Translation Ni no Kuni Translation [ENG]

[Anjiera]

If it's 5% per month, it's really great
do you have an updated % for the pictures too?

I haven't looked at the images since I got back from vacation, sorry about that! I'll make sure I include it in my next stat update, though. There has been some progress, but I'm not sure how much. We have some tricky files left to do, but the game graphics appear almost entirely translated on my recent playthrough. The ones we have left appear in some specific places, but not everywhere IIRC. We'll get them done before we release the patch, but things are surprisingly playable at the moment.

 

[BADDINOROX99]

really looking forward to this

 

[riendegraaf]

Hi all, I'm a newbee around here.
After reading this post I signed up to this forum.
Can't wait to play the english game

 

[NermaN]

Can't wait for release too, waiting for it from 2014, allmost lost hope by now =(

 

[Reploid]

PS3 ver is probably better anyway

 

[giokun18]

I will wait for this. Goodluck!

 

[desrone2]

*first post was here*
You can see how fast the project is progressing. Don't expect a release in next few days or weeks.
This project is not dead, even if there's no new activity in that thread.

Any updates for November?

 

[Anjiera]

Sorry for not posting lately. I got back from my vacation, did a bit of bug fixing (aka no % progress, but definite in-game progress) and also started on a new team at work. I then proceeded to light my entire codebase on fire at work, and have spent two weeks spending a lot of late nights at the office fixing the mess I made. Good impression of my willingness to break everything for my new team... surprisingly everyone seems really cool about it since I took responsibility for breaking everything, and since I also (*cough* positive spin starts now) "uncovered some serious flaws in our automated and manual test processes". Aka nobody thought any major bugs could get through all of those lines of defense, and yet I had the magic touch... sort of... blergh.

Anyway, I believe that my mess at work has died down, so I'll try to post an update this time next week with new stats. Keep in mind, as mentioned, we've been doing a bunch of bug fixes which looks like no % improvement, but ends up making the game more playable. It isn't likely going to be a giant number jump.

Thanks for your patience, folks! Don't give up, just give us time to have lives (and jobs) outside of this. Or, if you have translation or editing skills, you can help and it will go faster for everyone!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

PS3 ver is probably better anyway

The two games play surprisingly differently, given the physical-vs-ingame book situation and the turn-based-vs-real-time battles and the plot differences and so forth. Very clearly cut from the same cloth, but I find it quite hard to decide which one is "better" since I've spent so much time on the possibly inferior JP version.

I can acknowledge that my judgement is likely clouded... but by how much is rather difficult to say. (>_<)

For me, I think the fact that this was my first looooong game that I beat in Japanese means it will hold a special place in my heart. Oh, and first ROM translation too, so yeah... I lean strongly towards the DS game, even though the PS3 game is very pretty and just as fun as the DS game. We hope you can make your own judgement on the DS game once we've released our patch, but it isn't done just yet so please keep an eye on this thread. I promise we will be shouting "It's here!" to the ends of the earth when we are done.

 

[Nirmonculus]

Hoped you had a wonderful vacation. We all need breaks once in a while. :B

 

[Anjiera]

Hoped you had a wonderful vacation. We all need breaks once in a while. :B

It was a really good trip, thanks! We had 3.5 weeks off of work and visited family and friends in three other countries while travelling through cities in 5 countries. Europe just blows my mind. I'm from the Canadian praries, and if I drive for 3 hours I hit the nearest major city, and the nearest one from there is 7 hours, followed by 11 hours. Do that in Europe and you hit a new country - pretty much guaranteed, which just seems crazy to me. I mean, where does all the wildlife live without getting all mixed up with the people? And where do people go camping? And... road trips must be super short, but super fun! And so on. I've only ever been to Italy before this trip, so it was pretty eye-opening to see so much so easily and so quickly.

It was also lovely to be able to remember some French. It's been over a decade since I've been in a French classroom and even still I remembered enough to be able to understand people (more or less) when they spoke slowly. I have lost the ability to *produce* French sentences, though. My brain just fills in any words I don't remember in French with the Japanese, as if my brain is saying "Oh, can't use English so just use whatever we have that isn't English that means XYZ!" My husband found it funny. I definitely started saying "Hai... Hai... Hai..." at one point when I was listening to someone in French. My brain was just so used to those Japanese confirmation of listening words that you just say as you're listening that I was doing it without thinking about it because it was a not-English language I was tuning in to.

Anyway, it was a good vacation followed by joining a great new team at work followed by my unintentional chaos and destruction for my new team, so... it feels like eons since I've sat down and looked at Ni No Kuni stuff. I have cleared my schedule for the rest of the week, and I am really looking forward to digging back in and seeing what people got up to when I was away.

