ROM Hack Translation Metroid: Other M - True Japanese Mod (English Fan Translation)

Shining_KoW210

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You're welcome!
How is performance handling with the mod turned on? Are you just in Theater Mode, or have you tried it while playing through the campaign?
I have yet to do a full playthrough of the campaign myself to make sure there aren't any bugs during gameplay.
I am playing a full playthrough. I played a half hour without this, and now an hour with this, and I did not notice a difference in performance.
 

ShadowOne333

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Wanted to drop by to mention that using Gedit on Linux to edit the message_all.dat file does modify Hex bytes, quite a lot I gotta say.
I tried installing Notepad++ through Wine just out of curiosity, tried editing the file and found I couldn't save it, guess I have to handle it as a .txt and then rename it when I'm done.
Afterwards, I did check the modified file against the original in a Hex Editor, and Notepad++ doesn't modify any other bytes other than the modified lines, so you were correct on using that for this instance!
I am not sure if using Gedit is adviced in any capacity, or if I missed a setting somewhere for it so it respects the other bytes, but Notepad++ is so far the way to go!
 
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Wertypite

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Well compared to the official english version, pretty much everything, lol!
Compared to a translated Japanese version, his version is fairly close to it though a couple things come to mind:
I like that Lexi has Samus specifically say that she brought the baby metroid to Ceres instead of "bringing it home" with her - the Japanese text oddly never mentions Ceres by name. It's better canonically, and helps establish Other M's place in the Metroid universe better.
I also really like how he replaced most of Samus's descriptions regarding immaturity ("I was immature", "I was young", "as if she were Madeline's daughter" with the description "Child".
In doing so he really solidifies one of the themes that was buried within the original script, which is emphasizing how dangerous being "childish" can be... for yourself and everyone around you.
...Which also ties in well with the other themes of parenthood in the game.


Also, a quick question regarding "Any objections, Lady?":
So the Japanese script and the English script are both consistent in showing that is Adam's catchphrase.
But I noticed when he sacrifices himself, there is a subtle change in how the Japanese phrase is worded, as the translation changes from "Any objections? Lady." to "No objections, Lady."
The official english version picks up on this difference somewhat ("No objections, right Lady?"), but Lexi ignores it and changes it to "Any objections, Lady?"

I can see a couple options as to what the phrase is supposed to mean, but I can't pinpoint exactly which the writers intended.
One option is that Adam is addressing Samus as if she were his superior, which is why I changed it in my script to "No objections, my Lady." Kind of a role reversal to their relationship prior.
The other option I see is that Adam - instead of asking her if she has any objections, he is bluntly telling her "No objections this time. What's done is done. I've made my choice."

So, I'd rather keep the "No objections" part since it's more accurate, but I'm debating whether to keep my script as No objections, my Lady or to change it back to just No objections, Lady. There's not much of a way to narrow the meaning down to one or the other, so I might as well pick a phrase and let readers decide for themselves.

Which do you prefer?
I think the meaning of the phrase "Any objection, Lady?" was to emphasize the trust between Samus and Adam, as well as to show that Adam understands that Samus hasn't changed, which is why he uses the phrase for the first time. It should have been quite important moment in the game. Samus could have given Adam a thumbs up, but ended up giving a thumbs down, acknowledging that she hadn't changed, confirming that Adam was right in what he did, so Adam smiled slightly when he saw her thumbs down.
Post automatically merged:

Well compared to the official english version, pretty much everything, lol!
Compared to a translated Japanese version, his version is fairly close to it though a couple things come to mind:
I like that Lexi has Samus specifically say that she brought the baby metroid to Ceres instead of "bringing it home" with her - the Japanese text oddly never mentions Ceres by name. It's better canonically, and helps establish Other M's place in the Metroid universe better.
I also really like how he replaced most of Samus's descriptions regarding immaturity ("I was immature", "I was young", "as if she were Madeline's daughter" with the description "Child".
In doing so he really solidifies one of the themes that was buried within the original script, which is emphasizing how dangerous being "childish" can be... for yourself and everyone around you.
...Which also ties in well with the other themes of parenthood in the game.


Also, a quick question regarding "Any objections, Lady?":
So the Japanese script and the English script are both consistent in showing that is Adam's catchphrase.
But I noticed when he sacrifices himself, there is a subtle change in how the Japanese phrase is worded, as the translation changes from "Any objections? Lady." to "No objections, Lady."
The official english version picks up on this difference somewhat ("No objections, right Lady?"), but Lexi ignores it and changes it to "Any objections, Lady?"

