, the other Phantasia patch.

Of all the translators, I knew he would get his done, despite others who never delivered. Looking at you kajitani-eizan.

But for sure, crazy amounts of labor went into this, and I can't blame him (or even kaji), for wanting to do something else with their time.


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## Nisem0n0 (Feb 24, 2018)

This kind of reminds me of when the Tales of Graces translation project got axed just weeks from release because of  the official localization of F, but only like 100x worse.  You know I wouldn't mind if Bamco actually localized the older (and undeniably better) games of the franchise, but we all know that won't happen.  The recent tales games like Zestiria and Berseria have been really subpar imo and can't compare to older ones.  Can't even remember how long I've been looking forward to playing Tales of Destiny DC, literally was checking progress updates every month


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## anhminh (Feb 24, 2018)

So did they have any plan for translate other series? It seem like a waste now that we lost a fan translator team.


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## kuwanger (Feb 24, 2018)

Chary said:


> and going off the wonked out PC version of Zestiria



Yea, apparently Bamco can't be bothered to make a relatively really low resource game run at 60fps on even a decently fast system.  Even using community made ToZ fixes and it's still quite horrible.  It actually rather amazes me that they even began to think such was acceptable. :/

Overall, I'd say I'm okay with this.  Let "Tales of" die.  As much as I enjoyed Symphonia, I realize that as a series "Tales of" leaves a lot to be desired.  Of course, it's unlikely Bamco will focus on something better, but then that's not really something that can be helped.  Absolute Zero Translations went above and beyond to work on something even the original makers couldn't be bothered to do.  That they have the love to "set them free" amazes me, honestly.  I'd be more inclined to rage quit.

PS - This would be entirely different if it were a small series or Bamco were merely a Publisher so it was an honest issue about a genuine belief of a lack of general interest or not being able to spend the resources on an outside project.  Clearly Bamco either knows it would be profitable in the west or they have very little confidence in "Tales of".  I can understand why, but that really does mean they'd be better spending their resources on better projects.


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## Subtle Demise (Feb 24, 2018)

So why not bring attention to another series?


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## DarthDub (Feb 24, 2018)

I've been waiting for almost a decade for a translation of Tales of Phantasia on PSP. I guess it's time to take up the cross and do what they couldn't do.
Edit: Are any of the tools they used open-sourced?


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## tehrzky (Feb 24, 2018)

DeadlyAnGeL91792 said:


> 9+ years waiting for a Tales of Destiny translation lmao. What a waste of effort on there part. So many people over the years that wanted to translate Tales of games and decided not to because Cless and Absolute Zero were on it, and now look smh. Hopefully they atleast leave all there tools somewhere so people don't have to start from nothing. His reasoning was BS...idc im not understanding...im salty lol. We might have already had translations for these games were it other people on the job.



i agree. so many people wants to translate tales game. they did not because absolute zero team announce all that game that their going to translate. now their abandoning this translation.  they should stick to one game in the first place..  i hope they just release what they have tools and translated to other people who still interested in translating this games.  so sad. im waiting for the directors cut and narikiri dungeon x.  anyway for all the effort you put on translating this games.


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## leonmagnus99 (Feb 24, 2018)

no destiny dc ..
q_q and well , was looking forward to the rest too.

bad news , today's a bad day




Nisem0n0 said:


> This kind of reminds me of when the Tales of Graces translation project got axed just weeks from release because of  the official localization of F, but only like 100x worse.  You know I wouldn't mind if Bamco actually localized the older (and undeniably better) games of the franchise, but we all know that won't happen.  The recent tales games like Zestiria and Berseria have been really subpar imo and can't compare to older ones.  Can't even remember how long I've been looking forward to playing Tales of Destiny DC, literally was checking progress updates every month



i agree with you, old school tales are just so much better.
was like you looking forward to the destiny dc, and well rebirth also (is it from the same team?)

oh well, we still have translation scripts..