Thanks for all the encouragement - it does help. I mean, it feels like a bit of a razor's edge we're walking - enjoying the fact that people care about our project, while at the same time being a bit nervous about not always having huge progress because, well... people care about our project. It will be done when it is done, and even then I know it won't be perfect, but still... progress is happening and nice reminders that you folks care is nice from time to time. Haven't had too many trolls, and most of them have been more amusing that harmful.

That's about all I have for now, I'll post some progress stats early next week.

 

[Cyan]

glad you enjoyed your trip.
France (and probably other european countries, but I don't know them as much as France)is beautiful and has a LOT of landscape, geological or historical differences (from prehistoric to now).
We have some place crowded with people, and some without any, we have sea and mountains, volcano, plains, prairies, canyon, forests, national parks, etc. of course, much smaller than canadian ones.
I guess we don't have deserts

I suppose we are not used driving for hours just for the fun across the country (road trip), there will always be a city or village near your location, but it's possible to do it in smaller area (camping, mountain hiking, etc.). hiking in Alps has lot of great views. I don't know other mountains from France.
Travel is maybe expansive for us (national plane cost more than international travel :s, and road are not always the best to reach another part of the country without doing detour).

If you went to Italy, then France, maybe you pass near my place (Nice)

 

[Anjiera]

glad you enjoyed your trip.
Travel is maybe expansive for us (national plane cost more than international travel :s, and road are not always the best to reach another part of the country without doing detour).

If you went to Italy, then France, maybe you pass near my place (Nice)

I hear ya on national vs international travel. It usually costs more for me to fly to Toronto (ie within the same country and continent) that it does for me to fly to most major airports in Europe (I am including the British Isles in Europe, which may be a faux pas in the minds of Brits). We don't fly places often, but when we do it just makes so much more sense to fly far far away. Funny story: I've now seen the British Houses of Parliament that our Canadian ones were modelled after, but I have yet to see the ones in Canada because it is so far away from where I live. (We're thinking maybe we'll do some domestic travel in a few years, though!)

I went to Italy several years ago. This trip we just went to Paris in France, so we didn't pass through Nice. My sister has been there, though, and she loved it! Next time we're over in France we are obliged to visit some friends that are moving to a house near Toulouse and our bucket list includes a trip to Italy's Cinque Terre, so maybe we'll just make a long trip from Toulouse to the Cinque Terre. If we're in your neck of the woods, I'll drop you a line!

Travel is always fun, but so is getting back into a routine with work and hobbies - can't wait to start translating the next area of the game tonight! We're just starting the city in the sky called Haven, which is an entire area that didn't exist in the PS3 game. It's also a quick area (<1000 blocks of text not including sidequests), so I'm hoping to blast through it quickly.

 

[Issac]

(I am including the British Isles in Europe, which may be a faux pas in the minds of Brits).

Well, the British Isles are part of Europe. They will leave the European Union though (but are still members as of now).

I always wanted to translate a game, but the only game I'm interested to do seems to be near impossible
I'm happy this game gets such progress!

 

[Anjiera]

I always wanted to translate a game, but the only game I'm interested to do seems to be near impossible

What game? I would have thought that this game would be impossible to fan translate, and yet here we are with less than 40% to go (not including the book). You need dedication and a team of crazy people that don't know when to give up, but it might be more possible than you think!

I'm happy this game gets such progress!

Me too! I can't wait to share the final patch file with my English speaking friends, especially those that loved the PS3 game. ()

 

[Issac]

What game? I would have thought that this game would be impossible to fan translate, and yet here we are with less than 40% to go (not including the book). You need dedication and a team of crazy people that don't know when to give up, but it might be more possible than you think!

Ganbare Goemon DS (full Japanese title: がんばれゴエモン東海道中大江戸天狗り返しのい巻)
It seems like the text is stored as images somehow, unless I just suck extremely bad at finding the text. And besides, I have a lot of trouble extracting the pure images as well (like the Game Over screen, for example). The images aren't impossible, but tricky to get the right size and the correct palette... that, and the fact that I have no clue how to do it properly to begin with. I've just played around with "DS Tinke"... maybe that's not the best tool?

 

[Anjiera]

Ganbare Goemon DS (full Japanese title: がんばれゴエモン東海道中大江戸天狗り返しのい巻)
It seems like the text is stored as images somehow, unless I just suck extremely bad at finding the text. And besides, I have a lot of trouble extracting the pure images as well (like the Game Over screen, for example). The images aren't impossible, but tricky to get the right size and the correct palette... that, and the fact that I have no clue how to do it properly to begin with. I've just played around with "DS Tinke"... maybe that's not the best tool?

