Translation Ni no Kuni Translation [ENG]

[Zkarts]

Project Status - December 9th, 2018
Patch: Released! Woo hoo!
Release date: December 9th, 2018


Project Description:
On December 9th, 2010 Level-5 and Studio Ghibli released the first game in the Ni no Kuni franchise, 二ノ国 漆黒の魔導士 (Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madōshi), for the Nintendo DS. The game came with a massive 352 page tome that was required to play the game, which ended up being the reason the game was never brought to audiences outside of Japan.

On December 9th, 2018 a plucky group of fans released the first fan-translated version of that same game, titled "Ni no Kuni: The Jet-Black Mage" in English, following a Spanish translation several years prior. The fan translation comes with an even bigger 372 page book that is required to play the game, and which ended up being the reason that the game was released in December and not in the spring of 2018.


Project started: before 2014.
Project lead: Zkarts
ROM Hacker: Pleonex
Main translator, project reporter and coordinator: Anjiera

Downloads

Official patch v1.0
http://www.romhacking.net/translations/4068/

Or direct link to the download here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/1657bx038wohmhb/Ni+no+kuni+-+The+Jet-Black+Mage+v1.0.zip
The link contains the translation patch AND the required translated Magic book in pdf format.

Savegame
OK7MO prepared a savegame with ALL DLC unlocked at the first save point at the start of the game.

Progress note:
These are for clean new game only.
These savegame files are not useful to you if you already started the game and have any story progress.
If you never played, you are encouraged to first watch the introduction by selecting "new game" and reset the game when you can walk with Oliver in his bedroom, then load the provided savegame to continue from the same place.

It works with the official patch, the restored ARM7 patch, and previous team's spanish translation patch too.
Not tested with retrogameFan patch.

Grab the savegames here : https://gbatemp.net/posts/9042991/
be sure to read the readme about available gazette and the two different save files.


Custom User's patches

- v1.0 restored ARM7 patch
English patch v1.0 with restored unpatched ARM7.bin, to apply on a Japanese clean ROM.

- Icon patch
Translated game icon and title patch, to apply on an already English patched ROM (original or restored arm7).

- RetrogameFan v1.0 patch - New link here
English patch v1.0 for Flashcarts using YSMenu 7.0.6 firmware, apply on a clean japanese ROM. Do not add the icon and title patch. update your flashcart to YSmenu 7.0.6

Bugs, translation errors and issue reports

Anjiera has set up an email address you can send screenshots to, so if you have anything that is easier shown that described, please send it to:
[email protected]

Edit by Cyan in early 2020: nobody ever got any answer from that email, and the project owner never came back since the patch release.
We don't know if the report ever got read or will one day result in a new updated and fixed release.
You can send your screenshot anyway, we never know!

Known issues with Patch v1.0

these are not officially acknowledged by the translation team.
They are some gathered reports from users in this thread gathered here.

General recommendation:
Always keep a backup of your savegames whenever you can, even if you never need to transfer your save (from flashcart to emulator, etc.).
In case the game has an unreported bug and you lose your current progress you won't have to restart the game from the beginning.


1) Sleep mode doesn't work
Cause:
This is caused by AP (anti piracy) check done by the game.
The game contains multiple flash cart detection which is not fully patched and creates issues with some flashcart.

Solution:
- use an emulator
- try another flashcart
- wait for next patch release with an AP fix
- try another arm7.bin, Hephaestus made a modified patch with original arm7, you can try it but some flashcart might not work with it either.
-try reformatting your SD card to use a large block size (a Redditor claimed this alone solved it for them)
- don't close the console, always save and exit the game when you want to stop playing.

