Translation Line Attack Heroes English translation for Wii

[Brand Newman]

Hello dear followers,

I just came by to keep you on track with my work.

I've been translating thousands of "intro" sentences for weeks by now, since they're as numerous and random as the NPCs' names (see my previous posts).

So I'm basically writing iterations of a bunch of similar sentences over and over...

That being said, I also progressed with the GUI by discovering that the ranking (which I thought was an unused idea at first) actually shows when you lose.

Fun fact : the game presents you with a list of players' names that is totally independent from the NPC list (even if some names are identical), in order, I believe, to make you think these are the records of real players (or maybe developers).

Fortunately, they're just a few compared to the other list, and while I might change some names in the future, they're already all translated anyway, although people will have to start a fresh savefile, considering the Japanese names are recorded when a file is created, hence the names staying in Japanese if you happen to have saved prior to the translation.

Below are some comparison : notice that I'm using a "face" for the word "traveler" in "carefree traveler" (気ままな旅人) ("free emoji" in English), since I only have two characters, one of them being used by a space... so I don't think I have much choice, but the smiley (which comes from the original font) actually looks good !

The English conversion for "3rd", "2nd" and "1st" was very tricky, since the glow behind the ranks are of different dimensions, meaning I had to make an outline and resize them to correct proportions later. But I think it doesn't really show.

That's all for now, I'll let you know when I'm done with the boring part and can go back the story.

In the meantime, everybody has a good night.

Comparison screenshots:

 

[wiiAdventurer]

I've been translating thousands of "intro" sentences for weeks by now, since they're as numerous and random as the NPCs' names (see my previous posts).

So I'm basically writing iterations of a bunch of similar sentences over and over...

I'm curious what you mean by intro sentences? A random sentence when the character pops on screen for the first time? Sounds like it could be amusing depending on what the sentences actually are but from your comment, it seems like the sentences aren't very entertaining .

Fun fact : the game presents you with a list of players' names that is totally independent from the NPC list (even if some names are identical), in order, I believe, to make you think these are the records of real players (or maybe developers).

Fortunately, they're just a few compared to the other list, and while I might change some names in the future, they're already all translated anyway, although people will have to start a fresh savefile, considering the Japanese names are recorded when a file is created, hence the names staying in Japanese if you happen to have saved prior to the translation.

This game sounds like it was pretty creative despite being stuck with a small file size restriction. Is the game difficult, will we at least see the losing sequence once? Does it happen in multiplayer?

Hello dear followers,

Below are some comparison : notice that I'm using a "face" for the word "traveler" in "carefree traveler" (気ままな旅人) ("free emoji" in English), since I only have two characters, one of them being used by a space... so I don't think I have much choice, but the smiley (which comes from the original font) actually looks good !

I see 気ままな旅人 literally means "carefree traveler". I'm assuming "free emoji" is the non literal translation?

The smiley is nice looking but admittedly I didn't understand the reference. I'm guessing it's the same as saying "Nice try" or possibly a joke on the concept of like when some people used to give gold stars to kids for doing a good job? I get that it's tough to get the meaning across in 6 characters! (and even more difficult since you aren't targeting a specific region for the game translation)

Also, does the 'Rk' mean rank?

The English conversion for "3rd", "2nd" and "1st" was very tricky, since the glow behind the ranks are of different dimensions, meaning I had to make an outline and resize them to correct proportions later. But I think it doesn't really show.

These look good!

--

Thank you for all your work on this Brand. Can't wait to see more!!

 

[Brand Newman]

I'm curious what you mean by intro sentences? A random sentence when the character pops on screen for the first time? Sounds like it could be amusing depending on what the sentences actually are but from your comment, it seems like the sentences aren't very entertaining .

From what I've seen so far, the levels have missions inbetween when you have to choose to do something specific for a NPC character (save them, help them get a treasure, do some "pet control", etc.)

Depending on the mission, the character will come to you with a sentence that will basically mean "can you help me with that", except the game has lots of small variations for that. It's almost never totally the same phrasing, but I can't really use a single line because I don't have the same room everytime (unless I go for the smallest, but it's not really satisfactory sometimes).

