Hacking Xenoblade menu translation

[ZeForte]

And I'm still against machine translations because they're complete and utter shit.

Description of Slow:
"At the time of automatic attack [surou] is given to the partner with the $2" ($2 is replaced in the game by a percentage)

Junk Sword being named "Junk sawed"?

Shaker Edge's description is " “Fainting” it can point to the enemy “of inversion” state "

I mean come on, what the hell? If you're not going to put it into legible English, who will?
The way I see, it, it's completely useless as an actual Japanese/English speaker will have to go through 100% of it and proof read it, fixing most, if not all, of the "translations" in the process.

I'll leave to Hisshou to decide if he wants to work with that, but I'm sure as hell not touching it.

 

[iamatmylimit]

here is an small update...i have started to officially translate/change words to a readable form after my initial translation.I changed words such as "deletion" to "delete", "it is," to "yes" ,"calling obtaining" to "no" etc....it may seem small but in game usefull as now you can finally tell when your agreeing or disagreeing to things...from now on everytime i translate ill update the rar which will be everyday.

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

And I'm still against machine translations because they're complete and utter shit.

Description of Slow:
"At the time of automatic attack [surou] is given to the partner with the $2" ($2 is replaced in the game by a percentage)

Junk Sword being named "Junk sawed"?

Shaker Edge's description is " “Fainting” it can point to the enemy “of inversion” state "

I mean come on, what the hell? If you're not going to put it into legible English, who will?
The way I see, it, it's completely useless as an actual Japanese/English speaker will have to go through 100% of it and proof read it, fixing most, if not all, of the "translations" in the process.

I'll leave to Hisshou to decide if he wants to work with that, but I'm sure as hell not touching it.

It would be less effort to scrap it and start with a blank cell, trust me I've done this a lot

I'm working on some stuff now but it would be good to know how limited I'm gonna be as far as characters. Like there's no way to make "Poison" and "Lightning" or other elements into one character. I will upload things as I finish them to google docs and share them here. There are some where there will be japanese and I won't touch it because it's clearly some kind of variable and not script, and changing it would probably break something and freeze the game when it's referenced. I logged 99 hours on this thing so I'll be able to tell the difference ;P

iamatmylimit - How experienced with Japanese are you?

 

[Sephy]

Hey there,

I've skimmed through the posts so far and just wanted to say:
I would certainly like to help you in translating the menu - or even the whole game if possible!

I'm from Germany but I'd say that I have enough proficiency in English and Japanese: Actually, just yesterday I had my last oral exam at university (in Japanese), passed it with flying colors, and have now officially graduated as M.A. in Japanese Studies (A+) and English Studies (B). Also, I've been to Japan (Hirosaki) for more than one year and I've played and finished Xenoblade, already - so I THINK I might be of sufficient help.

Now the bad news...

Unfortunately, I don't have much (aka, close to zero) knowledge of game hacking so it would be best, if possible, if I could just get whatever text has to be translated (maybe via google docs? I think someone mentioned that in this thread) while somebody else who knows what he's doing would put it back into the game.

Oh, and I read some of the stuff about machine translation: Personally, I'd be against that. As ZeForte said: What's the point if somebody has to go through everything afterwards, anyway?

Well, that's it for now. So, in short: I'd like to be of help in translating the menu / whole game! But I'm not good at the hacking stuff so that would have to be done by other people...

Yoroshiku!

 

[Hop25]

Much like Sephy, I too have been keeping an eye on this thread closely to check the progress.

Now, I'm not very fluent in Japanese but, I do know some Wii game hacking or if you guys need someone to do some proof-reading/grammar checks/etc, be sure to let me know, I would love to help out.

 

[ZeForte]

Thanks for the interest so far, here're the google docs(sign in to edit):
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B_uJh7V14r...hMzg5&hl=en

I'm not sure about most limits myself, but be sure to write them somewhere in the spreadsheet if you find out (any columns except for the ones that are for the original Japanese and the translation are ignored so they can be used however you like)

Use the guide at http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4607 to insert the text back into the game, although I'll try to regularly upload the static.arc with the latest translations.

And please, no machine translations.