The three things that we saw caused by AP during testing:
[1] Your game won't even load, you will get a white screen before the main game screen.
[2] If you get past that, you can still have problems about 40 minutes into the game. Your game will hang when you try to fight in any battle. Unfortunately there aren't any nice save points right before the first battle in the game, so even if you have saved often you will lose some game progress before finding out that the AP feature is screwing your file over. The save file will be good to go once the patch is fixed, but we don't really know when that will be yet.
[3] the sleep hang that people are talking about here - this happened so much I forgot it was a problem with the patch and not the flashcard, so... we didn't even try to fix it until people started mentioning it here. Sorry for that, folks! We knew about it, but we got used to it after years and years of dealing with it. :/

No promises on when we will be able to fix the flashcart issues, but hopefully you can enjoy it on another device in the meantime.

2) patching error
Xdelta 3 error, couldn't patch etc....

cause: wrong xdelta version.
solution: Please use xDelta UI v1.1, not xdelta 3. https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/598/


3) Different progress blocking bugs
- In the dream world, you can't give the correct answer. The game is misinterpreting the 0 for an O letter.
- The game freezes when performing the resurrection spell. (note: You don't need it to complete the game)
- The game freezes when exchanging medals for prizes in Casino.

Solution:
The current workaround for all these 3 progress blocking bugs, until they are addressed into a future patch, is to complete these actions on the Spanish or Japanese ROM, then re-import the savegame to english game.
Another solution you can try is to use an emulator, another flashcart, the other game patch based on the one you are currently using (altered or original arm7 patch, see issue 1 above for links).


4) Whitescreen or Error number with flashcard using Ysmenu
Cause:
YSmenu header file is outdated, it doesn't have the patched game information.

Solutions:
- Update your YSmenu version to 7.06
- Patch your clean Japanese ROM using the patch specifically created for YSMenu. (link provided in the user's patch section above)


5) Freeze at random location while playing.
Cause:
The SD card might not be fast enough.

Solutions:
- Use a faster SD card, at least class10.
- Try reformatting your SD card to use a large block size

Flashcart and media compatibility

Unofficial list.
Please help maintaining a list of compatible flashcarts by reporting yours.
If you have one of the non working card, please test it again with the updated YSmenu version.
Provide as much information as you can : FULL name and version, Manufacturer website URL if present, Current kernel or firmware version.
https://gbatemp.net/posts/8451388

Media

Screenshots:
https://m.imgur.com/a/kx90Mvg

YouTube video of the translation in action:

Spoiler: Progression for the past months

Progress update Summer 2018
Patch: Unreleased
Release date: When it is good enough for release (2018, 2019, 2030? when it's done!) It's been many years since this game came out, you can wait a little longer.
Demo Release: No pre-patch or demo will be released, please just wait for the official release announcement.

Current Status: Translation completed, the team is formatting the text to look good on screen and fixing latest bugs before release.
Job wanted: None. Translation is done, graphics are done, hacking is done.
Play testers wanted: None. The team has enough play testers at this point. Thank you for your support.

Progress percentage updated March 10th 2018
Text: 100% of the text translated (excluding the bonus content that amounted to a news digest of tweet-like things accessible before you launch a save file)
Edited: 26% (+13%), Actually it's more than 26%, because some text blocks are already displaying fine in-game and don't need to be edited.
Images: 99.99% (+0%), still one image to go?

Spring 2018 update:
It is still a work in progress - or rather, a work in the seemingly interminable editing and bug fixing stage. BUT. It is still happening, yes. Hahah.
It'll never be perfect, but we keep finding little things that make it tricky to play and some of the technical issues need a delicate hand.
Thanks for your patience and encouragement!

Progress update April 2016
Text: 49% translated
Image: 90% translated

Progress updated June 16th 2016
Text: 51.25% of the text translated, ~12% of that has been edited.
Images: 100% of the images have been translated, and of that 85% have been photoshopped.

Progress updated August 15th 2016
Text: 53.83% of the text translated, 13% edited.
Images: 100% of the images have been translated, and 86.83% have been 'shopped.

