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Topic: Article on translation hacking (Read 1142 times)
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Nightcrawler
Administrator
Hero Member
Gender: 
Posts: 909
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When did you write that? It's pretty old I guess, judging from the references to the "Videogames" Mag there.
It
was published last month. Retro Gamer deals with the history of
videogames, so my modus operandi is always to look for the oldest
examples possible. I also thought that specific mag was very
reminiscent of the British mag "Superplay", or USA mag "GameFan", hence
why I covered them.  Also,
thanks for the links nightcrawler. I notice a weapons seller in that
one game has the name nightcrawler. Did you take the nickname from that
game, or as part of your translation, did you add your own persona to
it? If you added your own persona, well... I quite like that! It makes
the translations very personalized, kind of like having a signature
inside it. Btw, assuming the article gets the green light, how
do you guys want to be mentioned when I'm quoting you directly, and
listing you in the thank you section? Anyway, I seem to be
working after 10pm again, so I'm going to call it quits for today.
Speak to you all tomorrow. And thanks again for being so helpful with
your answers.
I added my own persona in the game.
Sort of a little Easter egg. It is a shop keeper on a remote
island. Had I had any sprite making skills, I'd have made a custom
sprite. That would have made it even cooler. Eh, maybe next time.
Hmm.. what exactly are our options for being quoted and listed? Are you asking if we want our names or nicknames in there?
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TransCorp - Home of the Dual Orb 2 SFC/SNES Translation
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KingMike
Full Member
Posts: 231
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I would definitely say the NES and SNES are probably the most
hacked-systems, for at least Japanese-English translations, anyways.
For one thing because many in the scene grew up in that generation. And
they were also very popular systems worldwide (I hear SMS did better
than the NES in Europe, but in America the NES just buried the
competition. Whereas Genesis sold evenly (if not slightly more than)
the SNES in America, the SNES dominated Japanese sales, and PC-Engine I
hear was the opposite case. Games being developed in the source
language, and a high fan demand in the target language.
And
though the PlayStation series has repeated the success the Super/NES
had, the newer systems present can more challenge from their
complexity, which can no doubt turn off hacking.
And also because
they're CD, and they're large games, which makes them harder to
download (not to encourage piracy. Ripping a CD needs only a computer
and a CD-drive (and software which can be found on the internet),
whereas obtaining a cart ROM within the law requires one to build their
own hardware (which requires some technical skill) to copy the data
from their own purchased copy.) But I do suspect the easy (nevermind
illegal) availablity of most classic cart-based games from various
websites is a factor to mention, too. More likely to discover a good
unknown game when it's a small, free (yes, illegal) download.
REMBER PEOPLE, IF YOU LIKE THE GAME, GO BUY IT.
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KingMike
Full Member
Posts: 231
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The only thing I heard of about Pokemon was in an EGM article about fan translations.
Supposedly, somebody (no idea if it was the 34242849-in-one cart makers  or the translators), but somebody must have been selling carts of the patch.
And one FF interview I read once claimed Square shut down a Russian FF8 translation, which was supposedly being sold.
So, I guess giving out ROMs make you more likely to receive a legal threat, and selling an even bigger likelihood.
Though
I haven't heard lately of the person (Don Miguel, was it?) who did a
finished RPGMaker 95, as well as a full RPG Maker 2000 translation
(both as full-program, protection-cracked releases). |
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filler
Jr. Member
Gender:
Posts: 55
Bastich!
Location: Somewhere in space (USA)
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I only became interested in the scene around 2002 and I haven't
contributed to the scene on the hacking side of things as much as
Japanese to English translation. I'm not the only, and certainly not
the best translator in the scene, but I wanted to answer question 2
from that perspective.
For
me it's a way to improve my Japanese. That is not the main reason, but
it's a big one. I'm also a big anime fan, and while that does not earn
me any points in a community plagued with requests for DBZ games, one
of my biggest goals is to enrich my experience of the anime stories and
characters I like the most. Japanese cartoons are popular here now
(USA), but even still, games based on anime are not frequently
localized here, though we are seeing more and more. It does not help
that a lot of the games are of poor quality, (Fullmetal Alchemist by
the almighty Square/Enix was almost universally despised). Regardless,
I am really interested in a lot of the old and newer anime based games
(see my Playstation anime gaming site).
I've worked on a number of non-anime related games (Energy Breaker,
Hoshi wo Sagashite, etc...) but my primary interest has been on anime
related games (Slayers, Maison Ikkoku, Bubblegum Crash, Magic Knights
Rayearth, 3x3 Eyes). I'm just curious to better understand the content
of the games, sometimes they really add something to the story universe
so it's fun to translate them.