 

[iamatmylimit]

to HisshouBuraiKen = my japanese is very weak so im doing translations now based off of common sense..im not longer using machine translations....and i dont think anyone should start that way now as i already did that part....the whole point was to have a second source which we now have so even an english speaking guy can look at my "translated" line and fix any english that seems off...it was never meant to be perfect but a second source to make it easier for everyone.as you said its stupid to start with a blank cell when someone has done half the work already or even 10%....everything in life takes revising and the famous chess player kasparov said a machine and human can accomplish more working together than either one ever could on thier own....

by the way dont waste time starting over new...i can guarantee my xls files are the farthest along at this point in time than anyone elses....as i said even if you know no japanese you can see a word like "bunnit" and a monkey can figure out it means "bunny".....

and here is my way of doing this.
1.play using wii or dolphin
2.look for a word in the game ex. "Verification " and its location... like does it pop up when you open a chest?
3.from common sense it means " recieved" or "awarded" you get the idea..........
4.look for the xls with "verification" and replace it with your new "recieved" word or whatever you want to put here that makes sense

then move unto another word..im not saying looks for words im saying play the game and if a text comes up like on a map screen you know its related to maps/locations... if i see the word bunnit and im fighting a monkey then i look for bunnit in xls and change it to monkey.this is the comon sense even an english speaker can translate without knowing japanese and that is the beauty of my 1st translation done through a machine.for the ones that are way off then yes we look back at the first japanese and get a japanese speaker..

by the way even if you did machine translation dont use google.i found out its off...i translated this word = チェインアタック
and got this = Cheinatakku

now using a program (systran6 for example..theres many out there) i got this = Chain attack

now tell me what is cheintakku?compare that to my program which says chain attack...so dont use any website translater but its ok to use programs as they are accurate with "normal" words....words made up like "sephiroth" even a human would have trouble translating so we give a twist on translation...again program translation is ok but i already did this step for every 102 xls....theres no katakana/hiragana and the one i saw that was in the equipment menu leads me to believe there is menu text in another file thats not in static.arc....

 

[Sephy]

@iamatmylimit:
Yeah, I suppose a lot of what you've translated can / should be left the way it is.

Still, I'd be rather cautious about doing translations based on common sense only...

About the "bunnit" thing for example:
I happened upon a Japanese website of a guy saying how he found it very nice and interesting that the game developers had come up with names for the enemies that were close to real animals' names but were kept slightly different from them, such as "Bunnit" (banitto) instead of "Bunny" or "Flammy" (furamii) instead of Flamingo.

I guess, it might be a question open to discussion whether to translate Bunnit/banitto as "Bunny" or to stick to using slightly estranged enemy names and, thus, translate it as "Bunnit" or something similar...
However, I think "Bunnit" would actually be better, since in the crystal name list there's a "bani" as well as a "banitto" which you translated as "Bunny" and "Bunnit", respectively. And it might be confusing if you translate the crystal name "bani" to "Bunny" and the crystal name "banitto" to "Bunnit" but the enemy name "banitto" to "Bunny".

Of course, I'm not meaning to discredit what you've done so far! On the contrary, from what I've seen, most of it is perfectly fine and just as I would have translated it (the "Flammy" thing, for instance).

I'm just trying to say that translations based on common sense should probably be used with caution and that there might be a limit to that way of translating.
But then again, that's why we're here, trying to team up so we can also proofread and correct each other and discuss certain aspects of the translation, right?

@ZeForte: thanks for the link, I'll have a thorough look at it now and see what I can contribute for today

 

[ZeForte]

The google docs thing is what I translated myself (the flammy thing is "Hula me" in the machine translation, one can't guess what "Hula me" is even with the best common sense ever) just to see what it looks like/see how many things are limited. You can freely scrap things from there.

 

[iamatmylimit]

i agree sephy that its only in certain situations.i meant im just doing this for the beginning and its not possible in all cases ...it was meant for the beginning and menu as this is where the early learning is..for monster names it wont always work like if its an animal we can figure this out but if its a monster/machine ya we need help........i didnt think of what you said but you could be right about the Bunnit" (banitto) instead of "Bunny"......so we should discuss wether to change it or not...to be honest i was afraid to touch certain words because i wanted accuracy not "oh this makes more sense in english" because theres 2 types of translations...

theres Literal translation = word for word

regular translation = sense of meaning

regular translation is putting your views on things and literal is a fact....putting our views on what we "think" they mean is what japanese people do....literal translation is what a program does and makes it exactly the same word for word.....the problem is balancing both like some things should be the same but some things need to have a "twist".....

i want to thank zeforte also as i already said hes the man for making those tools..without his tools this wouldnt be possible at all...even if we disagree on translation methods he deserves a lot of credit.if i had this done now id give all the credit to zeforte as im not one to ask for recognition....im only doing this because ive always played other peoples translated games and i wanted to give back for once by translating a game as a way of saying thanks....


