Translation Ni no Kuni Translation [ENG]

[kosterix]

1% per month, 49 months to go, is 4 years. So it won't be released before the end of 2020. Who will have a ds around then?
Guys release the unfinished product so we can at least play the first half now!

 

[iSeeNoChanges]

1% per month, 49 months to go, is 4 years. So it won't be released before the end of 2020. Who will have a ds around then?
Guys release the unfinished product so we can at least play the first half now!

lol be patient or do it yourself

 

[Cyan]

I still have my game&watch. time is irrelevant. You are not stuck playing games on the last gen only. nobody stop you from playing old games on old consoles.
Play the games you have, when this project will be completed then be happy to play that game as if it was just released!

 

[WooHyun]

I still have my game&watch. time is irrelevant. You are not stuck playing games on the last gen only. nobody stop you from playing old games on old consoles.
Play the games you have, when this project will be completed then be happy to play that game as if it was just released!

When Pokemon Red Korean translation was released in 2010, I thankfully played it.(It was a huge surprise gift for Korean pokemon oldbies-and for retro game fans like me!) Now I am waiting for somebody to come up with Firered Korean translation. When this is done, I will happily play it, even if it's already 2030 by then.

[Edit] Well, the term 'gracious' wasn't the meaning I expected I thought it would be synonym of 'thankful' but it was 'kind'. My bad English. :/

 

[desrone2]

Curious about the progress since June :3, what say you, OP?

 

[kosterix]

So I got the Japanese game, the big box, including the Magic Master, yesterday. Playing it on my 3dsxl it is AWESOME and very addictive. Ordered it via amazon.co.uk, price was in pounds, and nowadays the pound is worthless.
In comparison, the ps3 version we played is a bleak, dumbed down version of this masterpiece. Wondering if there is an android app with the story progression, quests/errands, and ingredient locations and recipes. I guess not.

I would play the spanish version on a handheld but I don't know what flash card, if any, would work, and playing it on a pc kinda defeats the purpose.

Finally, I tried to edit the patch but the result was a checksum error. Does anyone know how to edit the game in a hex editor such that the end result nds file would work?

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lol be patient or do it yourself

and how can I release it if it is not available?
at least give some tools that would do the job.

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Yes. You need the book for things like the list of runes and for maps and such, and there is not currently an English version of the DS Magic Master book available online.

Perhaps your statement was true at some point in time, but not any more.
There is an english version of the book in pdf online, for free.
Also there is the spanish translation of the book in pdf online, for free.

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No worries, it's okay as a "first infraction", many people do that and then turn into exemplary members after their first post

Anyway, the legal way of doing this kind of stuff is that the translation groups will only provide a patch which will add the translated content to a ROM of the original game. How you get yourself such a ROM is up to you

Enjoy the temp!

Ehm, I read the rules, just for the sake of it, but I don't see what rule was broken here, by what exactly. Perhaps I have no talent in Law.

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Hi, I started translating Ninokuni Shikkoku no Madoushi into Bulgarian. I'm already to the trials cave. I will try to translate everything - NPCs, Side Quests, item names, etc. If I can be of any help with the English translation, I would be glad to help. I have created a simple application which takes screenshots from the emulator, then passes the through OCR-like procedure and gets the text, then looks up the dialogs from a text files which contain the japanese to bulgarian translation. The translated text is shown as a subtitle, because I want to see the original also. Here's a sample screenshot:

View attachment 24327

Hi, very nice image of your proof. I would very much appreciate if you could show what tools you used and how I can use them to translate the game into Dutch. Thanks in advance!

 

[raulpica]

Ehm, I read the rules, just for the sake of it, but I don't see what rule was broken here, by what exactly. Perhaps I have no talent in Law.

Well, I betcha you didn't - I removed the part of the post violating the rules! You can clearly see there was something there as I usually put a "<snip>" whenever I remove some text.

 

[kosterix]

But there are so many people who can speak both Spanish/English, as opposed to Japanese/English. Wouldn't the option at least speed up progress?

