Hacking translation project idea

[deitz0ne]

i play my psp, and i love it
there are so many games that i cant play cause i dont understand japanese
for example:

summon night 3
gundam age universe accel
super robot taisen op extended
gundam age cosmic drive
shining blade
steins gate
sd gundam gen world
sd gundam g portable
super robot taise og saga masou kishin 1
super robot taise og saga masou kishin 2
toaru kagaku railgun
tears to tiara kakan no daichi
shining heart
kidou senshi gundam gihren no yabou
super robot taisen mx portable

after searching this forum for a while, there are none of above on progress or even started yet
i really want to play all those games
so,why not me do the translation works?

so, comment below, what game most hyped to get translated:
perhaps i can get a team or two ready for games that generate most support

my concern is it legal to translate game?

 

[Shadow#1]

i play my psp, and i love it
there are so many games that i cant play cause i dont understand japanese
for example:

summon night 3
gundam age universe accel
super robot taisen op extended
gundam age cosmic drive
shining blade
steins gate
sd gundam gen world
sd gundam g portable
super robot taise og saga masou kishin 1
super robot taise og saga masou kishin 2
toaru kagaku railgun
tears to tiara kakan no daichi
shining heart
kidou senshi gundam gihren no yabou
super robot taisen mx portable

after searching this forum for a while, there are none of above on progress or even started yet
i really want to play all those games
so,why not me do the translation works?

so, comment below, what game most hyped to get translated:
perhaps i can get a team or two ready for games that generate most support

my concern is it legal to translate game?

Summon night 3 is being thraslated for its original system it was released on

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

i believe someone actually translated railgun, but they had no hacker for it so only the actual script translation exists.

 

[ThoD]

i play my psp, and i love it
there are so many games that i cant play cause i dont understand japanese
for example:

summon night 3
gundam age universe accel
super robot taisen op extended
gundam age cosmic drive
shining blade
steins gate
sd gundam gen world
sd gundam g portable
super robot taise og saga masou kishin 1
super robot taise og saga masou kishin 2
toaru kagaku railgun
tears to tiara kakan no daichi
shining heart
kidou senshi gundam gihren no yabou
super robot taisen mx portable

after searching this forum for a while, there are none of above on progress or even started yet
i really want to play all those games
so,why not me do the translation works?

so, comment below, what game most hyped to get translated:
perhaps i can get a team or two ready for games that generate most support

my concern is it legal to translate game?

Are YOU going to translate them or are you just looking for people to go beg translators to do the work for you? It's much easier to just learn Japanese, reaching a point where you can perfectly fine understand almost all conversations in a game or even real life won't take you more than a year if you only bother 1-2 hours a week, let alone if you actively try to learn!

i believe someone actually translated railgun, but they had no hacker for it so only the actual script translation exists.

Kinda irrelevant, but since you popped up here, I gotta ask, are working on any projects lately? Perhaps any in the list?

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

Kinda irrelevant, but since you popped up here, I gotta ask, are working on any projects lately? Perhaps any in the list?

i still have the olde 2 projects going on that have been going on since eternity.
Zill O'll Infinite plus is picking up real nicely, though i can only guess the progress Tom has made with the scripts. On the engine side it's nearly 100% done.
Utawarerumono portable is 100% hacked and 52% translated, it is currently on a standstill due to the translator being MIA..

nothing from the above list, it doesnt seem like a list of games i'd be too interested to play, sans shining heart maybe

 

[ThoD]

i still have the olde 2 projects going on that have been going on since eternity.
Zill O'll Infinite plus is picking up real nicely, though i can only guess the progress Tom has made with the scripts. On the engine side it's nearly 100% done.
Utawarerumono portable is 100% hacked and 52% translated, it is currently on a standstill due to the translator being MIA..

nothing from the above list, it doesnt seem like a list of games i'd be too interested to play, sans shining heart maybe

I've actually forgotten about most games since my PSP died, but I DO remember the "Infinite +" in the title of a Monster Hunter-like game (with the guild and all), is that the one? I really loved that one but never managed to invest enough time in it as I put half my time on PSP on either Dissidia Duodecim and MHP3rd... If we are talking about that game, then only the main stuff is actually needed, NPC text is 99% useless in that As for Utawarerumono, I've already beaten it twice, but kinda curious about how it would be if translated fully and properly...