I can see a couple options as to what the phrase is supposed to mean, but I can't pinpoint exactly which the writers intended.
One option is that Adam is addressing Samus as if she were his superior, which is why I changed it in my script to "No objections, my Lady." Kind of a role reversal to their relationship prior.
The other option I see is that Adam - instead of asking her if she has any objections, he is bluntly telling her "No objections this time. What's done is done. I've made my choice."

So, I'd rather keep the "No objections" part since it's more accurate, but I'm debating whether to keep my script as No objections, my Lady or to change it back to just No objections, Lady. There's not much of a way to narrow the meaning down to one or the other, so I might as well pick a phrase and let readers decide for themselves.

Which do you prefer?
I think the meaning of the phrase "Any objection, Lady?" was to emphasize the trust between Samus and Adam, as well as to show that Adam understands that Samus hasn't changed, which is why he uses the phrase for the first time. It should have been quite important moment in the game. Samus could have given Adam a thumbs up, but ended up giving a thumbs down, acknowledging that she hadn't changed, confirming that Adam was right in what he did, so Adam smiled slightly when he saw her thumbs down.

Also, I think Lexxicon's translation was very good. I think story of this game was great. As Metroid fan and as a fan of good storytelling, I think this story was really strong. It's was very surprising for me how better Japanese version really is compare to English one.
 
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novortices

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@ScaryHobbit thanks for the really detailed information, my friend :D
I wasn't aware that programs like Notepad++ or even Gedit could edit the message file directly.

Gedit seems to work as well with no issues, thought I might have to do a proper hex comparison to know if other things get modified after saving the file or not:
View attachment 357502

This will make adding or removing lines for Other M Redux really easy now. Like a hella lot easier for sure. Since I removed a lot of the lines, I can simply delete whatever I don't want and save the file that way, instead of doing Hex editing and replacing it all with spaces as I was doing previously.

Another thing I've been actually thinking on making was using some text to voice software to make Samus' suit read-out that certain features are being activated (since Redux gets rid of the authorization system for a suit auto-repair instead), using this one: https://www.texttovoice.online/ with the very first female voice (Sally). Metroid Prime did have a female voice for the suit, and the Remaster has the option to toggle those on/off, so I could very well implement such a feature and replace Adam's lines about activating features for the Suit's female voice talking about activating them instead.

Another REALLY good option, and probably one you could be interested in, would be on taking the Japanese script comparison that's floating on YouTube, fixing up and localizing the lines properly for English, and then completely redo the lines in English with a speech/voice AI like that of ElevenLabs (we can do a limited amount of characters per month for free, around 10'000 per-month, but that's per-user, so we could abuse this if we have around 2-3 people doing them).
That AI can be trained by feeding it some voice samples, and then you can basically get whatever lines you'd want in the very same voice as the original voice actors, with emotions and all in the speech AI (not that Other M had much emotion in their voice lines tho).

The 1st one is an option I will do for sure (voicing the suit to tell the player some features have been restored), if I find a proper wording for the line (like "XXX functionality restored. Activating..." is something I'm thinking of), but the 2nd one would be really cool for a whole redux of Other M in English with the proper plotpoints from the japanese carried over. What do you think?
Hey, sorry for replying to an old post, but I actually have an ElevenLabs subscription. I think I can test out getting some of the Other M characters in there! Where would I get the original voice data so I can make the AI voices?
 

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Hey, sorry for replying to an old post, but I actually have an ElevenLabs subscription. I think I can test out getting some of the Other M characters in there! Where would I get the original voice data so I can make the AI voices?
For voice samples, you might have to use ffmpeg to dump the audio files in either wav of mp3 format. All of the AIX files are audio files, simply use something like "ffmpeg -i youraudio.aix output.wav", something like that would be good enough to rip them eaasily. The rest of the audio files can be found in the cutscene videos, which are all in SFD.
You can also use ffmpeg to dump all of the audio out of the SFD files directly, but what you'll have to do is specify the track, in the case of the english audio it's 0:0, for japanese is 0:1. You can see an example on how to dump the audios from the SFD with ffmpeg in my thread for Other M Redux, like this
"ffmpeg -i your.sfd -map 0:0 audio-english.wav"

The cutscene audio has both the BGM and voices all in one track, so I'd recommend using something like Demucs, so you can get clean voice samples out of the cutscenes for more material to train the AI with.