@ zeforte = flammy thing is "Hula me....if it changes it to hula me id stay with flammy.....we all know flammie from secret of mana if you played that one.flammy should stay and your right some of these names are way off.....i cant even think of an english equivelant for some names...for those we should discuss....thats what this forum is for and we have this space to text.lets use it


xls files updated 2/3/2011 morning

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

I translated a bunch of shit today because I had shit all to do.

Here is the link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?8f7374ur84fyki2

Now here is what I suggest we do, and I strongly recommend you listen because I do translate professionally.

iamatmylimit - Discard your machine translations and don't try to translate any further. Use what I provided today to update/create a set of google docs, and then we can use those as the central repository. If I left something blank, leave it that way in the file since it's a programming/dummied out thing. I will try and coordinate with other translator(s) as they join to divvy up the remaining sheets.

I'm not interested in the hacking aspect of this project so I would rather see you concentrate your efforts on that side. Even if you get lucky with a few machine translations, they are likely to be overwritten later. Leave it to us.

Also, keep in mind this is a fantasy world and some things will have names that don't make any sense. Just go with it. Just because Flammie was in secret of mana 19 years ago doesn't mean a big flammingo (flammie->flamingo, see?) can't have the same name. Let the translators make those calls.

From what I've seen so far there's still a lot of scripts left to be found, particularly the cut scene subtitles. If you want to do the story you'll need to find those.

See if you can't fit in what I've translated and check if it all works, I'm curious to see

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

ZeForte - Thanks for doing the google docs, can you update them with the translations I've done in the above post? I also think it would be better to make it viewable by anyone but editable only by certain people who post in this thread and sign on as translators so we don't have people who don't know japanese at all trying to help but end up fucking things up.

 

[iamatmylimit]

Here is a video showing the menu translation i've done so far...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tjjur6DsBs

@HisshouBuraiKen - ill check out your file......

 

[ZeForte]

Thank you for your work Hisshou.

By the way, please use the xls I posted at http://gbatemp.net/t276731-xenoblade-menu-...t&p=3433539 for the ones you didn't do yet (or just edit in the google docs), because there was some error with roman numerals and they had a =LEN column to see how long the translation is while mentioning the max char count.
Second, try to leave the formatting and order in tact (the skill list has name, cylinder_list etc in the 6th line, that's bad)
Third, I will dig up any other text when the xls we currently have are mostly translated and when I get the time to (which won't be for a while)

Keep up the good work.

 

[iamatmylimit]

I checked out your work HisshouBuraiKen and you did a lot.Im impressed....Im playing the game right now using your xls and it looks professional indeed but i see 2 problems...

1. some words are cut off and i ran into this problem myself and was forced to shorten characters....
it looks as if i misspelled something but i didnt..for example when you are given a choice at the bottom after the A you have "accept"....in mine i shortened to "ok"..your definately not gonna be able to leave it as accept..this is the space issue zeforte mentioned which i had trouble with also...i spent hours trying to figure it out on the ncp list(non playable character) and couldnt figure why dolphin was giving me compile errors so i could only resort to shortening it all to "translate" to show you will have trouble in this area...

2.Your japanese is good but not perfect.......the items you translated for the mainland = MNU_main.xls
another guy named tj445 on gamefaqs pointed out what the menu names are and what they mean and his description seems more accurate.plus he lives in japan and beat the game back in june of last year so he most likely knows what hes talking about....the problem with gamefaqs is you cant text message another user so i cant get in contact with him to ask for his help.Your "bond" that you listed he has "kizuna" and hes not the only one using kizuna.i saw it all over the place on gamefaqs and in the xls themselves.......his "time" you list as "clock"...again the problem with people translating "what they think" it means produces different results.and this was just 2 people.imagine if i asked 7 different translaters?..not saying yours sucks but you might want to look into that..opinions aside the space issue alone will force you to shorten things...dont look at this as bashing,im only criticizing


http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/960564-xeno...55761/608017037

other than that your doing a great job and im glad your helping....the way me and zeforte were going it was gonna take awhile but youve made this process much faster.i looked through your items and the other xls and i wouldnt change anything.only the mainland stuff because thats what we will be staring at throughout the whole game and if we cant even get this right your whole translation will be questioned.this is why i worked so hard on the menu and never touched the monster list etc.....heres a video showing your hard work...you deserve a lot of credit..this is Hisshou's translation......i like how you renamed treasure to "chest"...good work on everything...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPHRsObqH5c