Chary said:


> I can sort of understand their point, but at the same time, going off Namco's blasé Twitter PR, they don't seem keen to retranslate games that didn't hit the west (the fan's tears for official release of PS3 Vesperia could fill a lake) and going off the wonked out PC version of Zestiria and the trash fire that was Symphonia, I don't really trust Namco even if they did manage to take on translating older games one day.



not to mention their god awful localization of Tales of Hearts R , it was done in a purely garbage way.

i couldn't bear read the dialogue..alot of it didn't make sense (i understand some jap).

so yeah it's nuts how alot of times fan translations are so much better..


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## zeropain (Feb 24, 2018)

Feels like an April Fools joke.


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## Cyan (Feb 24, 2018)

I understand the decision, but just regret it's effective immediately and there weren't any announcement to let users the time to get the patches they wanted before they were removed.



Subtle Demise said:


> So why not bring attention to another series?


Oh, yeah, Like Little Princess project from Tom and Gemini. it's been ages, and Nippon Ichi doesn't seem to want to do a remake or official release on new gen consoles. I hope someone will take the project they started, if they don't go back to that game themselves.


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## CathyRina (Feb 24, 2018)

I liked their Tales of Phantasia (PSX) translation. Its a shame


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## Chrisssj2 (Feb 24, 2018)

A real darn shame.


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## Deleted User (Feb 24, 2018)

Chary said:


> I can sort of understand their point, but at the same time, going off Namco's blasé Twitter PR, they don't seem keen to retranslate games that didn't hit the west (the fan's tears for official release of PS3 Vesperia could fill a lake) and going off the wonked out PC version of Zestiria and *the trash fire that was Symphonia*, I don't really trust Namco even if they did manage to take on translating older games one day.


Troll detected. Symphonia was freaking amazing! The game that got me into the franchise. No other Tales game has been as good as it, save for maybe Graces F

Still have all my Tales games in a nice collection.


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## Chary (Feb 24, 2018)

StarGazerTom said:


> Troll detected. Symphonia was freaking amazing! The game that got me into the franchise. No other Tales game has been as good as it, save for maybe Graces F
> 
> Still have all my Tales games in a nice collection.


You have me wrong here  I mean the Symphonia PC port was a trash fire, along with Zestiria's (DRM causing CPU overheating, 30fps lock that modders fixed day 1, etc). The game itself is great!


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## Deleted User (Feb 24, 2018)

Chary said:


> You have me wrong here  I mean the Symphonia PC port was a trash fire, along with Zestiria's (DRM causing CPU overheating, 30fps lock that modders fixed day 1, etc). The game itself is great!


Ahhhh I getcha. I never played the Pc port. Just the Gamecube (still have my copy) and the collectors edition of the Ps3 version.

I used to have the actual Mint Gamecube Symphonia console, but it was stolen a few years back.


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## LukeHasAWii (Feb 24, 2018)

It's their decision, no harm done. Anyone who expected anything had no reason to in the first place, there was never a promise.


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## donaldgx (Feb 24, 2018)

well damn, i'm out of words. Was kind of looking forward to the DC patch.


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## bobmcjr (Feb 24, 2018)

"...nor will old patches be available for download"

https://web.archive.org/web/20160429203831if_/http://a0t.co/translation/tott_1.0.zip
https://web.archive.org/web/20170706100913if_/http://a0t.co/translation/toi_1.0.zip
https://web.archive.org/web/20170620181207if_/http://a0t.co/translation/top_psx_1.0.zip


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## Noctosphere (Feb 24, 2018)

never heard of them
what were they doing?
games translation?


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## the_randomizer (Feb 24, 2018)

*snip*



Noctosphere said:


> never heard of them
> what were they doing?
> games translation?



They translated a number of DS Tales of series games into English.



chrisrlink said:


> i smell an underlying reason iirc bandai is like square enix C&D issuing happy



Haven't seen too many C&Ds from them in all honesty.


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## chrisrlink (Feb 24, 2018)

i smell an underlying reason iirc bandai is like square enix C&D issuing happy


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## Juggalo Debo (Feb 24, 2018)

Really really sad to see such a dedicated and awesome team hang it up.... they will truly be missed.


