ROM Hack Question about hacking rom/translation

[Kishire]

Hey all, so exactly how difficult is it to only hack a game enough to translate the script/text? In other words, how or what do you need to translate the text or script of a game? and only the script so other stuff such as the graphics & such is unnecessary.
I am wondering because for certain games I would only like to know enough to play, I don't know japanense so I can't translate, however, there are guides that shows what the items name & such in japanese and what it means in english, so I can simply find those words & translate it myself if possible.

Also I know there is a hacking info stickied topic up there and I've tried reading through it but it is just too much info for someone with no experience about this. So I'm hoping to get a quick simple answer if possible, thanks.

 

[twiztidsinz]

varies depending on the game.

If reading through the stickied topic was too much for you, you should pretty much give up since that is what is involved with getting the text in a usable format to translate.
However, if you can read Japanese, you might want to see if someone who can get to the text can extract the text for you and then you translate and have them put it back (or they can write an app that does it automatically).

 

[Shabang21]

Best of luck. It takes time and patience. Let's hope you have them

 

[Shipuh]

im not trying to dissuade you from attempting to translate a game...but i absolutely HATE seeing a bad and incorrect translation...and if you seriously don't speak japanese...you won't translate the game right.

im not trying to be rude, its just a fact.

there are sayings and colloquials that dictionaries will never be able to translate properly for you...it only comes with an understanding of how japanese people think. not to mention verb conjugations...which can decide the entire personality of the character if you don't know how to translate it properly.

...i know this from my own translation experience. i tried to subtitle back when i had a 2 or 3 years grasp of the japanese language...and i go back now and see how terribly wrong my japanese was. its embarrassing and shameful.

to really translate a television show (or in your case a game)...you need atleast 4 or 5 years of japanese under your belt...and even then...you might not be that great. it varies case by case, but it just really comes down to how determined you are.

good luck with what your trying to accomplish though. if you need any help, give me a pm, i cant guarantee you anything, but if your stuck i might be able to lend you a hand.

 

[_Chaz_]

im not trying to dissuade you from attempting to translate a game...but i absolutely HATE seeing a bad and incorrect translation...and if you seriously don't speak japanese...you won't translate the game right.

im not trying to be rude, its just a fact.

there are sayings and colloquials that dictionaries will never be able to translate properly for you...it only comes with an understanding of how japanese people think. not to mention verb conjugations...which can decide the entire personality of the character if you don't know how to translate it properly.

...i know this from my own translation experience. i tried to subtitle back when i had a 2 or 3 years grasp of the japanese language...and i go back now and see how terribly wrong my japanese was. its embarrassing and shameful.

to really translate a television show (or in your case a game)...you need atleast 4 or 5 years of japanese under your belt...and even then...you might not be that great. it varies case by case, but it just really comes down to how determined you are.

good luck with what your trying to accomplish though. if you need any help, give me a pm, i cant guarantee you anything, but if your stuck i might be able to lend you a hand.

 

[azerty1]

im not trying to dissuade you from attempting to translate a game...but i absolutely HATE seeing a bad and incorrect translation...and if you seriously don't speak japanese...you won't translate the game right.

im not trying to be rude, its just a fact.

there are sayings and colloquials that dictionaries will never be able to translate properly for you...it only comes with an understanding of how japanese people think. not to mention verb conjugations...which can decide the entire personality of the character if you don't know how to translate it properly.

...i know this from my own translation experience. i tried to subtitle back when i had a 2 or 3 years grasp of the japanese language...and i go back now and see how terribly wrong my japanese was. its embarrassing and shameful.

to really translate a television show (or in your case a game)...you need atleast 4 or 5 years of japanese under your belt...and even then...you might not be that great. it varies case by case, but it just really comes down to how determined you are.

good luck with what your trying to accomplish though. if you need any help, give me a pm, i cant guarantee you anything, but if your stuck i might be able to lend you a hand.

he is asking for how to hack the rom, he has not said much about trasnlating a game with an online translator. I, for example, can easily translate some of the item names in games, since they're just english written out in kana. that is all Kishire seems to be saying.

@kishire
the stickied topic might be a bit confusing, so you should also look for toerh guides. go to romhacking.net and look at that stuff, but some friendly advice before you start, don't spend too much time reading about tables. it's more rare to find a game that doesn't use shift-jis than one that does on the ds.
what game are you intending to hack? i might be able to take a look at it and sort of walk you through the process of how I reverse engineer the script.
the way i learned was pretty much through trial and error and asking a lot of questions. specific answers to specific questions help you learn much faster than the general guides.

 

[mipe]

If you would actually read the first post, you would notice that he isn't going to release them, he's just doing them for himself. So you don't need to say 'omg anoter bd inglsh trsanltation'

 

[Kishire]

Thank you for your feedback & opinions. And yes I guess you can say this is mostly for personal use, since I'm not really looking to translating a whole game for the public, just enough so that I can understand the game myself.

@azerty1
Thank you for the the site, I'll try to learn from it.
and the game that I would like to hack is Harvest Moon: Wind Bazaar, it'll probably be translated into english but who knows how long that will be. It'll probably take me forever to be able to do anything to the rom myself (considering I have no clue what to do). So I'm hoping that maybe someone can create some sort of spreadsheet with the japanese words, and I'll translate it through a guide, and then they can make a patch out of it for me.

Lookie: http://fogu.com/hmforum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=100169
If anyone ever play a Harvest Moon game before they'd know the mechanic is easy, and an understanding of the story is not exactly required to play. However, with the guide above, I can use it to help me translate the items, names, etc. just enough so that I won't be completely lost. But I do not know how to hack into the text, let alone, putting it all into a spreadsheet form for translating (then there's also the patch that need to be made).
any more help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Shipuh]

regardless if its personal use or not, i see all these videos now posted up on youtube with just "translations for fun" and i can't stand them...they authors get mad and defensive if you try and correct their japanese by saying "im only a beginner"...but why even show it to anyone at all then?

my apologies for assuming that you were going to show it off to other people, im not trying to bite anyones head off...

...i guess i just don't understand the logic in going through the ordeal of hacking the scripts...when there are already many tools available to help you understand a foreign language for your own personal agenda.

learning how to write proper chinese character stroke order or how to search by radicals would be easier and take far less time for most people than learning how to hack a game. (unless you're like a computer engineer with a relatively idea of how software is written/works...and then you'd be more inclined to edit it that way because its more comfortable for someone like that...) but genererally...why would you go through the trouble?

if you're using a windows operating system, writing kanji should already be included in your IME...but since i'm on a mac osx, i can't write in chinese characters unless i know the exact pronunciation for the word. theres thousands upon thousands of kanji...and japanese people don't even know all of them (they don't even use all of them on a regular basis...) and since i'm not a native speaker, i run into these words quite often. when i want to look up the kanji of a word i don't know the pronunciation to, i have to use these sites:

http://kanji.sljfaq.org/draw.html
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php

(when i was on windows though, i did almost everything entirely within the IME)

and of course my own ds program "kanji sono mama ds rakubiki jiten"...and "touch dic" (lol...engrish!)

...to me, thats easier than completely hacking a game. you'd likely end up using resources like these sites provide anyways during the script translation process.

well, whatever you end up doing...you'll learn something new for sure.