 

[Sephy]

@iamatmylimit: I'm sorry but kizuna does translate into the English word bond / bonds. I don't know why he's saying kizuna on gamefaqs, there might be many reasons, one of the simplest being that he just got used to the word kizuna during the game (even I had to remind myself of not saying kizuna sometimes when I was talking to friends about the game's various features after I finished it). If it was a special term, like for example "mie", the special pose in Kabuki theatre which is hard to translate and should rather be adopted and explained, then it would make sense to leave "kizuna" untranslated but "kizuna" is an ordinary word and not translating it would be kind of like me translating an English text into German and leaving the word "bond" untranslated. So yeah, since kizuna is no proper name or special Japanese term but a simple and translatable vocable and has not (at least not that I know of) been adopted as loan word in the English speaking word, I don't see why it should not be translated with what it means, that is, with "bond" or "bonds".

Using "Ok" instead of "Accept", on the other hand, sounds like a good idea to me, if accept makes problems due to its length.



@HisshouBuraiKen: whoa, that's a lot you did there! I'll have a look at the google docs now and try to update the empty spaces with things you've already done.



Oh, and here's a general question: Yesterday when I had a short look at the google docs (couldn't do much though when something came up and I had to leave) I started to wonder how we should proceed if one of us stumbles upon something where he/she thinks there might be a better translation? Should we write our suggestion into a separate, empty column or should we actually replace it? I stumbled upon "?????????" being translated as "Storm Clive", for instance, where I'm about 99% sure that this should be "Stone Clive".

(Sorry, if that's a stupid question but bear with me,

I've never worked on a bigger translation project before so I'll have to get used to editing documents together, but rest assured that I do know the language and want to help translating as much of it as possible...

)

 

[ZeForte]

I'm not sure what to do about that. If this were a SVN system, you'd comment each change and if the original contributor disagreed, he'd know who made the change and could talk it over.
There's a revision history in google docs as well, but it seems you can't see who made the change and there aren't even any comments.

Also, Sephy and Hisshou, drop me a PM so I can add you as editors.

iamatmylimit: Are you honestly saying that his Japanese "is good but not perfect" on the sole basis of someone doing a different translation? Even though you stated that you can hardly speak any Japanese?

And yes, different people will produce different results. That's how the world works and that's what we have to deal with. I consider "time" and "clock" to be equally good given the context.

And please, for future reference, leave the translations to the actual translators. We'll get nowhere if people who don't know the language second guess each translation decision. It may be useful for a "QA phase" to see if it sounds natural, but we're nowhere near that.

I'll now update the google docs with H's stuff.

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Please use my full nick in the video description, HisshouBuraiKen

I watched the video and I see what you mean about stuff being cut off due to character limits...this sucks, it's like the NES days. Definitely a sign they didn't build this game with localization outside Japan in mind

I checked out your work HisshouBuraiKen and you did a lot.Im impressed....Im playing the game right now using your xls and it looks professional indeed but i see 2 problems...

1. some words are cut off and i ran into this problem myself and was forced to shorten characters....
it looks as if i misspelled something but i didnt..for example when you are given a choice at the bottom after the A you have "accept"....in mine i shortened to "ok"..your definately not gonna be able to leave it as accept..this is the space issue zeforte mentioned which i had trouble with also...i spent hours trying to figure it out on the ncp list(non playable character) and couldnt figure why dolphin was giving me compile errors so i could only resort to shortening it all to "translate" to show you will have trouble in this area...

I was worried this would be a problem. Actually it also shows they probably don't intend to localize this, game, because otherwise they would have given each word/item more memory for its title to make it easier to change to english later

We will have to figure something out, but my translations have the meaning of the word/sentence/phrase so we can try to ad lib from there. Is the character limit strictly 1:1 for everything or do we at least have some leeway on certain items? Like I said earlier, stuff like "Poison", "lightning" pretty much ALL elements are 1 character and there's no way to convey that in 1 letter. Having seen the video I can at least reduce the menu items to fit.