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## Sakitoshi (Feb 24, 2018)

bobmcjr said:


> "...nor will old patches be available for download"
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20160429203831if_/http://a0t.co/translation/tott_1.0.zip
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170706100913if_/http://a0t.co/translation/toi_1.0.zip
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170620181207if_/http://a0t.co/translation/top_psx_1.0.zip


they are also still on romhacking.


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## Pluupy (Feb 24, 2018)

Holy shit I remember stalking the hell out of the Absolute Zero page for Tales of Innocence updates. Can't believe it's been 8 years since then. Tales of Innocence wasn't that great but it was nice to be able to actually play a Tales game that wasn't Symphonia or Phantasia on Nintendo.


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## Clydefrosch (Feb 24, 2018)

hmmmm... not buying it. If Tales of hitting it of in the west was the reason, they could've stopped much earlier.
I smell trouble in the group and a wish to stop and they were really only debating what out they could take with the least backlash.


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## Oniman (Feb 24, 2018)

I use Google translate and it does a decent job of translating menus and important plot points. By no means it's perfect but it's helped me beat most Japan only games. I got restless waiting on the translations from absolute zero xD  give it a try if you guys really want to play those games


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## luigismentor (Feb 24, 2018)

Dammit, that means we'll have to wait for someone else to start fantranslating those games, because odds of Bamco rereleasing older games are worse than a snowball's chance in Florida! You know what? Now I'm mad! I'm so mad, I'm going to unhealthily vent it out by making an English patch for Phantasia (SNES version), translation courtesy of *GOOGLE TRANSLATE!!!!!!!!* And none of you are gonna stop me!


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## Rudy69 (Feb 25, 2018)

That's really too bad. I've been following this project since the beginning (Tales of Destiny is my favorite Tales of game by far) and I was really looking forward to an eventual release. I also feel like this "project" killed potential effort by other teams (and hey maybe they would have had a patch a lot sooner, this project has been pretty slow)


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## Chrisssj2 (Feb 25, 2018)

bobmcjr said:


> "...nor will old patches be available for download"
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20160429203831if_/http://a0t.co/translation/tott_1.0.zip
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170706100913if_/http://a0t.co/translation/toi_1.0.zip
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170620181207if_/http://a0t.co/translation/top_psx_1.0.zip



Can you tel me what game patch nr 1 and patch 2 is? 
The 3rd one is psx obviously


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## mario5555 (Feb 26, 2018)

"Furthermore, he says he worries that any translation projects his team releases now might be disincentives for Bandai Namco when/if they ever consider localizing older titles, so in the best interests of the franchise, he has chosen to halt all work."

I applaud their time and effort working on this but....

That's flawed logic.  Thinking like that would be like S-E translating Seiken Densetsu 3 or some other big franchise getting that treatment. 

Additionally unless there is proof or some murmuring from the publisher that they in FACT have ANY interest in localizing any of the titles in the back catalog (which after 10+ years is very unlikely) due to cost, localization, testing, etc. if the cost/reward balance isn't there, they are NOT going to release these games to a very small small (but dedicated) set of fans who'd like to see them all. 

And why let that stop them that it MIGHT happen one day?  That never stopped ToP's SFC translation (when eventually we did get the inferior GBA version) and I doubt that seriously hurt sales.

Final point, it's their time/effort to do as they please, but to waste already spent time effort is extremely sad.  

It'd be like well we won't finish translating Mother 3 because ONE DAY Nintendo MIGHT give us an official translation.  And still to this day, that has yet to happen (and probably won't either)  ....sound familiar?


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## Chrisssj2 (Feb 26, 2018)

Oniman said:


> I use Google translate and it does a decent job of translating menus and important plot points. By no means it's perfect but it's helped me beat most Japan only games. I got restless waiting on the translations from absolute zero xD  give it a try if you guys really want to play those games


Ehmm... how the hell would you use google translate to play games that arent translated when you dont know jap? 
it is not like you can type jap charachter into google translate page for every single thing you meet on screen?


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## Maximilious (Feb 26, 2018)

StarGazerTom said:


> Ahhhh I getcha. I never played the Pc port. Just the Gamecube (still have my copy) and the collectors edition of the Ps3 version.