This game sounds like it was pretty creative despite being stuck with a small file size restriction. Is the game difficult, will we at least see the losing sequence once? Does it happen in multiplayer?

The losing sequence is hard to see in the first intermission, which is where I'm at, but probably the missions will get harder eventually. That explains I got the ranking only yesterday !

I haven't seen it in multiplayer mode yet, but since the game unlocks feature (like NPC allies you meet in story mode that become available in battle), it might as well be.

I see 気ままな旅人 literally means "carefree traveler". I'm assuming "free emoji" is the non literal translation?

The smiley is nice looking but admittedly I didn't understand the reference. I'm guessing it's the same as saying "Nice try" or possibly a joke on the concept of like when some people used to give gold stars to kids for doing a good job? I get that it's tough to get the meaning across in 6 characters! (and even more difficult since you aren't targeting a specific region for the game translation)

I'm with you on that : I'll be leaving the smiley for the time being because I want to see where the word "traveler" is used (If I'm not wrong, you probably get a combination of that word with a "description" of some sort, since there are words like "minion", or "ally" in the list), but I'm thinking about deleting it eventually.

That's why I've already replaced the "Free" adjective by the noun "Loner" in my file (thank you altered font again), and intend to use nouns everytime. But for now I need this emoji to identify where the Japanese version uses it.

Also, does the 'Rk' mean rank?

Yes. I believe this one is understandable since the first screen shows "Rank" in full, and then you get a list of records with the abreviated version.

 

[Brand Newman]

Good evening everyone, and sorry for not posting anything for two months.

Rest assure I was working on the translation patch, and am now done with the horrendous "intermission" dialogs, which for your information were exactly 263 974 characters-long!

I dare to say the translation is more than 50% done, considering the story part is so much shorter, but the intermissions will surely need to be refined, as dialogs are just a "shuffle" of variations of the same sentences, depending of the type of mission you're doing.

That is why I tried to be "gender and age neutral" (except when specified otherwise), not knowing if your opponent would be a man or a woman, young or old, etc.

I'll probably need some beta testers to help me when I'm done, so as usual you can send me a PM if you're interested, and I'll contact you when the first version of the patch is ready.

As for the time being, please find below some examples of my work, no mission being in Japanese anymore.

Have a good night, and see you again in a couple of months or so!

PS: Please be aware that I had to simplify some sentences due to the lack of space, especially when fornames would have to be replaced with things like "your ally" or "this one" (as in "this person").

 

[Brand Newman]

Today is my last day of holidays, meaning I'll have to come back to working on my translation on evenings only (good thing intermissions are done, it would have taken forever).

I'll leave you with pictures of some allies from the story mode, which gives me the opportunity to demonstrate how localization can lead you to make small alterations, especially when doing an amateur translation.

Since the game leaves me only 2 to 5 letters for characters' names, depending on which, please find below the little modifications I had to make to the script so the story remains consistent.

Tomoe (name of a real Japanese female samurai, by the way) : 3 letters.
Becomes : Tom
Alteration : in addition to recognizing her, the enemy calls the princess a "tomboy", emphasizing her "fighter side". That, and the fact that the nickname "Tom" can stand for "Tomoe", leads for her to be called that way during the rest of the game:

La Mancha (inspired by the "Man of La Mancha", who himself is inspired by the novel "Don Quixote") : 3 letters.
Becomes : Don
Alteration : Instead of giving "La Mancha" as his name, the character says he's "Don Quixote de La Mancha".

Bear : 2 letters
Becomes : Bir
Alteration : That one was tricky. In the Japanese version, the character ends being called "bear", because he thinks it's his name, as the others call him that way. So I relied on the altered font ("ir" being a single character), and slightly altered the dialog so that the bear would think his name is "beer", making Tomoe settle for "Bir" (instead of "Bear" in Japanese).

I hope you'll find these solutions satisfactory, as I believe they stay as true as possible to the original.

Have a nice Sunday.