As for the list, I agree. Shining has always been a series I've liked, but besides that and Summon Night (which btw I've finished SM1-5), the rest don't seem that good or interesting enough to bother translating. It's a ton of work after all. I remember trying to translate Monster Kingdom Jewel Summoner all alone and it was so time consuming I only was at like 70% system and 10% NPCs by the time it came out in English officially and that's a full year difference!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Are YOU going to translate them or are you just looking for people to go beg translators to do the work for you? It's much easier to just learn Japanese, reaching a point where you can perfectly fine understand almost all conversations in a game or even real life won't take you more than a year if you only bother 1-2 hours a week, let alone if you actively try to learn!

Do you know that from experience or are you just guessing?
Because that actually doesn't sound too bad. It would be worth it to be able to play games in Japanese and watch anime raws.
What resources would you suggest for learning Japanese?

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

I've actually forgotten about most games since my PSP died, but I DO remember the "Infinite +" in the title of a Monster Hunter-like game (with the guild and all), is that the one? I really loved that one but never managed to invest enough time in it as I put half my time on PSP on either Dissidia Duodecim and MHP3rd... If we are talking about that game, then only the main stuff is actually needed, NPC text is 99% useless in that As for Utawarerumono, I've already beaten it twice, but kinda curious about how it would be if translated fully and properly...

As for the list, I agree. Shining has always been a series I've liked, but besides that and Summon Night (which btw I've finished SM1-5), the rest don't seem that good or interesting enough to bother translating. It's a ton of work after all. I remember trying to translate Monster Kingdom Jewel Summoner all alone and it was so time consuming I only was at like 70% system and 10% NPCs by the time it came out in English officially and that's a full year difference!

Zill O'll infinite plus has nothing to do with monster hunter, it's a traditional turn based freeroam RPG from KOEI.
my project page for it is here: https://blacklabel-translations.com/projects/zill-oll-infinite-plus
i also made a thread about it on gbatemp when i was looking for a translator for it, which can be found here: http://gbatemp.net/threads/zill-oll-infinite-plus.445627/

My utawarerumono project actually started from the point where mirror moon handed me their translation files to be imported into the psp version, but while their translation of it is pretty good, it's also taking lots of liberties with the script, so I ended up abandoning it and retranslating from scratch. The script we have is much more accurate to the original and practically the only thing i kept from mirror moon's pc translation was the character naming convention (Aruruw/Eruruw instead of Aruruu/Eruruu)

the project page for it is here: https://blacklabel-translations.com/projects/utawarerumono-portable

as you can see, it's more or less done, just the later half of the script is missing.

 

[ThoD]

Do you know that from experience or are you just guessing?
Because that actually doesn't sound too bad. It would be worth it to be able to play games in Japanese and watch anime raws.
What resources would you suggest for learning Japanese?

I know from experience (after all I just said I tried to translate a game myself, so I kinda have to know Japanese to do that). I'm at M3 level (or at least was while I was actively using my Japanese) and got there in 2 and a half years of one 3 hour long class every Sunday. It's REALLY easy and I could understand games just fine in a year with hardly any studying outside of class. You don't even need to go to a class though as you can find all the necessary stuff online. Best two book lines are Genki (Genki I and II) and Minna no Nihongo (I used this one to learn), both of which are included in the "Japanese Language Learning Pack"s you find on torrent sites. Most of the challenge is learning to read Japanese, so once you get that part down, the most trouble you will ever have is with complicated Kanji (which btw is displayed along with the Hiragana/Katakata equivalent anyway in the text of most games on the PSP). You can learn vocabulary from watching subbed movies/anime and stuff, so really, it's easy once you get the first part done.

Zill O'll infinite plus has nothing to do with monster hunter, it's a traditional turn based freeroam RPG from KOEI.
my project page for it is here: https://blacklabel-translations.com/projects/zill-oll-infinite-plus
i also made a thread about it on gbatemp when i was looking for a translator for it, which can be found here: http://gbatemp.net/threads/zill-oll-infinite-plus.445627/

My utawarerumono project actually started from the point where mirror moon handed me their translation files to be imported into the psp version, but while their translation of it is pretty good, it's also taking lots of liberties with the script, so I ended up abandoning it and retranslating from scratch. The script we have is much more accurate to the original and practically the only thing i kept from mirror moon's pc translation was the character naming convention (Aruruw/Eruruw instead of Aruruu/Eruruu)

the project page for it is here: https://blacklabel-translations.com/projects/utawarerumono-portable

as you can see, it's more or less done, just the later half of the script is missing.