As someone interested in Japanese
gaming and doujinshi culture it's also fun to get your hands on
material that is unique. I know there are others that can probably say
volumes about doujin-soft (Haeleth perhaps, sorry to whomever else I am
not mentioning), but the opportunity to translate or simply
play/discover fan created software is cool. Also you can discover some
hidden treasure. I ran across a bunch of programmers notes in Lady
Sword relating things like that time he got drunk at his computer and
woke up with a liquor soaked keyboard, or his views on the cold war.
That's pretty rare stuff. And it's fun to work on games like Ace of
Spades or Welcome to Pia Carrot that are sexually explicit. Those are
not the kind of games you can normally play outside of Japan. Anyway,
that's the big thing for me, working on my Japanese, further enjoying
my favorite anime, and further enjoying Japanese gaming aside from the
usual RPGs and stuff that everyone is so fond of. Just wanted to give
another perspective on the "motivation" topic. |
Nirvana
may be the final object of attainment, but at the moment, it is
difficult to reach. This, the practical and realistic aim is
compassion, a warm heart, serving other people, helping others,
respecting others, being less selfish. - Dalai Lama
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Kitsune Sniper
Sr. Member
Posts: 283
Location: Somewhere in Mexicoland
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)Better late than never, stupid computer had to die on me. -_-
1)
What are some of the earliest examples of unofficial fan translations,
that involved actually changing a game’s code? Is it best to referance
the deleted Wiki? Is there any one specific example that you can say
was the “first time” someone created a fan translation? If so, what was
the game, group, people involved etc. If there were any particular
pioneering figures involved, I’d be interested getting a few quotes
from them.
God. When I came around (98-99)... I don't really
know. Seriously though, regardless of what everyone here says, all
translations involved changing game code. Particularly pointer data.
2)
Is the motivation to create translation patches simply to allow people
to play games in their native language, or are there other reasons? Has
money ever been offered or supplied for a fan translation? Also, do
many people start projects and then grow disinterested over time, never
finishing them?
I've never been offered money for translating
anything. I do it because it's fun and it makes me feel good. Heck,
it's this hobby that made me go into English-Spanish translation in the
first place. But about other projects... there's quite a few I started
but that I never got far with them. There's three or four that I'm
bored of for one reason or another and I've never finished. But I
intend to, eventually.
3)
Apart from translating games from Japanese to English, what other
languages are worked on by such communities? In various ROM archives,
I’ve seen unofficial Dutch, French, and German translations. Are these
groups very active?
The Spanish (Spain and Latin America) scene is about as large, if not larger, than our own.
4) Are there any examples of translating English only games into Japanese?
D's Super Mario Bros. 1?
7)
Can you give me some idea of how long it takes to create a final patch?
Perhaps give examples where it’s been done quickly, and where it’s
taken a long time.
I've taken up to FOUR years to finish something.  I suck.
Eight)
Are there many examples of fan translations being done for games that
have already been localised? The only two that spring to my mind is
Castlevania 3 (FC) and Metal Gear 1 (MSX).
Well, I translated
Akumajyou Densetsu (CV3) and Doki Doki Panic... the former because I
was admittedly bored but I liked the music; the latter because I was
bored and wanted to try my hand at an FDS game. There's Gid's
Shatterhand, too.
9)
I’ve seen people talk about “OMFG teenage high drama” and related
antics (SD3, FFV, FF3j, Treasure Hunter G, etc.), and someone even
mentioned a “Romancing Saga curse”. Can you guys elaborate on these
tales of melodrama? What did they involve, the causes, the people, etc.
Cause? People wanting to enlarge their ePenis. Pride. Credit.
The usual BS drama. I'm sad to say that I fell victim to that, too.
These days it doesn't really matter too much.
10)
I’ve seen a few topics on this, but what is the ratio of old games
being translated compared to new games? Is there a serious movement for
GBA, PSP, and current generation consoles? (I’ll only be describing
this very briefly in the article)
There's little to no info on
modern consoles; or worse, no way to play the games on emulators (or
they haven't gotten good enough to run the games properly). So... old
games? 85% to new games 15%, in my opinion.
11)
While I have my own ideas, what would you guys say were the 5 biggest,
most anticipated, or most influential translations produced? The
article is likely to dedicate at least half a page to five important
examples, so I’m curious to see others’ views.
FFV
FFIV
SD3
FFII
I can't think of a fifth one.
*sighs* Man, everyone else has better answers...
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RedComet
Romhacking.net Staff
Sr. Member
Posts: 315
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Didn't koitsu/y0shi do some of the asm mods for FF2?