 

[Deleted member 323844]

I love the Don Quixote character

 

[Brand Newman]

Alright, last one before I leave you without news about my translation for weeks!

The character's original name is Jo Gekoku (Gekoku Jo), which is a word for "insurgent". Five letters to translate it in English (not to mention preserve the pun), so I came up with this.

(Yeah I know, but that's a silly game anyway)

 

[Brand Newman]

Hello everyone!

I should be done with the first draft of the translation patch by the end of the month, and will be looking for beta testers in October.

The general idea would be to play the game, each on our own (ideally progressing at the same speed), and look for grammatical errors, typos,... as well as inconsistencies in the story (dialogs are out of order, which makes it hard sometimes to write a cohesive script)

I'd create a private conversation with the beta testers, and we'd exchange about things that need to be refined, make suggestions, put screenshots online, etc.

If anyone is interested, you can send me a PM, and we can discuss the details all together.

Please let me know, and have a nice WE.

 

[fatherjack]

Great work Brand Newman!
Sure it's gonna turn out just as good as Earth Seeker translation - which was tremendous!
Keep going

 

[Justinlakos77]

Very excited for this and looking forward to beta testing!

 

[Brand Newman]

Thank you, @Justinlakos77 , and welcome since you just joined us today.

Unless I've missed some Japanese (in which case I'll find out during the beta testing phase), I am done with the last file of the game.

I should start beta testing within the week (just want to refine the "intermissions" part a bit first), and will open a private thread about that with volunteers, so do not hesitate to contact me!

Most of the dialogs should make sense in the first chapters, since I had already played a bit while translating. But I can tell the story goes a bit south afterward anyway, so be prepared for some debate !

Oh, and something I find funny : I've found an old footage from E3 where they presented a translated mission of the game (it's easy to translate only one mission, which put people under the impression the translation was almost complete for years), but they decided to go with the final level!

Talk about spoiling the game... well at least it gave me some confirmation about the accuracy of my job!

Looking forward for application, everybody has a good start of their week!

 

[Brand Newman]

Currently writing the "readme" for the game, which will be quite different from the previous projects, since patching a wad differs a lot from patching an iso or a retail disc.

I intend to send it to the people willing to beta test the game, but sadly I haven't received a lot of applications yet...

If you're willing to help and get your name in the acknowledgments, please feel free to contact me.

As for my current "team", I'll send you everything you need in a few days or so (as I wrote, patching method and installation of a wad can be tricky).

Good night everyone!

 

[Deleted member 323844]

I would like to help, but my English is not quite there, unfortunately. I will wait for the final release

Great job, as always, Brand.

 

[wiiAdventurer]

Unfortunately, I'm quite busy with some other projects at the moment

To be honest, it frustrates me that your projects aren't more popular. The games are great and the translation is always very well done. I hope you get some more applicants because I too am looking forward to the upcoming release! As I've mentioned before, this one has been on my radar since it was revealed at E3

 

[Brand Newman]

Unfortunately, I'm quite busy with some other projects at the moment

To be honest, it frustrates me that your projects aren't more popular. The games are great and the translation is always very well done. I hope you get some more applicants because I too am looking forward to the upcoming release! As I've mentioned before, this one has been on my radar since it was revealed at E3

Thank you @wiiAdventurer . Guess I came a little too late in the game for my translations to be popular, but that doesn't matter.

Maybe I'll have the pleasure to count you amongst my beta testers for another project?

For the time being it appears we'll be three. That's more than enough for a WiiWare I guess.

I'll be done with the patching and installing instructions tonight, and will be sending the translation by tomorrow.

But I already know the tricky part will be the ranking, as it turns out I'll have to draw little symbols to replace very short words, so they look like medals.

It's always the details that take the most time!

Have a good afternoon.

 

[Brand Newman]

The beta testing phase is going steady, except that some testers are having trouble installing the customized font, which I'll have to check more thoroughly.

Speaking of customized font, the most tricky obstacle I'm facing right now is the ranking system : some combinations are still a mystery to me (and I've played more than 150 stages), making it very hard to test every possibilty.

