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.
Having played the DS game entirely in Japanese, I agree. I enjoyed solving the puzzles and referencing the book. But, at the same time many people have managed to enjoy the Spanish translation of the game, and they did not translate the book.Well the book is pretty important as it is heavily referenced in the game (wether to solve a puzzle or use a certain spell).
We do have high quality scans of the Japanese book already, and as posted above we have done the page-by-page comparison of the DS book to the PS3 book to determine how much work it might be to translate the book. It will be about 100 pages of translation, and then quite a bit of graphics editing to scanlate the book, so we are going to try to release the game translation patch first without the book, and then if we have time/energy afterwards we could then hypothetically remove all of the puzzle hints and release an updated patch file that would require the translated book.If somebody could rip it and make a pdf or something similiar from that, there's your spell book.
Uh, thanks wiinwinn... I didn't realize I needed cheering up!cheer up
Uh, thanks wiinwinn... I didn't realize I needed cheering up!
I notice you're from Thailand, and that was a very very short message... Did you mean that you are cheering for our progress? A quick google search leads me to believe that the phrase "ทุกสิ่ง ทุกอย่าง จะ ผ่านไปได้ ด้วยดี" in Thai means something like "everything will go well", but that is sometimes translated as "don't worry" or "cheer up", which might fit in some situations, but not in others.
The expression "cheer up" is idiomatic and means that the person who is being "cheered up" or who needs "cheering up" is unhappy and that the person who is doing the cheering up is going to make them happy again or at least happier than they were.
Hopefully I'm not coming across as depressed or disheartened - not at all! I'm crazy enthusiastic about the progress that we're making. Thanks for the positive words, whatever your intent! I am certain that everything will go well for this project, eventually. ()
For anyone reading this post who still things that Google Translate would do even a slightly passable job at translating 30,000+ blocks of dialogue, this short phrase example should hopefully convince you otherwise. Context is king, and telling someone "everything will go well" can mean very different things (and thus, have several very different but still sensible and correct translations) depending on the context of whether you are encouraging them to continue something difficult (what I think wiinwinn meant), helping them out of a deep & dark hole of depression (what it sounded like wiinwinn meant), or even just calming someone down when they are getting a bit anxious about something that will probably not be as bad as they think (also a possibility for wiinwinn's meaning).
Context, as well as deducing authorial intent and dealing with idiomatic expressions, exaggerations, boasting, hyperbole, sarcasm, and a whole host of other styles of communication is difficult to teach computers and is the reason why large corpus texts can be difficult to accurately translate by computer. This is especially true with the way our files are organized, sometimes I have to go watch Let's Play videos just to figure out who is talking and who is listening in a conversation! Ha.
Anyway, I've been doing some stuff that isn't impacting the translation % (reworking previous sections of text, checking that we used certain phrases consistently and whatnot).
Current % is a bit lower than I had hoped for today's update, but still making good, solid, necessary progress.
Updated stats:
Text: 72.73% of the text translated (+2.53% since last update)
Graphics - I keep forgetting to go dig around and check on this. It is a little less obvious than the text % done, since the graphics need to be checked after being photoshopped so that they don't crash the game. Smaller progress on graphics as far as exact # of them done vs # of lines translated, but since there is a much smaller number of total graphics needing to be done the % jump is probably higher. All speculation, though, I'll try to remember to look at that soon. Not done yet, anyway.
I hope everyone had a great weekend! I'll update things again soon.
Bro / Ladybro, do not worry about it! Your English is waaaaay better than my Thai.Sorry, my english is quite bad lol.
i just want you to know that i really like this project and hope that it will come out soon.
I have an old PDF of the English book that came with the PS3 game(as well as owning a physical copy of the book too \m/). How similar are the two to each other? I'm not sure about being allowed to distribute it, but whatever restrictions on that would likely also apply to the Japanese version as well...The book very same book is all ready translated in PS3 version of game. Or at least it had pretty much same stuff, the spells and how they need to be drawn, monster info etc. If somebody could rip it and make a pdf or something similiar from that, there's your spell book.
Yes, another good point. It is easy for us to release a patch file for a ROM that users get elsewhere, but releasing a scanlated book might draw more unwanted legal attention. Hence putting out the ROM first and then seeingI'm not sure about being allowed to distribute it, but whatever restrictions on that would likely also apply to the Japanese version as well...
Aww... Thanks! We're not giving up, have no fear! Things are moving pretty smoothly at the moment, and it is starting to feel like we're into the home stretch. I've got some family stuff going on this weekend, but I'll post a progress update on Dec. 19th after (hopefully) making some more progress.GREAT JOB!! YOU'RE DOING A WONDERFUL WORK! <3
How will you guys handle certain points in the game that reference the magic book that don't necessarily pertain to spells, like points where text input is needed? I'd assume character length would affect some of the responses since your limited in the DS version as to how many characters you can input.
interesting to read the translation case study.
I see drippy/Shizuku has an accent. How did you translate it? Did you keep his regional accent difference?