It is a question of perspective: either you go for first time right, or for first time quickly and badly, followed by iterations. I would prefer the latter, reasons being: (1) If my experience IRL has taught me 1 thing it is that ¨first time right¨ is bad bad (as in IT waterfall vs. agile). Secondly, playtesting the game unleashes the massive amount of power of the visitors of this forum, and that way anyone can contribute and feel great, instead of being just a consumer.
Another critique of using Japanese natives is that it is likely they are bad in English, so while they would ¨get¨ the meaning of the Kanji, they would have trouble ¨conveying" it into natural-sounding English. Colloquial: a second Japanese translator would have another style, and your end product would be breathing those different translation styles anyhow. The point is that the English-Japanese distance is so great that approximations and approaches must be chosen, and to keep that consistent is far harder than it seems; you would need guidelines and conventions, and I'm not aware of the existence of those, nor whether any or all of the translators consistently apply those.

Judging by the spelling errors in the dialogue texts by the Spanish team (and i don't even speak spanish, imagine!) it was also done in a hurry, but to have results first then edit mistakes is far easier than ¨first time right¨, and while I don't enjoy Spanish, it helps me to progress in the game.

If I had the tools I would just use some babel-fishy automated translation and be done with it. But rather than re-invent the wheel I'd prefer some out of the box tools to hack away at the nds file.

This opinion will probably cause me to be banned, but it has to be said.

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something there as I usually put a "<snip>" whenever I remove some text.

At least use <snip/> not <snip>, and the word snip does not convey the meaning to me at least that it was removed. Suggest something like <censored/> instead.

¨Well, I betcha you didn't - I removed the part of the post violating the rules! You can clearly see there was something there as I usually put a "<snip>" whenever I remove some text.¨

Raulpica, I find your attitude quite condescending by the way, I expect at least some arguments when someone blatantly states that someone is ¨incorrect¨. It reminds me too much of kindergarten teachers - it's normative to say the least. Re-read your own statement, and then ask yourself how would you feel when a cop would say to you on the street: you have violated the law. Here's your fine. Without telling you what you did wrong.

 

[raulpica]

I find your attitude quite condescending by the way, I expect at least some arguments when someone blatantly states that someone is ¨incorrect¨. It reminds me too much of kindergarten teachers - it's normative to say the least.

You shouldn't have been the one to throw the first stone then. I found your attitude quite condescending in the first place - you were assuming that I enforced a non-existent rule which is a quite rude thing to do and your snarky remark was implying that it was exactly what happened there. I've also provided enough arguments ("the part in question was removed") to clearly refute your assertion, so I don't see your point.

I never had any trouble with <snip> and the rest of the mod team uses it as well, this is the first time I see anyone complaining about it in 5-6 years I've been modding here. So yeah, I suppose it works for the rest of the users. YMMV.

Don't be too hard on kindergarten teachers - they also need to punish bad kids when needed

Anyway, enough off-topic.

 

[kosterix]

You shouldn't have been the one to throw the first stone then. I found your attitude quite condescending in the first place - you were assuming that I enforced a non-existent rule which is a quite rude thing to do and your snarky remark was implying that it was exactly what happened there. I've also provided enough arguments ("the part in question was removed") to clearly refute your assertion, so I don't see your point.

I never had any trouble with <snip> and the rest of the mod team uses it as well, this is the first time I see anyone complaining about it in 5-6 years I've been modding here. So yeah, I suppose it works for the rest of the users. YMMV.

Don't be too hard on kindergarten teachers - they also need to punish bad kids when needed

Anyway, enough off-topic.

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* If you really believe that "the part in question was removed" is actually an argument, I give up.

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What? Asking questions is felt like throwing stones at a mod?
Well if you really believe that "the part in question was removed" is actually an argument, I give up.

 

[raulpica]

* If you really believe that "the part in question was removed" is actually an argument, I give up.

I'll amuse this question line for the last time.

Your post implied that I was applying some non-existent rule, I told you that there was a part in that post you couldn't see that contained a rule violation and as such rules for that case were applied appropriately. That's enough explanation of what was going on there. If you were instead asking for what the user did post, I'll link you to this other part of the rules:

All actions, moderation and administration of GBAtemp are decided by the staff only and are not open to debate.

To protect the privacy of the user, I'm not allowed to disclose what he posted originally.

What? Asking questions is felt like throwing stones at a mod?

No, but asking questions in a condescending tone implying that something irregular was afoot is.
So, what I meant with my "throwing the first stone" is "if you don't want to be replied to in a condescending tone, don't use a condescending tone in the first place yourself", which is quite clear.

With this, I hope that all your concerns will be put to rest.

 

[rmladenov]

Hi,

Can I receive access to the google docs files with dialogs to translate. I would like to contribute and translate some dialogs in my free time.

 

[Anjiera]

at least give some tools that would do the job.