Furthermore, some rankings are actual sentences that make little to no sense when reduced to a single word...

So I decided to modify the logic behind it a bit, and took inspiration from the "stamp" system of Super Mario 3D World : while I had created pictures for nouns only at the beginning, I've extended it to adjectives / sentences.

It resolves the fact that, in some case, it's hard to say whether you're facing a noun or an adjective, because of the lack of context).

Plus, while the stamps still have a connection with the Japanese version, the graphical aspect makes it easier to catch the idea with a single character, which was all I had in some cases anyway.

I'm far from done, but I think these badges are decent, and will do the job much better than abbreviated words that had become hard to even understand (what do you think of the Kabuki dancer? This one took me some time and effort)

And of course, I replaced the word "rank" by "stamp" (no room for plural, but nevermind).

Anyway, back to more graphical ressources modification, wishing everybody a nice WE!

 

[Deleted member 323844]

This translation is getting a crazy amount of work. I'm sure even original devs would be surprised.

Kabuki icon looks great. I would had choose this oni mask as well.

 

[wiiAdventurer]

View attachment 278073

Wow. I love those icons. My favorite is the castle but the bear made me laugh. Did you do these? Great work. What do the japanese symbols mean?

I'm far from done, but I think these badges are decent, and will do the job much better than abbreviated words that had become hard to even understand (what do you think of the Kabuki dancer? This one took me some time and effort)

You have more to do? Dang. Is is bad that I actually look forward to seeing what more there is. Thank you again for all your work. You are truly doing this game justice! (kabuki dancer is great)

 

[Brand Newman]

Wow. I love those icons. My favorite is the castle but the bear made me laugh. Did you do these? Great work. What do the japanese symbols mean?




You have more to do? Dang. Is is bad that I actually look forward to seeing what more there is. Thank you again for all your work. You are truly doing this game justice! (kabuki dancer is great)

Yes I did the icons myself, but the Japanese on the left are untouched kanjis : I used symbols that weren't used by the game (like buttons, smileys, etc., since the game uses graphical resources instead), and replaced them with my icons.

So what you're seeing is actually the beginning of the badges' list, starting with what used to be the "magnifying glass" icon ("E0 00" in hexadecimal).

I've done 31 out of 60 symbols, so I'm halfway there as you can see.

As for the rest, I've completed the story and obtained all the items from the game : I still have to get feedbacks from my beta testers about the last chapters, and will check the NPC's weapons to verify whether their names correspond (some are using quite strange weapons, which I sometimes couldn't really figure before I saw them ingame).

And of course there's the multiplayer mode, but this one shouldn't be too complex since I already have a team of NPC from the story mode.

Two things I find worthy of noticing :
- The game totally runs off trail from the story that was (and is still) presented today on the rare websites mentioning it : I won't spoil anything, but the "dragon's parts" are nowhere to be seen, which means the E3 presentation (which provided the obtention of one of them, with a camera movement that didn't make it to the final product either) was obviously an altered version,
- There seems to be some unused content, even in the Wiiware: after more than 150 levels of intermissions, I still haven't met some characters' names and mission: if they don't show up at level 200, I think it will be safe to say they were cut off.

That's all for now, thank you everyone for your kind feedback, and have a nice WE!

 

[wiiAdventurer]

Two things I find worthy of noticing :
- The game totally runs off trail from the story that was (and is still) presented today on the rare websites mentioning it : I won't spoil anything, but the "dragon's parts" are nowhere to be seen, which means the E3 presentation (which provided the obtention of one of them, with a camera movement that didn't make it to the final product either) was obviously an altered version,
- There seems to be some unused content, even in the Wiiware: after more than 150 levels of intermissions, I still haven't met some characters' names and mission: if they don't show up at level 200, I think it will be safe to say they were cut off.

Oooo, I love hearing about these sort of details. I'm sure the team had to do some cutting back of content when going from Wii to Wiiware and the unused content might be proof of that. Or maybe that content is still accessible but not directly in game, that's always interesting.

Thanks for sharing!