2.Your japanese is good but not perfect.......the items you translated for the mainland = MNU_main.xls
another guy named tj445 on gamefaqs pointed out what the menu names are and what they mean and his description seems more accurate.plus he lives in japan and beat the game back in june of last year so he most likely knows what hes talking about....the problem with gamefaqs is you cant text message another user so i cant get in contact with him to ask for his help.Your "bond" that you listed he has "kizuna" and hes not the only one using kizuna.i saw it all over the place on gamefaqs and in the xls themselves.......his "time" you list as "clock"...again the problem with people translating "what they think" it means produces different results.and this was just 2 people.imagine if i asked 7 different translaters?..not saying yours sucks but you might want to look into that..opinions aside the space issue alone will force you to shorten things...dont look at this as bashing,im only criticizing

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/960564-xeno...55761/608017037

You're really nitpicking over "time" vs. "clock?"

And "Kizuna" means "bond" or "relationship" in english. I'm not one of those fansubber types who leaves everything in Japanese. I'm trying to be thorough and do this like Nintendo actually would (except for censorship and stuff) because that's how I roll. Yes, you're gonna have questions and see differences, it's the nature of the beast. That's why you DON'T get multiple translators working on the same parts, you split them up and have a final editor make everything consistent. I'm kinda acting as both, which I've done before. Anyways, I'm always open to suggestions, like how on second thought I like "Flammy" better than "Flammie".

QUOTE

other than that your doing a great job and im glad your helping....the way me and zeforte were going it was gonna take awhile but youve made this process much faster.i looked through your items and the other xls and i wouldnt change anything.only the mainland stuff because thats what we will be staring at throughout the whole game and if we cant even get this right your whole translation will be questioned.this is why i worked so hard on the menu and never touched the monster list etc.....heres a video showing your hard work...you deserve a lot of credit..this is Hisshou's translation......i like how you renamed treasure to "chest"...good work on everything...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPHRsObqH5c

don't understand what you mean by mainland stuff? anyways I'm glad you like it so far but don't try to pick at every single line or it'll take forever.

It looks like the arts descriptions are good if we cut out the red text, which when translated ends up being redundant anyways. Give it a shot and see if it looks better.

It would really help if we start tracking the character limits for some of these fields. Please use the google docs and put any text that's getting cut off in BOLD ITALICS UNDERLINED For example I see in the main menu "Play time" and "Save Time" are cut to "Play T" and "Save T". If you marked those translations on the google docs as "Play Time and "Save Time it would be VERY VERY HELPFUL!!!! We can do this like the old school NES translators did it, it'll be good experience. Perhaps the character limit could be included in the heading for the "translated" column? Like "enemy_name_translated_10" or something? I know it's a pain in the ass setup but it will save us a great deal of time later.

Also are the story scripts uploaded anywhere yet? It would be awesome to at least to the intro tonight

I'm gonna work on a bunch more stuff again today because, like yesterday, I will be at work with very little to do and no internet connection

Sephy I will contact you later and we'll see if we can't split some of this up. If you notice something weird put a note in another column to its right.

 

[ZeForte]

We will have to figure something out, but my translations have the meaning of the word/sentence/phrase so we can try to ad lib from there. Is the character limit strictly 1:1 for everything or do we at least have some leeway on certain items?

You're bound to a global limit, not necessarily the Japanese term (e.g. although "????????" is 8 chars, the global limit for weapons is 11 chars, so "Junk Bunker" barely fits)
The global limit for elements seems to be indeed 1 character, so it might as well be left alone.

Perhaps the character limit could be included in the heading for the "translated" column?
I'm currently adding two columns in each file, one with the current length of the translation and one that outputs "too long" if the text size is above a constant defined in the column (see ITM_wpnlist for an example)
And you're pretty right about it being work.

Also are the story scripts uploaded anywhere yet? It would be awesome to at least to the intro tonight

Things aren't quite ready on the technical side for event scripts, my guess is that I'll have to work for 2 days straight to get everything working. I can't spare that time at the moment.

QUOTE

Definitely a sign they didn't build this game with localization outside Japan in mind

Oh don't worry, if they did it the way I think they did it, it'll take them about 5 minutes to change the text limits (though it's hard as hell to reverse engineer). And judging by the fact that there's a pretty nice looking variable width font for English and traces of Unicode(äöüß etc) support(it's not quite working it seems) means that they definitely planned an American/worldwide release.

I'll have to stop for now. Got up to the JNL_quest xls files.

 

[ciris]

I just want to say a big THANK YOU to all those involved in the project. I wish I could help out but I dont know kanji.

Thanks a million for this!!!