ROM Hack Jump Ulimate Stars Translation Project

[Harsky]

So if someone manages to finally translate everything in that file, does that mean inserting the english can be done with ease or is that the hardest/tedious part?

 

[Lumstar]

How about a translation of Panel de Pon on SNES? Just like Mega Man VII, no one to date has ever been able to crack the graphics compression.

 

[Harsky]

How about a translation of Panel de Pon on SNES? Just like Mega Man VII, no one to date has ever been able to crack the graphics compression.

That's the Tetris Attack type game isn't it? To be honest, it's not like the game requires a lot of readin in the first place

 

[unr]

Suggested WEB 2.0 approach is indeed possible and I could probably help with that.

Just dump strings into xml file with the following structure:

CODE

     
         encoded string
     

     
         encoded string2
     

     ...etc...



where `string_id` is an unique identifier to track the string (e.g. string_1, string_2) and `encoded string` is a japanese string with japanese characters encoded to HTML entities.

I already have set up a translation system for one of my projects, so it shouldn`t be hard to slightly alter it and provide a convenient WEB interface.


Another solution would be to hire professional translators.
Yes, it would cost a fortune, but we could set-up a fundraiser, couldn`t we?

 

[Mewgia]

@theclaw: And remind me again how Panel de Pon has anything to do with what we are discussing here?

@Beutifulbeast: That's what I was wondering about in my post. It is possible to do a translation of the text using an online web translator (I used dictionary.com's translation because it can handle about 1000 characters at a time (as opposed to others that I found that usually cap 1/4 that and google's which doesn't seem to do anything). then some hackers can go about trying to reinsert the text into the gamecode, and will have enough time before even a partial human translation is finished to work out whatever kinks they may run into so that it definitely works by the time the translation is ready.
Or something.

[EDIT] I copied the text into Word and did a word count, and there are 76,932 characters and 6,442 lines of text in the text dump
That's a lot of translation.

 

[FAST6191]

DS roms are trivial to expand (you simply add on to the end and rebuild or add on to the end and tweak the filesystem, the hardest part is if the files themselves give themselves a length but that is not that hard either (typically it is the 8th byte onwards, albeit flipped, and maybe a few other ones at the start of the file which are easy enough to spot)), basically space is not an issue.

If you are concerned about pointers they have been figured out (without going back to an earlier post I seem to recall them just being the location offset by the cumilative amount of 00's so far or a simple variant).

Frequently you would have to alter the font (this causes the random garbage you sometimes see in partial translations) but shiftJIS includes Roman characters and they are in the font already (look through the text dump and you will see, song names and level names as well as the odd command).

Basically if a translation appears you merely have to save as a shiftJIS encoded text file, replace the return key with 00's (4 seconds on a hex editor there), generate a pointer map (a bit harder but nothing special) and reinsert into the rom (there are at least 5 tools sitting in front of me not counting my hex editor that can do it)

@Mewgia a good bit of that is the tutorials with which a serious amount of creative license could be taken in translation, machine translation is not a good idea though. If you want a proof of concept (or a partial translation within what my Japanese can afford) I would be happy to oblige.

 

[Stray]

There isn't any way I can help with your project, having NO knowledge of japanese, but I do have a question. How are you going about modifying the in-game text? Is there a patricular program?

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah it is called a hex editor, there are apps made for certain roms/groups of roms though (normally pokemon, big RPGs, occasionally advance wars style games and gameshow style things).

If you want a quick grounding in rom hacking I made a preview release of a guide I am writing a little while back, it is a bit sparse in some areas and courtesy of the late nights I spent writing it things could be better written (I am currently rewriting sections and finishing it):
http://www.4shared.com/file/3636881/1f5f088d/rom101.html

 

[Harsky]

Off topic but there's a series called Dragon's Den in the UK where people pitch ideas for cash from rich business people. One of the contestant was a guy who has a company who specialises in translating documents/files for a fee.

www.appliedlanguage.com (site currently down)

Obviously the idea of paying translators is absurd but I thought it would be a nice last resort if no-one still wants to take up on it.... then again, the idea of a professional company using their resources to translate japanese text from a video game seems strange....

EDIT. OOOOOOKAAAAAY.... I just uploaded the file that contained the text dump.... uploaded it for a quote.... and the total price?

£10166.53

Obviously that's never going to be an option

 

[OSW]

Harsky: lmao i'm not surprised though. only richer companies with big projects are likely to use such a resource.

 

[beautifulbeast]

Update:
Got server space to host the translation application.
Designed the application.
Found a way to make the dumps into a database.

@FAST6191: You list 21 files, but when I split them into individual ones they are indeed 22, and I've double-checked it already. Can you take a look at it?

 

[poloman]

@Harsky - i saw that one too - lol at the price!!! wonder how their online tool performs....

 

[beautifulbeast]

Update:
· Found a way to display both japanes and western text on the same page.
· Completed main layout of translation pages.

 

[Harsky]

Update:
· Found a way to display both japanes and western text on the same page.
· Completed main layout of translation pages.

Is this for a website where people can chip in translations?

 

[FAST6191]

Nice going beautifulbeast, with regard to my error I probably messed up grabbing those names from my batch file.

I have a nice bit of research to write up for next week so I may be AWOL for a little while but I will try and find out where I messed up and post back and maybe include a tiny bit of translation as a proof of concept (although it will probably just be a help file as everything else is too hard for me, * shakes fist at whoever decided (mythical) animals were good for naming fighting moves).

 

[beautifulbeast]

@Harsky: Yep!

@FAST6191: Don't worry about the timing, I don't think I'll have the page ready till next week (Monday hopefully).

 

[beautifulbeast]

Update:
· Finished programming of the Javascript/Ajax part (in a weird move since I haven't even started with the server side of the app).

 

[linkmaster03]

BeautifulBeast, so I assume you're translating JUS?

 

[beautifulbeast]

@linkmaster: No, I'm just creating a web application so that others can translate it. Easier than it seems, you know how things work in Internet now: users providing their own content and stuff like that.

Update: Made some progress in the server side of the application: the welcome page is almost done and so is the database, and models.

Contest: JUSTP (Jump Ultimate Stars Translation Project) needs your contribution! The application should be ready for this week (Wednesday hopefully), but I'm too lazy to design a logo, so I'm asking you to create your own and then we'll choose the best one to use it. Conditions are: It must feature the name of the application (JUSTP or JUS Translation Project or Jump Ultimate Stars Translation Project), 780px of width and if any characters appear, it must be more than one and from different families. There's no prize but the chance to contribute in a project like this and having your name in the contributors list and maybe a link to your personal page if you have it. I've gathered some images that might serve as inspiration/background and a official logo. Enjoy and keep them coming!

 

[beautifulbeast]

Sorry, When I said logo I meant header, like in this site: narutofan.