I thought I'd post this thread as an aggregate for all the game translations I've thought about doing (with some amount of seriousness) but have hit a block somewhere. It's probably better if I collaborate with others who know more than me, so maybe if I'm lucky someone will want to help. I think I'll post this on my site as well, later. Please do not use generative AI in conjunction with any of my projects.
Note: nothing here is intended to imply intent to translate one of these games, though I think it would be nice to. But what this means is, don't get your hopes up too much. Especially if I don't get help, nor find a way to do it myself.
Now with an attempt to organize the list by how much I'd like help.
Most wanted: (least hope of doing it alone)
Titeuf: méga compet' (PS2/PC)
This is probably one of my most ambitious, difficult requests... I wish to translate the game dialogue via subtitles (don't want to organize a fan dub, WILL NOT use "AI" under any circumstance, and while there's English dubbing in the Steam/Switch remake, it's quite bad and could be legally dubious depending on how you decide to patch it in). The problem is, the game doesn't have subtitles... my hope is that someone can find a way to hack subs into the game, but I imagine that might require skilled MIPS/x86 ASM hacking... I can say that the game engine is related to Test Drive Unlimited... of all things. Some TDU modding tools work on the game, partially. (A hack to remove the copyrighted music that gets Youtube uploads of the game blocked would also be good.) This is one of the funnest games to be French only, it even has pretty good Eyetoy games in the PS2 version, so this would be among the games I'd most want to see properly translated.
Various Director games
Macromedia Director was an authoring tool that was used for various multimedia and games in the 90s and 2000s, on Mac and Windows. I honestly considered a translation patch for these games impossible, short of dubiously reauthoring the data files and re-encoding the Quicktime videos... then I saw the translation of Cookie's Bustle, which uses a technique I didn't know was possible: dynamically patching the game text, and text into the FMV, using a CST! If anyone is skilled in this type of Director hacking and wants to help or teach me how, there's a lot of French language Director games that would be interesting to translate. (One example: Papyrus : la malédiction de Seth... oh good, another Franco-belgian comic...)
Medium wanted: (a little hope of doing it myself, lower priority)
Kilari: Na-san, mon meilleur ami
I have at least been able to decompress and alter the text, though how the pointers and such work isn't understood by me yet... I can probably manage that with some work at least. The graphics format is currently unknown but potentially simple enough even for me to work out (at least, it seems to be based on LZ)... still, if anyone wants to offer help, I should probably accept it. It seems like an interesting game. (Though with a ton of text, and I should probably watch some of the anime first...)
Titeuf: méga compet' (GBA)
With some effort I located where and how the text is stored (obfuscated in a "fun" way), and with more effort I located some (possibly not all) the graphics that need modifying, determined their compression method, and found the voice clips, though I'm unsure of their sample rate. But I can't figure out the tile format or find the audio pointers. Any help with graphics or sound editing is appreciated.
Less wanted: (more a nice to have)
Kid Paddle: Blorks Invasion
While I've documented the game enough to make a translation doable (given sufficient motivation), the game is extremely difficult. If anyone knows how to make cheat codes that would help, though maybe if I learn the right tools I could figure it out...? Still, feel free to help.
And in general...
Some of these games have way more text than Kid Paddle, ok most of them, and my method of copying and pasting text between different text editor windows is proving... a terrible idea. Any advice on how to better manage translating large amounts of game text would be really helpful. What do translators who know what they're doing do? (Some kind of CSV import/export...?)
Also, if you have any other games you think are worth looking into, you can suggest some, but please don't overdo it. I speak French, and a bit of Spanish in a pinch. I know friends who speak German, Portuguese, Russian, who could possibly help translating from those (one already has, even...), but I know essentially no Japanese, and the only friend I have with any real knowledge of it knows too little to help. I will not use any form of (generative) "AI*" or MTL, and take my advice, you shouldn't either!
*Extremely tiny possibility of me using AI-assisted transcription of audio in a language I speak in a pinch, as it's the only remotely-useful type of machine learning I've seen so far. Even so, I would try everything to do it by hand first. (Preferably, if I resorted to that kind of horror, I would want it to be a local model and as "ethical" as can be... you know, like chocolate. I'm embarrassed to even admit I'd think of this, honestly...)
