ROM Hack Ninokuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi - Translation Project

[ouioui2003]

I understood we're going for the more literal translations with the English translation. Also the voice acting in the game uses "Shizuku" too, so it would make sense not to call him something else then. I personally detest "Drippy" too, but I'm not the one doing the actual translating.

It's cool for you to do a choice ! Thanks.
3 votes for a Undub version. And I vote for the two ones.
Like others games, players want a real european game. Look at IE3 for example, 10 people pick up the english version versus 1 the undub.
Having Endou mamoru in the speech don't perturb players because they know Mark Evans.
In the PS3 version, if you choose the japanese voices, Drippy say his name as "Shizuku" too.
Ear it here at 24:25 :

If someone has a list for a undub version of the names already done, it could be helpful.
Pleonex, your names xml in spanish is really unsharable ?

 

[GHANMI]

It's cool for you to do a choice ! Thanks.
3 votes for a Undub version. And I vote for the two ones.
Like others games, players want a real european game. Look at IE3 for example, 10 people pick up the english version versus 1 the undub.
Having Endou mamoru in the speech don't perturb players because they know Mark Evans.

If someone has a list for a undub version of the names already done, it could be helpful.
Pleonex, your names xml in spanish is really unsharable ?

Um, it's not like it's an undub version, since the DS version was never localized to begin with. The English PS3 version is not the same, it's very different and including its names in the DS version is a much bigger task than it seems, and it's not even a priority in the translation process. In fact:

* NPC Characters: We can't just use the English names since we have no way to swap the DS voices to the ones in the PS3 version, and this would create a useless annoying dissonance between JP names in audio and US names in text.
Even in case we could swap the audio, the dialogue is vastly different at places, and 3 main locations with their NPC are exclusive to the DS version (they are destroyed in the backstory of the PS3 version).
* Imagen names: A lot of Imagen are DS-exclusive. Other are PS3 exclusive. The internal list has around 700 entries and we have it already translated. The same goes for item names (lots of them are DS-exclusive, and one has its name as a soltion to a riddle) and skill names (for instance Maru/Esther has three different songs to catch enemies, and may skills are DS-exclusive due to the fact that the battle system is different, let alone that the PS3 version itself has its exclusive skills as well)
* Options: Many gameplay aspects are DS-exclusive, for example the tensei drops and the item crafting to create floors. This said we went sometimes with the official ps3 names when it was a good fit for the ds game. For example the species name "senshi","tori" (warrior,bird)... perfectly match the "milites""aves" and the like. We had "Bottle" but we put "Locket" instead since it's more of the same and not a lot is missing from the original meaning.

The translators already are going that path. Of course this doesn't rule out an eventual second "localized names / reverse-undub" patch and I and pleonex don't object to it at all, but it's *not* a priority. It won't be made unless we have already the direct translation patch out.

About the names xml it's not even complete for all languages and we are waiting for the second translator since scott.ender didn't answer for a while.
Even the battle fonts in screens are borrowed from other games (Final Fantasy). I tried adding the Layton font but I didn't figure it out yet for the battle one. The dialogue one works fine

 

[ouioui2003]

Ghanmi, i understand your position.
So, if you have already done a list for all what i need to graph, even a unfinished list, i'll could use it.

 

[Permafry_42]

I understood we're going for the more literal translations with the English translation. Also the voice acting in the game uses "Shizuku" too, so it would make sense not to call him something else then. I personally detest "Drippy" too, but I'm not the one doing the actual translating.

I'm assuming it would be too much work to have 2 patches (undub names and localized names) right? Is it possible that, after we finish the undub patch, that anyone else that wants to (like me) can go through the translation and change the names to their localized names? I still personally prefer the localized names since I've grown accustomed to them thanks to the ps3 version. I'm sure I'm not the only one either. Most people playing the patch will have played the ps3 version first, so it makes sense that we have at least one version that uses the same names the ps3 version does. It would require a second reinsertion though, so I assume it would cost a lot of time for people to do it again just so that the names could be changed. I assume there's also names exclusive to the ds version that would need to be localized, right?

