Yes, it's still alive.
I'm making good progress, but I am doing the translation stuff alone, so it's taking a while.
Right now, by the end of the year, I'll most likely have all the CS1 text done by the end of the year except the DigiLine messages from NPCs (the stuff related to the story, I've gotten the quizzes and messages from DigiFarm Digimon done). For HM, I'll have everything done except the main and side quest stuff and the DigiLine.
An issue that's cropped up is how the game organizes the text for the main and side quests. For both games, the main quest files are organized by file name, so it's pretty easy to figure out. The side quests are a different matter. CS1's side quests each have all their text in a single file. Simple and easy, and there aren't too many of them. For HM though, the side quest text is split up like the main quest files are.
In addition to this, Bandai seems to have, on the whole, done a better job translating the HM text than the CS 1 text. CS1's text is awful. HM's is better (not perfect by any means, but better), and the lines seem better written and doesn't seem to have what the main issue that CS1's text does: whoever translated CS1 for Bandai had no context for the dialogue they were translating.
For example, in the CS1 side quest where you, Nokia, and Arata eat at different Nakano restaurants, the official translators didn't know what lines were Arata's and which were Nokia's. They very obviously guessed which were which based on the text files alone. And in some cases, they guessed wrong, and wrote the English lines according to their assumption. I have been following along with YouTube videos of each quest in the official English release for context, so I know what lines are said by who. This has helped immensely and the text is more accurate as a result, as I know who is saying what line and how the conversations flow.
For HM, I did the same for a couple side quests before switching focus to CS1's side quests due to the much simpler organization of the text, and what I found was that, while not perfect, don't seem to have problems to the same degree that the CS1 quest files do. My guess is that CS1 had a much lower budget and tighter schedule for the translation and when it was a successful release, they increased the budget and schedule for HM.
So what does this mean for people reading this? Well, I've decided that, I'll keep up what I've been doing for CS 1 (retranslating everything) until I'm done with all its text (the DigiLine will be really difficult to sort out, so it won't be perfect, but hopefully I can make it at least somewhat better.)
For HM though, I've decided that I'll revise what's already there. HM's main issues are inconsistently translated names and terms, punctuation, removed and altered cultural references, and the interchangable use of American and British slang. I'm doing this alone and by the time I'm done with all of CS1, I don't think I'll have the energy to retranslate all of HM's quest text, especially after it seems acceptable enough to me and nothing sticks out too badly except the aforementioned issues, along with anything else that pops up while I'm revising. (I'll still do HM's DigiLine to the best of my ability and as much as is possible, and I've already retranslated all of HM's non-quest text.)
HM will still be much improved, it's just that I don't think I'll have the energy to retranslate all of its quest text. And anyway, I would guess that people that want to play the patch will most likely be more interested in CS1 with the extra features? That's part of the reason I wanted to focus on CS 1's quest text instead (the other reason being I like CS 1 a lot better.)
I had said before about hoping to release by the end of the year, but at this point, I don't think that's doable. End of winter sounds more reasonable to me. Sorry for any disappointments, but again, I'm doing the translations alone and have been working on them since June 2019.
Anyone who has any questions about anything, feel free to ask them.