One of the tricky things about this is that we have to make a lot of the tools ourselves, in the sense of scripts that run to update text, and to format the translated text in a way that can get easily edited and then convert that back into the format that the DS files require. We also get a lot of help from the Spanish team's tech guy for some of the more intricate rom hacking to move around graphical elements when the English text just can't be shortened enough to fit in the space where the Japanese text did. This happens a lot more often than you would imagine, and a lot of the remaining work on the battle system images is tweaking things at the hex- and byte-code level to make stuff work correctly.

Perhaps your statement was true at some point in time, but not any more.
There is an english version of the book in pdf online, for free.

Are you referring to the English version of the in-game PS3 book? I have done a comparison of that book and the DS book and there are about 100 pages of differences, actually. Several imagen are DS or PS3 exclusive, and of course the English book doesn't have the Dream World map which is key to solving all of the Riddle Rabbit's puzzles. If someone has translated the DS book, I'd love to be put in touch with them so we can link to their work when we wrap this project.

I would very much appreciate if you could show what tools you used and how I can use them to translate the game into Dutch. Thanks in advance!

The project lead and OP is actually Dutch but wanted to work on the English translation first in order to reach a wider audience. If you are serious about translating 30,000+ and 1800+ graphics into Dutch, I'd suggest you talk with him as we have a pretty good file setup right now and he knows the ins and outs of the game and what parts are hard to work with.

would need guidelines and conventions, and I'm not aware of the existence of those, nor whether any or all of the translators consistently apply those.
...
If I had the tools I would just use some babel-fishy automated translation and be done with it

Funny story, actually - we have a project style guide, we have a glossary of common terms, we have documented conventions on how to refer to places and people, and though it is an effort to do so we are consistently using them. That is one of the reasons why we each file takes time - to make sure we don't have to go back and correct it too many times as we go, since there is so much text that we honestly don't want to have to do too much rework.

Also, due to the format of the furigana text in the DS code it would be very difficult to just take the text and stuff it into a translation program and expect it all to work. There would need to be some heavy massaging done upfront, and even then kanji and slang and especially accents tend to trip up automated translation tools. All of those things exist in abundance in this game, so I doubt an automated approach would be very comprehensible or coherent.

Plus, you would miss out on all the punny names of the imagen and NPCs and places, which is part of the fun of playing a Level5 game, in my opinion. I appreciate that it may seem that there are faster ways of doing this, but until you have actually worked on a translation project and seen the results of bad translators (people) and bad translations (from automated translation tools) I think it may be difficult to appreciate why humans are better for quality, but perhaps not for speed of progress.

Can I receive access to the google docs files with dialogs to translate. I would like to contribute and translate some dialogs in my free time.

rmladenov - all of our translators and editors need to go through a quality check before we give access to the files, as we've been bitten by some well-intentioned volunteers that did more damage than doing nothing would have. Please PM me with preferably a gmail address and I can send you our translator test. Please also let me know of any Japanese experience you have, formal or otherwise, when you PM me so I can gauge your level of accent/slang abilities.


For everyone else on the forum
Thanks for your support and your patience! This game is epic and takes an epic amount of energy to keep working on, since at times it does feel endless - as one forum post pointed out recent progress points at a 2020 release, which is depressing for everyone involved. BUT! We carry on, and we have our productivity ups and downs, and hopefully you'll be satisfied with what we release in the end.

I'm catching up on other questions in the forum, sorry for the delay. I live above the 51st parallel in the North, so we really only get June/July/August as pleasant months outdoors. I've spend a number of weekends getting outside and enjoying the sun while I can at the expense of spending time on translation work. While I am probably the northernmost member of our team, I know other people have been doing the same. That, and the usual life stuff: moving, having kids, finding new jobs, getting married, etc. We're a busy bunch, but we are still very much working on this project.

Again, for anyone who has a positive attitude and would like to help edit translated text, or translate Japanese to English (need JLPT ~N2 at very minimum and an excellent command of English grammar and spelling) please contact me or the OP via PM so that we can send you our Editor / Translator test. Once you pass that you'll get access to files and guidance on how to help.

For reasons previously stated, we will not be releasing the patch until we are sure that it is fully playable. Not perfect, as no translation can ever be perfect, but playable from start to finish.[/QUOTE]

 

[Anjiera]

Updated stats:
Text: 53.83% of the text translated, 13% edited.
Images: 100% of the images have been translated, and 86.83% have been 'shopped.