Progress updated August 29th 2016
Text: 56.78% of the text translated ( +2.95% in 2 weeks. Woo! That's some sweet progress - things are picking up! )
No recent editing or graphics work done, but we've got a couple of new people starting to look at those areas, so we might see some jumps there soon.

Progress updated September 12th 2016
Text: 61.42% of the text translated (+4.64% since August 29th)

Progress updated October 18th 2016
Updated stats:
Text: 66.87% of the text translated (+5.45% since Sept. 12th)

Progress updated November 21st 2016
Text: 70.20% of the text translated (+3.33% since last update)

Progress updated December 5th 2016
Text: 72.73% of the text translated (+2.53% since last update)

Progress updated December 20th 2016
Text: 80.02% of the text translated (+7.29% since December 5th)
Edited: 13.47% not really moving much, a lot of editors have seemingly vanished
Graphics: 100% of the images have been translated, 95.59% 'shopped (About ~75 images, not counting any rework as we play the game and see what is broken on screen)

Progress updated January 9th 2017
Text: 95.81% of the text translated (+16% since December 20th! )
Edited: 13.49% (+0.02%), not moving noticeably, but we're narrowing our focus to areas that were translated before all the terms were nailed down so the % done is not accurate for what we'll consider a release-ready text
Images: 99.99% (+4.5%), only one tricky image left to go, and then we have to check everything in-game to make sure there are no subtle glitches after image import

Progress updated October 9th 2017
Text: 100%[/B] of the text translated (excluding the bonus content that amounted to a news digest of tweet-like things accessible before you launch a save file)
Edited: 13.49% (+0.02%), not moving noticeably, but we're narrowing our focus to areas that were translated before all the terms were nailed down so the % done is not accurate for what we'll consider a release-ready text
Images: 99.99% (+4.5%), only one tricky image left to go, and then we have to check everything in-game to make sure there are no subtle glitches after image import


Translation complete! GAME PATCH IS NOT COMPLETE OR RELEASED YET !
100% translation doesn't mean the patch is complete and ready. The text is fully translated, it now needs to be re-inserted into the game.
We are currently working on the quality of the translation, including another pass through the text to edit it to sound more like it was translated by 1 person rather than ~20, identifying and fixing incredibly frustrating string wrapping issues and any translation consistency issues noticed during playtests, and repeated area play throughs to verify bug fixes.


Fall 2017 update : Play testing and editing is making progress, but we're not finding it easy to quantify our work at this point.
No more progress %, last changes will be small and will not change the % a lot.
This part includes last minutes bug fixing and full game replay to be sure everything is consistent (word choice, name consistency, menus and text length, etc.), this can take longer than expected for each new found issue will require spending time and dedication to fix and test again.

Progress percentage updated March 10th 2018
Text: 100% of the text translated (excluding the bonus content that amounted to a news digest of tweet-like things accessible before you launch a save file)
Edited: 26% (+13%), Actually it's more than 26%, because some text blocks are already displaying fine in-game and don't need to be edited.
Images: 99.99% (+0%), still one image to go?

Link to the thread containing the other language translation projects.

 

[Nagato]

Deleted.

 

[Zkarts]

I have not contacted him, partly because he was convinced he'd just do the project by himself, although it's really gonna be a team effort with all the different aspects that we have to deal with, but that may have been caused by the misunderstanding. However, he did not contact me either, but if he (or anyone for that matter) would be interested, we wouldn't mind

It's true that here and there we've got some inconsistencies (like the モニュー or moniyuu) and that's because we had some help here and there from different translators with their own styles. It does indeed seem like a good idea to at least finish the reference document and skim through the current files with new translators and match all the terms (if you look at the Names & Locations Reference file you'll see that the moniyuu is in the terms list, but does not currently have a translation in our project; but I have to admit that that translator was simply wrong (sadly enough, that was not the only time)).