Apologies then, I remember the wrong game, ignore that comment. I'll check it out next time I feel like going back to PSP games, bookmarked it for now. For Utawarerumono, couldn't you have used at least part of their translation or would that be too much more trouble?

PS: I feel like we are kinda getting further and further away from the thread's topic, so we shouldn't drag this on too long, or more like I shouldn't...

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

As i said, i do have the full script from mirror moon so i could implement it until i'd get the rest retranslated (obviously the ps2/psp exclusive chapter excluded) but even so, typing that into the game would be quite a workload for something that would by all means not be a permanent solution. I considered it, but decided not to go along.

as for getting back to topic. The legality of translated games depends on how you deal with it really. You can translate texts, no one can sue you from that. you can also patch games with your own code, no one can sue you from that.
distributing said patches and the fact of if they or if they not contain code originally from the source game is a can of worms of it's own. so i'll just not go into that. i can more or less say though that if you simply hack a game and make an xdelta to patch a vanilla rom to the translated one which a lot of people do, is more or less 100% guaranteed to contain the game's original code, and hence would be illegal.

i pretty much go around that nowadays by writing my shit in assembly, and compiling the new assembly code over the game's files, so all the code i distribute in an assembly file is my own.

EDIT:
also, since i mentioned it, i dug it out and here it is,
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=25544.msg349826#msg349826
a person called jeruTz from RHDN did a partial script translation to railgun, and a nearly full translations to another psp title and thus only needs a hacker to get those dealt with.

 

[ThoD]

As i said, i do have the full script from mirror moon so i could implement it until i'd get the rest retranslated (obviously the ps2/psp exclusive chapter excluded) but even so, typing that into the game would be quite a workload for something that would by all means not be a permanent solution. I considered it, but decided not to go along.

as for getting back to topic. The legality of translated games depends on how you deal with it really. You can translate texts, no one can sue you from that. you can also patch games with your own code, no one can sue you from that.
distributing said patches and the fact of if they or if they not contain code originally from the source game is a can of worms of it's own. so i'll just not go into that. i can more or less say though that if you simply hack a game and make an xdelta to patch a vanilla rom to the translated one which a lot of people do, is more or less 100% guaranteed to contain the game's original code, and hence would be illegal.

i pretty much go around that nowadays by writing my shit in assembly, and compiling the new assembly code over the game's files, so all the code i distribute in an assembly file is my own.

I see... Well, it's already been a fair few years, so nothing's wrong with taking some more! Take your time with it, my PSP is dead anyway and until I can be bothered to 3D print a new analog from scratch along with fixing my screen cable, I'm not gonna be playing on that thing, so you got a good 5 years or so to work on it until I stop being lazy

Also to note on what you said about translation legality, there are certain cases where it's not a can of worms, but a blatant copyright violation. Mostly revolves around what parts you use to do the translation and how you acquired them. For example, if a base version of a game has gotten an official translation but the enhanced one of the same game hasn't, it's illegal to use text from the original's official translation in the fan translation of the enhanced one, resulting in a clear violation and netting you a huge fine that can go up to as high as 1.5 times what the official translation team was paid with for their work. So really, for anyone trying to translate things, take a good look through all the laws before even bothering to make sure you don't go to jail before you can finish the thing...

 

[zeropain]

i believe someone actually translated railgun, but they had no hacker for it so only the actual script translation exists.

Are you talking about this one?

https://jerutz.wordpress.com/railgun-psp/

Edit: Nevermind, i saw your edit in your previous post now. Its that one.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

well, importing a script from a localized version of the same game on another platform is not a translation to begin with. you're not translating anything, you just import (copyrighted) files to the game.

what comes to "enhanced" versions of games, this pretty much applies to every game ever on psp.

sony REQUIRED developers to add a certain percentage of extra content to a game if it was ported from another platform (usually ps2)

a lot of developers went around this by adding a music player or a gallery feature to the game, but some (zill o'll, magna carta) actually added some proper content like new characters or story events.

utawarerumono doesnt really add anything though, aside the hardmode, which was for whatever reason removed from the ps2 version lol.

 

[ThoD]

well, importing a script from a localized version of the same game on another platform is not a translation to begin with. you're not translating anything, you just import (copyrighted) files to the game.

I know, but since it's different game versions, it can involve a bit more than that, but yeah, you can say it's not really a translation. Just thought it was a good example though as most often idiots will try to get translators to do that for those games if they announce they don't plan on translating certain parts.