Edit: GHANMI's comment didn't show up for some reason until after I posted the comment . Still, I support the idea I for a second patch with the fully localized names if its feasible.

 

[pleonex]

It's true that a lot of people will play the game after play the PS3 version but I think that (in my opinion) the team feel more comfortable in this way and it will be shown in the results
I totally agree with Ghanmi and add that I really dislike the PS3 names... at least in the spanish version of the game...

Anyway, to change the names should be easy to do once the translation is done, just a quick search & replace checking that the changes are correctly done. So, no problem, we'll probably release the game in both versions (I'll try to change my tools to do the translation in both versions simultaneously, probably adding names variables like @shizuku for instance, I need to think about it).

PD : ouioui, time ago I tried to play to Inazuma 1, the european version, and I really couldn't do it becuase of I had just finished to view the anime with jap voices and read Mark Evans instead of Endou Mamoru was unpleasant.

 

[ouioui2003]

PD : ouioui, time ago I tried to play to Inazuma 1, the european version, and I really couldn't do it becuase of I had just finished to view the anime with jap voices and read Mark Evans instead of Endou Mamoru was unpleasant.

Yes !!
You are the same like Lip' !!
But you must consider yourself like a "fanboy".
For my part, I have play IE1 and IE2 european version first, and it's was really difficult for me to push Benjis and Lip' to do the two versions of IE3. I watch all the anime in french, because i'm not so fluent in english (and i'm not the only one). History has work for me, success of the english patch is heavily higher than the undub one. At v0.5, we have though about abandon the undub version lake of players...

For Ninokuni, it will be exactly the same. All the players know only the english PS3 version, and noone except hard core gamers know Shizuku.(you are part of them !)
I personaly dislike the french translation of the game, but it's the officially one.
Even the games are differents, they share the same videos, history, many monsters, ... and it will really be a disapointement to play a game with all the world you know called different.

That why we choose for the french patch the official translation, easy to find, easy to translate, and reduce the work to do (only the exclusive things, done by japanese to romanji on names, items, monsters, ...).
You choose what you want for the english patch, it's yours !!
It's not a bad idea to do a undub version where you put all what you want to change in the official game. It will please you and a lot of people. And please, produce a English patch for the masses.

 

[GHANMI]

I've begun a list of some of the JP>US name changes under "Undub English" as a reference. It's incomplete, needless to say (we don't even have ready our name list for the extraction tool).
If you'd like to be in charge of the undub part, you could complete it and then make a copy of the English text xmls and change it accordingly. We only have the Imagen list (some mustn't exceed 8 letters, the one with 4 kana in the jp script, or it may break the save) and "What to do next" text part done anyways.

Anyways, I'd like some input about the font used from everyone. Is it fine?

Spoiler

Translations and presentation not final (especially third image, threw it out quickly without correcting the font and tile compression issues).
About the battle font (the one still in JP in the fourth image) we are thinking of using Layton puzzle font.

Anyways, are the fonts used fine?

 

[ouioui2003]

Spoiler

Translations and presentation not final (especially third image, threw it out quickly without correcting the font and tile compression issues).
About the battle font (the one still in JP in the fourth image) we are thinking of using Layton puzzle font.

Anyways, are the fonts used fine?

Beautiful job on the fonts !
Except for the "Bottle" title, for my part, too gothic. The japanese titles are squares with rounded corners.

 

[StorMyu]

Battle screen's font looks horrible.
not to mention the vwf is not right.