Slow going, but as mentioned above we expect things to pick up in the fall once people are less inclined to spend time outdoors enjoying the weather.

If you have experience translating or editing and want to help, please PM me and I'll send you our quick test just to confirm your skills are what we're looking for.

 

[KingpinSlim]

Just here to tell all the people involved how amazing i think their progress is!
I am a big fan of this project!
I am rooting for all of you!
Still haven't played my PS3 version of the game, because i want to play this version first!

 

[Cyan]

Still haven't played my PS3 version of the game, because i want to play this version first!

I played PS3 version today for the first time (just the beginning, up to the forest's tree, which was available in the NDS demo).
I found it different than the DS version, even the beginning is different, with more cutscenes and even some "hints" explaining why the car lost its wheel.
I don't know if it was explained later in the NDS version, but PS3 has a different script, not just different chapters.

I feel that I would enjoy the PS3 version more if I played NDS first. I held few years before playing it, I can still wait

 

[KingpinSlim]

I played PS3 version today for the first time (just the beginning, up to the forest's tree, which was available in the NDS demo).
I found it different than the DS version, even the beginning is different, with more cutscenes and even some "hints" explaining why the car lost its wheel.
I don't know if it was explained later in the NDS version, but PS3 has a different script, not just different chapters.

I feel that I would enjoy the PS3 version more if I played NDS first. I held few years before playing it, I can still wait

I can relate to that.
The NDS version of the game was the first version and so i would really like to play it first, just to see if there are any changes in the PS3 version and if so, how it developed.
Besides... Anyone who has a Nintendo DS probably still has a huge backlog of games anyway.
There were so many amazing games on that little handheld.

Also... Go Team Ni No Kuni! <3

 

[Arcomador]

@OP , Do you have a patreon account, I would like to donate some money (in USD to buy you a decent cup of coffee!) Anyways I will subscribe to this post cause I am very interested in playing this game, and like most was disheartened when Level 5 decided not to localize this game for English markets.

Anyways, good luck to you guys I will waiting patiently for the translation file .

 

[Colton Floris]

Updated stats:
Text: 53.83% of the text translated, 13% edited.
Images: 100% of the images have been translated, and 86.83% have been 'shopped.

Slow going, but as mentioned above we expect things to pick up in the fall once people are less inclined to spend time outdoors enjoying the weather.

If you have experience translating or editing and want to help, please PM me and I'll send you our quick test just to confirm your skills are what we're looking for.

Hey I can help photoshop images if you still need people - let me know (sorry I'm new to these forums and I don't know how to PM )

 

[Anjiera]

@OP , Do you have a patreon account, I would like to donate some money

We don't have a patreon account for the team, just like we don't have an official website or a twitter account or anything like that. We've seen other groups that are super public about their game translation efforts get C&Ds a lot more than groups that keep it on the DL, so we're hoping to just keep it quiet with a few updates here until we are done.

Thank you for everyone who is patiently waiting - we are still making progress, and we're getting down to the smaller areas of the world now. Internally to the team we keep track of %done for each region in the game, as well as overall % that we report here. We are currently finishing area 9 out of 19, and Area 9 has 2063 blocks (not sentences, this is online dialog up to 4 sentences in Japanese at times) of text. All of our remaining areas are around 500-1000 blocks, so it'll start feeling (to us) that we are making a crapload of progress all at once. It's also much easier to stay motivated to put in a bit of time everyday when your small efforts take a huge chunk off the remaining % of untranslated text. Translating an area with ~400 lines is so great because you can do it in a week or so, but an area of 1500+ blocks is just daunting and sometimes a little overwhelming. You spend a whole day and you're not even done 30% of the area yet. :S

Hey I can help photoshop images if you still need people - let me know (sorry I'm new to these forums and I don't know how to PM )

We've got about 87% of the images done so far, out of 1668, which means we have ~200 images that have been translated but not shopped. I'll check with the graphics team and see if they want a hand, and then I can PM you with the graphic editing test to see if you've got the chops for it. The test mostly asks you to do things like change some simple text while keeping the number of colors below a certain amount, avoid transparency, stuff like that. Things that a photoshop pro can do, but noobs often screw up and we don't find out that there is a problem until a playtester gets to that part of the game and the emulator just freezes or the screen shows nothing but glitchy shit everywhere. We've found that doing a quick little test upfront means we have to do less supervising after people join the team, which helps us all to work faster.

Still room for more translators, if anyone knows anyone.