 

[deitz0ne]

Are YOU going to translate them or are you just looking for people to go beg translators to do the work for you? It's much easier to just learn Japanese, reaching a point where you can perfectly fine understand almost all conversations in a game or even real life won't take you more than a year if you only bother 1-2 hours a week, let alone if you actively try to learn!


Kinda irrelevant, but since you popped up here, I gotta ask, are working on any projects lately? Perhaps any in the list?

im going to translate it of course

 

[NierLuc]

This is a totally different game but please consider finishing Monster Hunter 3rd Portable for us >.<. It's at least 60-70% translated until the translator got burned out. NPC dialogs and I think, tutorials are left untouched. For people who are dirt poor and don't have the resources to play Monster Hunter World, this is the closest we could get.

 

[ThoD]

there are so many games that i cant play cause i dont understand japanese

im going to translate it of course

How? Do you at least have any knowledge in programming? It's impossible to find people who can translate stuff, approach them and have them work with you if you don't know at least either Japanese or programming. Not only will nobody accept to work with you on something you tell them to when you can do nothing to test besides the all famous (and totally wanted /s) "help" of "play testing" the translation, but if someone does accept, except either the project to be dropped soon after or yourself to be dropped from the project...

This is a totally different game but please consider finishing Monster Hunter 3rd Portable for us >.<. It's at least 60-70% translated until the translator got burned out. NPC dialogs and I think, tutorials are left untouched. For people who are dirt poor and don't have the resources to play Monster Hunter World, this is the closest we could get.

What makes you think it's at 60-70%? Version 5 of the patch has literally everything that needs translating already translated. That includes all important dialogues, so if something is in Japanese still, it's completely useless to you and serves no purpose. The game is playable from start to finish for English speakers, so stop being picky. Fan translations are almost never 100% ones, as there's no point.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

i beg to differ.
as someone who does this shit, at least for me it's a matter of pride to see my project finish properly.
releasing a 70% translated game and saying "it's good enough" is completely unacceptable behavior.

hats off to anyone actually working on fan translations, but if you dedicate that much time and effort into translating a game, then goddamnit, finish it instead of half-assing.

 

[ThoD]

i beg to differ.
as someone who does this shit, at least for me it's a matter of pride to see my project finish properly.
releasing a 70% translated game and saying "it's good enough" is completely unacceptable behavior.

hats off to anyone actually working on fan translations, but if you dedicate that much time and effort into translating a game, then goddamnit, finish it instead of half-assing.

MHP3rd specifically has a LOT of text, enough to even rival half the visual novels, so it's really hard with a team that was so small, so they decided to translate everything necessary to fully enjoy the game without any issues and they did just that, until they had to drop the project, leaving only some minor extras. I agree that it's a good thing to do the work 100%, but there are too many variables involved in fan translations (eg: how yours have people MIA), so you can't blame the team or their decision to prioritize certain things to muddle through and make it as best as they could. If it's already playable just fine and a team has needed to drop it, then it's not really that ok for people to look for other translators to finish the work just because they are picky about a little bit of text on some random NPC is still in Japanese...

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

maybe so, but it's a really 2-sided thing.
someone picking up a game and not finishing it causes that to "be it" so to say for that particular game in most cases.

people, and especially people capable enough, rarely have a motivation to pick up something once it's been somewhat dealt with, so those half done translations will be what we get and thats it.

sure, my project with utawarerumono has taken a lot longer than i intended it to, too and the translator has dissappeared to the point of no contact for now, but i never had the slightest intention to stop working on it.
i could make a patch and call it a day, but what's the point of that too ? the game is only playable to halfway, on which after all the textboxes are either empty or full of garbage (for programming sanity reasons i had to get rid of the original japanese font.) alternatively, i could just machine translate it and call it a day, and it would be terrible, and propably not particularly enjoyable to play either. But that would be it for uta psp. No one in their sane mind would pick it up from where i left it.

as far as i see, simply sitting on it is the better solution. If someone has the willpower to work on it, they will do it regardless of the existing material i made, since i did not release any of it in incomplete states.

of course, simply sitting on things is no good either.
in the hypotethical case that i would completely abandon working on uta for example, i would release the tools and the script files instead of a half-patched game for people to finish.

this part is more important than it sounds like, since giving people the means to finish it instead of something broken and half done is a far better motivation for the target audience to actually see it to it's end. To make a patch out of the plain files you'd have to work your way through it, so the border of trying to "improve it" while you're at it, is much lower.