One thing I'd love to do, is to use Voice AI to change all of Samus' lines made by Jessica Martin in Other M with the voice of Jennifer Hale, which was the original voice actor planned to be used in Metroid Prime all the way back in the Gamecube, but ended up being scrapped, with the voice files still in the game:


That'd be a really neat project to work on, but it'd be too overwhelming given the absurd amount of script given to Samus in Other M.
Still though, hope this information helps you out, please let me know if you do something with the AI voices, I'd be really interested!
 

novortices

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For voice samples, you might have to use ffmpeg to dump the audio files in either wav of mp3 format. All of the AIX files are audio files, simply use something like "ffmpeg -i youraudio.aix output.wav", something like that would be good enough to rip them eaasily. The rest of the audio files can be found in the cutscene videos, which are all in SFD.
You can also use ffmpeg to dump all of the audio out of the SFD files directly, but what you'll have to do is specify the track, in the case of the english audio it's 0:0, for japanese is 0:1. You can see an example on how to dump the audios from the SFD with ffmpeg in my thread for Other M Redux, like this
"ffmpeg -i your.sfd -map 0:0 audio-english.wav"

The cutscene audio has both the BGM and voices all in one track, so I'd recommend using something like Demucs, so you can get clean voice samples out of the cutscenes for more material to train the AI with.

One thing I'd love to do, is to use Voice AI to change all of Samus' lines made by Jessica Martin in Other M with the voice of Jennifer Hale, which was the original voice actor planned to be used in Metroid Prime all the way back in the Gamecube, but ended up being scrapped, with the voice files still in the game:


That'd be a really neat project to work on, but it'd be too overwhelming given the absurd amount of script given to Samus in Other M.
Still though, hope this information helps you out, please let me know if you do something with the AI voices, I'd be really interested!

That's a great idea! I downloaded the audio file for that unused Prime monologue and made an AI voice out of it! Here's a test dialogue I made.
 

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novortices

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Damn it sounds really good.
Wonder how it'd treat the more drama-oriented scenes from Other M with this voice sample.
Good work!
Thank you! It may be able to be a bit better with more voice data, but the only audio of Jennifer Hale as Samus (outside of grunts) was the one I used. Maybe we can find another role where Hale used a similar voice and use that?
 

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Thank you! It may be able to be a bit better with more voice data, but the only audio of Jennifer Hale as Samus (outside of grunts) was the one I used. Maybe we can find another role where Hale used a similar voice and use that?
She has a ton of voicing credentials:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0354937/

The most recent and popular ones are her role in Bayonetta 3, and several Mass Effect titles, probably those two are good sources for voice AI training.
You could go through the list of games and projects she has worked on to possibly grab more.
 

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Hey guys! Just released a new major update for the mod.
The Official 1.0.0 Version of the Metroid Other M - True Japanese Mod is NOW AVAILABLE!

This version replaces the in-game spoken dialogue within the campaign itself with the Japanese voice overs with modified subtitles, and includes an overhauled XML file so that it operates within a single Riivolution patch.
Minor changes have been made elsewhere in the script, and media files have been updated.

I will still offer the Subtitles and Media files in separate downloads - that way I can update either of them more easily if needed. Though if you had the prior versions and want to upgrade, I recommend you download and install a fresh version due to the amount of changes that have been made.


This time around I got a full play-through of the campaign done, and report no crashes on my end! Though I did make a few minor edits to the message_all script during my run, and while I think those changes didn't break anything, there is a slight chance that it did.
Please let me know if you run into any issues during your play-through!

The main post and download links have been updated to reflect these changes.
 
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hippy dave

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Hey guys! Just released a new major update for the mod.
The Official 1.0.0 Version of the Metroid Other M - True Japanese Mod is NOW AVAILABLE!

This version replaces the in-game spoken dialogue within the campaign itself with the Japanese voice overs with modified subtitles, and includes an overhauled XML file so that it operates within a single Riivolution patch.
Minor changes have been made elsewhere in the script, and media files have been updated.

I will still offer the Subtitles and Media files in separate downloads - that way I can update either of them more easily if needed. Though if you had the prior versions and want to upgrade, I recommend you download and install a fresh version due to the amount of changes that have been made.