 

[GHANMI]

Thanks for chiming in Nagato ! I got in touch with Kohmei using PMs and the the conversation continued in public. From what I gather from the whole situation, he's still not really interested in being part of this project, not that there's anything wrong with that (and lack of clarification for the whole issue -like not making a separate thread and announcing the translation formally- was poor handling on our part).

About the translation, the initial menu translations we already have weren't written by an English native (it was a Japanese fellow, who went MIA since), and it's not perfect as is by any means. I'd like to stress that whatever screenshots we're showing now have temporary translations that still desperately need another check. That aside, to my knowledge, no machine translator was involved in the process so far.

 

[Auryn]

Sad to hear that yet another possible translator didn't join the project. The project seems a bit cursed. Anyway Nagato, I don't think its the time to check the text. In AAI2 we had part of case 1 already translated before we had a script dump. A second version was made when we got the script dump and we ended with a 3rd version in the game itself.

 

[yasuoiwakura]

Hey, did you try recruiting within fansub-boards?
My Japanese is not good and my english is also not native so i cannot really help you there but trying to motivate for this great project!

 

[Nagato]

Deleted.

 

[Phoenix Goddess]

I've translated everything up until you enter the Northern Woods (so, after all of the cutscenes and you are able to save at the waystone). That should cover the first half hour or hour or so of the game. I don't know how much of the game I'll translate in total but I had some free time and didn't feel like studying for my algorithms exam on Monday, so... yeah. It also gives me a good excuse to replay the game, this time using my legit copy I bought in Japan in June. （●＾o＾●）
Last time I played the game using a combination of shitty scans from the internet, walkthroughs, and random Japanese Yahoo Answers to figure out the puzzles and runes that I needed the book for.

Edit: Also, the book and overall packaging of the game is just fantastic. I'm serious. It's hard to appreciate it without actually owning it, but it's seriously great. And the instruction booklet inside the DS game case (not the Magic Master) is thick as hell. Way more thick than I remember DS games being. Hell, thicker than any game in recent years that I remember. And the box is also really nice looking. There's even a jewel on the cover of the Magic Master. A fucking jewel. You can tell they effort into making everything look nice.

You make me want to get a legit copy of it now

Great job on translating! Rekindling your love for the game is an extra plus!

 

[Nagato]

Deleted.

 

[GHANMI]

In the English PS3 version, it seems "Ni no Kuni" and "Ichi no Kuni" were written out of the script.
Notable such occurrences of the English version translating "Ni no Kuni":
"another world" by Shizuku during their initial meeting (it uses "ni no kuni" between brackets in the JP versions)
"So this is... Ni no Kuni your world."by Oliver when he enters it initially.

The initial working English title for the DS version before it was cancelled in the US/PAL was "Ni no Kuni: The Another World" (and later "Dominion of the Dark Djinn")

(Oh, and I found those screenshots from an earlier, far different build)

Spoiler

(PSP version?)

Would having "Ni no Kuni" / "Ichi no Kuni" be acceptable in our English script?
Or maybe making up some translation for it?
"First World" / "Second World" (the literal translation)
"Surface World" / "Under/Nether/Outer World"
"Hither World" / "Thither/Another/Other World"
?

 

[Nagato]

Deleted.

 

[GHANMI]

Shizuku's script during the first battle is special text.
It's part of the text data for in-game tutorials, stone tablet tutorials, and sidequest clear messages.
We missed it when we were converting the xml files (pleonex's dumping/insertion tool format) to the spreadsheet format used by Google Drive.

For the moment being, I'll be uploading it to Google Drive as xml files (not spreadsheet files).
You can edit the version on Google Drive directly (overwriting the Japanese text with English text) and leaving a copy of an unaltered variant in Japanese for reference. Either way we have it backed up here.

 

[Kohmei]

I'd just like to state that I'm not working on my own project, in case someone is eying this one and doesn't like the idea of someone out there "competing" against them. My only real desire in starting my own was because it seemed (at the time) that the existing project was being mismanaged.