 

[Fracoraptor]

Hello! I'm really interested on this project and since I want to play it so bad I want to help as much as I can *-*. For what I have seen, the spanish translation is kind of bad..., so if you need any help with Spanish-English English-Spanish tell me and I'll gladly help. Also I know a little bit of french so I hope I can help with this amazing project :3

 

[GHANMI]

Hello! I'm really interested on this project and since I want to play it so bad I want to help as much as I can *-*. For what I have seen, the spanish translation is kind of bad..., so if you need any help with Spanish-English English-Spanish tell me and I'll gladly help. Also I know a little bit of french so I hope I can help with this amazing project :3

We really appreciate your kind thoughts!

However we won't be using the Spanish translation, the official PS3 English one (more details above), or any kind of machine translator, but rather translate from scratch from Japanese. We need help from Japanese translators mostly
It's weird to hear you say that the Spanish patch is bad since the screenshots released have been already stated to be neither the final translation nor the final presentation. I can't speak on behalf of the Spanish team, but you should be more confident in their work until you play it at least...

As for the French patch we already shared the ressources (ripped graphics, menu text) with ouioui2003 who wants to start it.
You could ask him to let you join his team (the IE3 team) si tu maîtrises bien le français et tu peux traduire à partir de l'anglais
Or you could help us with the "undub" process by giving us tables with the JP>PS3 English name changes for characters (Maru>Esther), locations (Goronail>Ding Dong Dell), Imagens and skills (Rucci Mad Dance>Mitey Cut Loose), item name changes and spell name chages (Yi Sela > Evenstar) and the like.

 

[Maldito Aficionado]

For what I have seen, the spanish translation is kind of bad...,

The Spanish translation is very good. Here is a preview from some months ago:

Maybe I'll join the translation team (someone asked me to join some days ago, but no news since then) and I wouldn't join a bunch of kids with a translation plenty of "heys" and misspelings.

 

[pleonex]

Battle screen's font looks horrible.
not to mention the vwf is not right.

Some original fonts have ugly ASCII glyhps and most of them are fixed-width (already changed in the spanish trans). In those screenshoots the fonts haven't been changed yet but we'll adapt them at least.

For what I have seen, the spanish translation is kind of bad...

The spanish translation is bad? Seriously? hahahaha, you know nothing about it then.
The funniest thing is that you wanted to translate the game into English using it...

The spanish translation is a very big project that involves a very serious people, trust me. There isn't any "pleeeeaaaaseee master help mi" child, translation using hexadecimal editors or google translator.

We try to do our best to translate one of the best games ever.

 

[StorMyu]

Spanish team ftw =p

 

[ouioui2003]

We really appreciate your kind thoughts!

As for the French patch we already shared the ressources (ripped graphics, menu text) with ouioui2003 who wants to start it.

Already started !
battle and mainmenu interface, ps3 french names, somes items, somes places, magics, some quests, some subtitles allready done.
a little bit more playable.
A new font "pour les accents" is used with japanese texts to play with the game even the texts aren't translated.

You could ask him to let you join his team (the IE3 team) si tu maîtrises bien le français et tu peux traduire à partir de l'anglais

On ne traduit rien depuis l'anglais, désolé Ghanmi.
We will use only the undub files from the english version to produce a undub french version.

If you're someone who can translate japanese, you're welcome. No other help is needed.

 

[GHANMI]

Things haven't been going so hot lately...
Our remaining translator, who said he was caught in RL, didn't give any updates since more than a month, and needless to say, this stalled the project quite a bit...
We put this file (needed to better automate the main text extraction tool) as the top priority and even that didn't get translated... Nevertheless I fully take the blame for the grim state this project got to.

If anyone would wish to help translating from Japanese, that would be very nice (and that's an understatement).
All the text is extracted from main plot text to system text (the graphic parts are especially needed if the menus are to be translated)..

 

[Zaide]

Dang, I wish I could help. This game is amazing and with the progress you guys have already made it'd be a shame for it to die now =(

 

[Auryn]

 

[superfranci99]

Today I try to make a tool for edit some Ni No Kuni textures. This is the result:

 

[mrgone]

took a look at the file
lots of "borg empire", and lots of borg empire in katakana...