This time around I got a full play-through of the campaign done, and report no crashes on my end! Though I did make a few minor edits to the message_all script during my run, and while I think those changes didn't break anything, there is a slight chance that it did.
Please let me know if you run into any issues during your play-through!

The main post and download links have been update to reflect these changes.
Amazing, congrats on the release! :yaywii:
 
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RetroNerdGamer

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Congrats on release! :D I'll be actually testing this on my hacked Wii U with the vWii and post my results for it as I test it.
It's the easiest way for me to play Other M atm.
Anyway thanks for this, can't wait to try it!

Edit: Doesn't work on vWii.
I think there needs to be some files in the root of my Wii U's sd card like some other fan patches I've used like Chibi Robo Wii.
Maybe you can use that as a hint on how to get it to work on consoles?
 
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ShadowOne333

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Congrats on release! :D I'll be actually testing this on my hacked Wii U with the vWii and post my results for it as I test it.
It's the easiest way for me to play Other M atm.
Anyway thanks for this, can't wait to try it!

Edit: Doesn't work on vWii.
I think there needs to be some files in the root of my Wii U's sd card like some other fan patches I've used like Chibi Robo Wii.
Maybe you can use that as a hint on how to get it to work on consoles?
Try rebuilding the ISO with the modified files, and then do the injection or run that ISO instead.
 
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ScaryHobbit

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Not sure how to do that.
I was running the game disc itself with Riivolution.
I'm not really familiar with how Riivolution works on console.
Did you include all the mod files in the same SD card location that you saved the Riivolution XML?

If you can show pictures or descriptions of what's happening on your vWii, that would help a lot.
 

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I'm not really familiar with how Riivolution works on console.
Did you include all the mod files in the same SD card location that you saved the Riivolution XML?

If you can show pictures or descriptions of what's happening on your vWii, that would help a lot.
Would a screenshot (or screenshots) of the files on my SD card help at all?
 

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Hey, amazing mod !! Yesterday I started playing the game again (played only once at release) and I was frustrated at the, in my opinion, low-quality English dubs. So I was going through the disc's content in WiiScrubber and replacing each English audio file with its Japanese counterpart when there was one to be found, and I still missed some cutscenes audio and some lines... So here I am, just what I was looking for. Great work !

About those few audio files still stuck in English, do you absolutely need to know where they're located for them to be swapped or do you just need the files with an accurate name ? The reason I'm asking this is I found a zip with ALL vocal audio, both in Japanese and English, and yeah it has some files that I couldn't find either on the disc's file system. Might be interesting if Riivolution can look for a file's name to replace it, but I don't know how it works.

Edit : I guess you already know all that, but if you happen to be interested in the files they should be on sounds resource.
 
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ScaryHobbit

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Hey, amazing mod !! Yesterday I started playing the game again (played only once at release) and I was frustrated at the, in my opinion, low-quality English dubs. So I was going through the disc's content in WiiScrubber and replacing each English audio file with its Japanese counterpart when there was one to be found, and I still missed some cutscenes audio and some lines... So here I am, just what I was looking for. Great work !

About those few audio files still stuck in English, do you absolutely need to know where they're located for them to be swapped or do you just need the files with an accurate name ? The reason I'm asking this is I found a zip with ALL vocal audio, both in Japanese and English, and yeah it has some files that I couldn't find either on the disc's file system. Might be interesting if Riivolution can look for a file's name to replace it, but I don't know how it works.

Edit : I guess you already know all that, but if you happen to be interested in the files they should be on sounds resource.
Thank you!
Yeah, the issue is that I can't find those files at all. And to try and have Riivolution replace them, I would need to know their exact name and location anyway. I'm guessing they're compressed somewhere in one of the hard-to-reach folders.

Though, it is a somewhat minor issue at this point, but I'll take up your offer on checking Sounds Resource if I get in the mood to revisit the mod.
 
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Leeka

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Thank you!
Yeah, the issue is that I can't find those files at all. And to try and have Riivolution replace them, I would need to know their exact name and location anyway. I'm guessing they're compressed somewhere in one of the hard-to-reach folders.

Though, it is a somewhat minor issue at this point, but I'll take up your offer on checking Sounds Resource if I get in the mood to revisit the mod.
Well if I ever find something about that myself I'll notify you. The files in question in the SR zip seem to be named like they should be in the disc's file system, but they're likely compressed further somewhere as you said...

And yeah it's not that big a deal anyway !
 
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