My best friend and I actually played through this game together - multiplayer combat aspect was amazing at the time for a console RPG. So many "This has to be the final boss!" moments in that game with huge plot twists directly after. I actually found a GC version of the game about 5 years ago... It was still $40 used at all outlets. 

Playing Symphonia also got me into the series, and led me to a lightly translated SNES rom-hack of Phantasia. The translations stopped roughly 2 hours into gameplay so I never got back into it. I'm guessing this team is to thank for that ROM I found so long ago. 

If anyone has an idea if/where I can find a full translated SNES ROM since this team is halting it's services, please PM me!


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## nl255 (Feb 26, 2018)

Sakitoshi said:


> they are also still on romhacking.



For now.  You can bet they will update their robots.txt to block archive.org as well as send takedown requests to romhacking and other sites that have the patches.


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## Meteor7 (Feb 26, 2018)

Chrisssj2 said:


> Can you tel me what game patch nr 1 and patch 2 is?
> The 3rd one is psx obviously


Looks like the first two links are for Tales of the Tempest and Tales of Innocence, both DS games. Not for nothing, but the games' names were at the top of the included readme files, and a quick googling of those would have found what you needed.


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## zeropain (Feb 26, 2018)

Maximilious said:


> If anyone has an idea if/where I can find a full translated SNES ROM since this team is halting it's services, please PM me!



https://www.romhacking.net/translations/470/

Here is the full patch file, should be easy to use.

(I guess you were looking for a full english patch of Tales of Phantasia for the SNES. If not, ignore my message)


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## Oniman (Feb 26, 2018)

Chrisssj2 said:


> Ehmm... how the hell would you use google translate to play games that arent translated when you dont know jap?
> it is not like you can type jap charachter into google translate page for every single thing you meet on screen?


If you take a picture of the Japanese text on Google translate it detects the Japanese characters. Then you highlight them with your finger then it translates it to any language you have it to translate to


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## Chrisssj2 (Feb 26, 2018)

Oniman said:


> If you take a picture of the Japanese text on Google translate it detects the Japanese characters. Then you highlight them with your finger then it translates it to any language you have it to translate to


Interesting so if you were to play an untranslated game you'd take a screenshot with your phone/tablet each second a conversation bubble pops up lol?
You can then upload this picture to google? Do you have a link for what exact feature of google you are using?


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## Oniman (Feb 26, 2018)

I use the Google translate app on android/iOS
It also has voice recognition. Sometimes the translations are a bit off but you'll get the gist of it


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## Zukov (Feb 27, 2018)

I'm currently playing Gemini's and throughhim413's work on Castlevania: SOTN and it is remarcable.
I love you guys!!! This is some quality work, for god's sake.

Thx for being part of the scene. Really apreciate your efforts.


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## Moondrag (Mar 2, 2018)

I think the worst part about this is how the other translators and programmers who helped with those projects weren't mentioned at all. All that hard work (As well as torture with Tempest) and time put into those translation projects, just wiped away by one guy deciding "Welp, our job is done! Burn everything down!". I was planning on playing though Phantasia with that translation patch they were working on, but now that is a pipe dream.


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## Pideg (Apr 21, 2018)

Not sure I should bump the old thread but the reason is pretty much hidden in the long post:
*
When Bamco asked several of us in the fan translation community to be Tales series community managers, it was a recognition of what we had contributed to helping the series succeed outside Japan.*

So they sold out to Bamco. Nothing wrong with that if they didnt hold back alot of other translators who wanted to start on this project. And I'm sure not everybody who was involved got a job at Bamco.


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## LukeHasAWii (Apr 21, 2018)

Pideg said:


> Not sure I should bump the old thread but the reason is pretty much hidden in the long post:
> *
> When Bamco asked several of us in the fan translation community to be Tales series community managers, it was a recognition of what we had contributed to helping the series succeed outside Japan.*
> 
> So they sold out to Bamco. Nothing wrong with that if they didnt hold back alot of other translators who wanted to start on this project. And I'm sure not everybody who was involved got a job at Bamco.


Did you really just make an alt account to bump a post? But thanks, good info.


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