As for joining this one, as I stated in the old thread, I haven't actually completed the game yet, so I'll be of no real use as the main translator until I do. It's something I've been putting off for quite a while now, and I'm not so sure when or if I'll be able to finish it. Which, certainly doesn't bode well for my ability to actually translate it, but there you have it. If I ever get it done, I'd certainly like to reevaluate joining this project at that time, assuming help is still in need. In the mean time, I might be able to assist (?) somewhat.

Also, Nagato pointed out pretty much what I was afraid of, and in this case the translation wouldn't end up simply being inconsistent, but flat out wrong. This is basically why I think starting the script over from scratch isn't a bad idea regardless of how you look at it. "Easy for you to say," right? Well, sure. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

 

[Nagato]

Deleted.

 

[kosterix]

I'd like to help. I can work with hex editors, have played the ps3 version, and know English. I could replace japanese characters with english ones.
Are there instructions on how to use the google drive and rom to make a working copy?

 

[kosterix]

What are the translation conventions, meaning things like try to be consistent and do we try to name things in the ds version alike to the US ps3 version or the EUR ps3 version?

 

[GHANMI]

I really appreciate your offer, but what we need right now are JP>EN translators.
No machine translations, nor Spanish>English translators.
pleonex has taken care of the hacking side, making manual hex editing pointless/unneeded - he has tools that automate that process (which is nevertheless possible without said tools, if you'd like to try -it's up to him to decide when to release it, but for now he released the Tinke tool which you might want to check)

As for relying on the PS3 translation: no, we're doing this translation from scratch.
DS version has different events not covered in the PS3 version, common events often have different details and wording.
About consistency, however, we plan on translating it properly first disregarding the official names (after all, we can't edit the cinematics to insert the English names for Motorville/Hotroit, Gate/Gateway, and all).

After we're done with that, we're open to make a second patch where we comb over the original text and replace Maru/Gyro/Jabo/Richie/Mark/Hotroit with Esther/Swaine/Shadar/Mitey/Phillip/Motorville.
If you'd like to help on that front, we'd appreciate if you gathered a list of English vs Japanese names for
- locations / towns /dungeons
- items
- NPCs, characters
- familiars

 

[Zkarts]

I personally like the names Ni no Kuni and Ichi no Kuni (they've got an air of mystery over them), but they'd obviously require some clarification when they are introduced. (EDIT: Reading through the files it's explained quite clearly that Ni no Kuni is another world )
As for consistency and figuring out which translations to use, a I started a Names and Locations file (I marked that one with [OBSOLETE], because our previous translator created a more detailed one, the Names and Locations Reference file) in the main folder of the Drive.
I'm also the one who made the xml to Google Drive program, so if I know which file to upload, I can easily do so
I'll take a closer look at all of it when I get home.

 

[Kurt117]

i also like the original name and i think it's better if you use the japanese name but it's your call
+
Nagato
are you going to translate the game completely or just some parts of it?
you'll be so many people's hero byhelping this team and translating the game

 

[Cyan]

I still didn't play that game (PS3 or DS), but I personally prefer First world and Second world.
Even if numbering them is weird because there are more than two, and anyone originally from one of the other worlds would consider his the "First".
But the game use ichi and ni, so let's keep the numbering first and second, as in "second visited world".
I don't like over/under (underworld looks like a bad place), hither/thither (never read that before ).
"My/your world" and "Other world" is maybe good.


I asked in the other thread, but isn't there any application translators could use to help with consistencies?
TAS (translation assisted tools) let you do that with words and sentences, but they are shareware and expansive.
Without such a tool, you have to look at a term's file manually. with multiple translators, each one is using his own names and translation style (for example a character with an accent in japanese could be translated a certain way to reflect this, or just dropped), and new translator have to proof read old work to continue in the same style/level.

It's a difficult task.
Good luck to all the team and finding a translator.