There is an old thread with posts as "recent" as 2014 here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/ganbare-goemon-ds-translated.66025
Maybe other people on that thread are just waiting for someone with the right motivation to kick off the project in earnest? One person sounded like they found the text, at least.

We use Tinke (well, graphics folks do) on our project, but it sounds like Goemon is a bit of a special snowflake.

I am very fortunate to be able to work on the Ni No Kuni project team, since we have enough people (ish) that we can have areas of expertise (translation, graphics, rom hacks, editing, playtesting). I've just been translating and playtesting, so I can't really give you much more advice than above regarding the rom unpacking side of things. That said, see if you can resurrect that thread and good luck to you!

 

[Issac]

There is an old thread with posts as "recent" as 2014 here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/ganbare-goemon-ds-translated.66025
Maybe other people on that thread are just waiting for someone with the right motivation to kick off the project in earnest? One person sounded like they found the text, at least.

We use Tinke (well, graphics folks do) on our project, but it sounds like Goemon is a bit of a special snowflake.

I am very fortunate to be able to work on the Ni No Kuni project team, since we have enough people (ish) that we can have areas of expertise (translation, graphics, rom hacks, editing, playtesting). I've just been translating and playtesting, so I can't really give you much more advice than above regarding the rom unpacking side of things. That said, see if you can resurrect that thread and good luck to you!

The latest posts are from 2016 even. I think most people there have given up, except this latest person perhaps.
But yeah, Goemon seems to be a bit special. Not the regular file structures and all that jazz. And from playing the game, the text has furigana, so I'm sure the text output will be special too. Oh well

Oh, and I'm not searching for a team or so... so I probably won't resurrect that thread for the Xth time

 

[Anjiera]

Updated stats:
Text: 70.20% of the text translated (+3.33% since last update)

I know you're all thinking "that's not much change considering how long it has been since the last update", but I was actually surprised it was that much change. People have been busy with life stuff lately, and as previously mentioned there was some time spent fixing bugs which looks like 0% change, so I was expecting it to be only around 1 or 2% change. Anyway, pleasantly surprised with the (visible) progress!

ALSO!!! Huge step as far as confidence in the project - we are staring at very slightly less than 30% of the game left to translate. Woo! That doesn't include the book, or the instruction manual that came with the game, but that does involve every single sidequest (even the DLC) and NPC conversation in the game. That also doesn't include our remaining graphics work (less than 200 images, not including any rework once we see the images in action in the game), or editing, playtesting and bug fixing. BUT. It is still a very significant feeling milestone, and I feel like we're into the home stretch.

That said, we can still use editors and graphics people and translators to help push us through to completion faster. More dedicated and qualified people means that we would have a hope in translating the book, or even just faster completion rate on the game itself.

I hope you can all be patient for a while longer now that you know that we are still making solid progress on this. Thanks for all the support!

 

[RPGTsukuru]

That doesn't include the book

Does "Wizards Companion" for DS have different from PS3 version? And will be it translated?

 

[Anjiera]

Does "Wizards Companion" for DS have different from PS3 version? And will be it translated?

FWIW, we're calling it the "Magic Master", since this is what it was called in Japanese, and since Wizard's Companion is quite a few more characters and we are always getting tripped up with not having enough space on screen for text (yes, even including some pretty amazing rom hacks, we still run out of space because kanji is so much more compact that English anything).

We are giving our percent done assuming that we will ship *without* the translation of the book, as that is what the Spanish team did for their translation, and people are still able to get a lot out of the game.

If we're not all dead from the effort of translating the game, we may consider working on the book, but the priority is definitely on getting the game out there in a playable state (ie any riddles that needed special things from the book that can't be found in the English PS3 pdf will just give the user the answer).

The games are quite different, which means the books are quite different. We've done a side-by-side comparison of the two books, and there are about 130 pages that are completely different:
- all of the DS-only special Astram riddles that are woven into chapter title borders, into the Wizard's War image, and sprinkled throughout the book
- 20 pages of DS-only imagen details,
- a lot of the synthesis items (~81 pages)
- each rune has its own page in the PS3 book but a few are doubled up in the DS one
- the maps of Coconanda caverns need to be translated (DS-only area; 5 pages)
- the world maps are fairly different, so all 20 pages of maps need to be translated
- the DS-only traveling eggs info
- the Dream World riddle page, which is going to be a bit complicated because it involves riddles that require Astram answers *and* it needs to match in-game graphics

As always, if you know your way around photoshop *well* and want to help us with in-game graphics we could still use help on the last ~200 images, and potentially with cleaning and lettering the book if/when we get there.