Note: nothing here is intended to imply intent to translate one of these games, though I think it would be nice to. But what this means is, don't get your hopes up too much. Especially if I don't get help, nor find a way to do it myself.
Now with an attempt to organize the list by how much I'd like help.
Most wanted: (least hope of doing it alone)
Titeuf: méga compet' (PS2/PC)
This is probably one of my most ambitious, difficult requests... I wish to translate the game dialogue via subtitles (don't want to organize a fan dub, WILL NOT use "AI" under any circumstance, and while there's English dubbing in the Steam/Switch remake, it's quite bad and could be legally dubious depending on how you decide to patch it in). The problem is, the game doesn't have subtitles... my hope is that someone can find a way to hack subs into the game, but I imagine that might require skilled MIPS/x86 ASM hacking... I can say that the game engine is related to Test Drive Unlimited... of all things. Some TDU modding tools work on the game, partially. (A hack to remove the copyrighted music that gets Youtube uploads of the game blocked would also be good.) This is one of the funnest games to be French only, it even has pretty good Eyetoy games in the PS2 version, so this would be among the games I'd most want to see properly translated.
Various Director games
Macromedia Director was an authoring tool that was used for various multimedia and games in the 90s and 2000s, on Mac and Windows. I honestly considered a translation patch for these games impossible, short of dubiously reauthoring the data files and re-encoding the Quicktime videos... then I saw the translation of Cookie's Bustle, which uses a technique I didn't know was possible: dynamically patching the game text, and text into the FMV, using a CST! If anyone is skilled in this type of Director hacking and wants to help or teach me how, there's a lot of French language Director games that would be interesting to translate. (One example: Papyrus : la malédiction de Seth... oh good, another Franco-belgian comic...)
Medium wanted: (a little hope of doing it myself, lower priority)
Kilari: Na-san, mon meilleur ami
I have at least been able to decompress and alter the text, though how the pointers and such work isn't understood by me yet... I can probably manage that with some work at least. The graphics format is currently unknown but potentially simple enough even for me to work out (at least, it seems to be based on LZ)... still, if anyone wants to offer help, I should probably accept it. It seems like an interesting game. (Though with a ton of text, and I should probably watch some of the anime first...)
Titeuf: méga compet' (GBA)
With some effort I located where and how the text is stored (obfuscated in a "fun" way), and with more effort I located some (possibly not all) the graphics that need modifying, determined their compression method, and found the voice clips, though I'm unsure of their sample rate. But I can't figure out the tile format or find the audio pointers. Any help with graphics or sound editing is appreciated.
Less wanted: (more a nice to have)
Kid Paddle: Blorks Invasion
While I've documented the game enough to make a translation doable (given sufficient motivation), the game is extremely difficult. If anyone knows how to make cheat codes that would help, though maybe if I learn the right tools I could figure it out...? Still, feel free to help.
And in general...
Some of these games have way more text than Kid Paddle, ok most of them, and my method of copying and pasting text between different text editor windows is proving... a terrible idea. Any advice on how to better manage translating large amounts of game text would be really helpful. What do translators who know what they're doing do? (Some kind of CSV import/export...?)
Also, if you have any other games you think are worth looking into, you can suggest some, but please don't overdo it. I speak French, and a bit of Spanish in a pinch. I know friends who speak German, Portuguese, Russian, who could possibly help translating from those (one already has, even...), but I know essentially no Japanese, and the only friend I have with any real knowledge of it knows too little to help. I will not use any form of (generative) "AI*" or MTL, and take my advice, you shouldn't either!
*Extremely tiny possibility of me using AI-assisted transcription of audio in a language I speak in a pinch, as it's the only remotely-useful type of machine learning I've seen so far. Even so, I would try everything to do it by hand first. (Preferably, if I resorted to that kind of horror, I would want it to be a local model and as "ethical" as can be... you know, like chocolate. I'm embarrassed to even admit I'd think of this, honestly...)
Last edited by onfy,
...Reading the format docs again, I took a chance and the voice clips really are in the same area as the instrument samples, 11khz signed 8-bit PCM it seems... there's actually four clips in the game, though I don't know if the other two are even used...! I'm not sure if it's allowed to attach the audio I dumped, so here's a transcript.