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Great Red Spirit
Jr. Member
Posts: 97
Ignorant Dolt
Location: Canadar
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Someone
please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that the group
KanjiHack got a cease-and-desist letter from ASCII, developer of the
RPG Maker series. However, I'm told this wasn't due to the
translation patches for the SNES games they had, but rather because of
the translation of the PC edition they were distributing on their site
as a full download (which is clearly a copyright violation). I've
never heard of anyone getting in trouble for creating or distributing
translation patches for older games. Does anyone know if there
were ever threats regarding patches for Pokemon games?
I
don't know what the exact reason behind the cease and disist was, but
(if I remember correctly, Kanjihack was a long time ago) they also had
prepatched ROM carts on their webpage as well.
On the same note, a
popular rumour back then on the Kanjihack forums (or some other popular
RPG Maker 95 forum) was that ASCII shut down Kanjihack thanks to some
group who claimed that they had a more complete version of RPG Maker 95
translated done completely by themselves. The patch turned out to be an
add-on patch of TNomad's work, group called plagarists, tossed out of
community, then a few months later Kanjihack got the C&D. Most
people just blamed the plagarists, even though nobody said what exactly
brought about the C&D.
And yes, it was Don Miguel who
finish the RPG Maker 95 translation and RPG Maker 2000 (didn't know it
had any copy protection though, but I never tried a pure unpatched
version of it). Then everyone wanted to be the person to translate RPG
Maker 2003. Damn was that ever a compatability mess... but I think the
generally accepted version was the translation done by RPG Advocate
*lets the real hackers and translaors resume their discussion*
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 If you don't know what this is, you don't know how screwed you are |
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Gideon Zhi
Full Member
Gender:
Posts: 241
Ruins Chaser
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The C&D was indeed because KanjiHack was distributing a full
download of RPG Maker 95 on their website. It had nothing directly to
do with their hacking of any of the games. |
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byuu
Newbie
Posts: 45
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The
earliest thing I remember, and this is hearsay, was that Taichou, a
#romhack guy from British Columbia and who I believe was earlier in
Pendragon Translations (the group that gained fame for stealing the
layout of Zophar's Domain, which today ... one would wonder why they
hell anyone would want to copy that page), paid Neill Corlett some chunk of money to get Seiken Densetsu 3 hacked.
As
far as I know, Taichou was not a member of Pendragon's group. The only
group I know of that he joined was my old Starsoft group, that he
eventually took over so that Louis Bontes would help us with Bahamut
Lagoon. Also, he paid Neill to replace the title screen in Fire Emblem
<3/4/who gives a shit>. The exact amount was never disclosed, but
was between $100 and $300, from what I recall. I consider being paid to
do something you don't want to do at the request of the person paying
you as totally acceptable. You're simply providing a service for a fee.
No reason to dredge up my protests against the act of asking for
donations/money again, suffice to say that's a bad example.
Now,
one thing I honestly can't remember is if Pendragon is Mordred311. The
names suggest so. If so, I can piece back info on him back to Enigma
soft/translations or whatever. Me and AnimeFX were in his little group
thing in early-mid 1997. That became Enix translations, which also did
absolutely nothing and is thus irrelevant to the history of romhacking.
If anyone knows if this is the same person, it'd be nice to fill in
that gap in my memory. |
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Shih Tzu
Newbie
Posts: 41
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Here's my answers to the questions I feel qualified to talk
about. I first was made aware of emulation at the very end of
1996 (and rom translations soon after that), and I followed the scene
ever since, but for quite a few years I was just a groupie people
tolerated on message boards and IRC channels, so I wasn't privy to
behind-the-scenes details. My interest in Japanese games and in
the scene eventually motivated me in fall 1999 to take some Japanese
classes in college just for fun. I wound up changing my major and
studying in Japan and all that, and after nearly three years of study I
reached the point where I could give something back to the community
beyond just script editing.
2)
Is the motivation to create translation patches simply to allow people
to play games in their native language, or are there other reasons?
That's
the primary motive. As with any hobby, there's also just the
sheer joy of doing. As with most non-casual gamers I know,
playing games makes me desperately want to create my own, and like most
gamers I know, I haven't developed the coding or art abilities to do
so. Translating a game gets me involved in the game creation
process, even in a small, restricted way. I love imagining how a
scene appears from the player's point of view as I'm interpreting it
into English. It's like getting to write my own game script,
except someone's already given me an outline of what to write.
Translation is fun that way when it's not being a pain in the ass.
Also, do many people start projects and then grow disinterested over time, never finishing them?
Oh
goodness yes. Very often people with little to no experience come
along and say "I'm starting a project for [such and such game that
everyone knows would be highly difficult to work on]! Who wants
to join my team?" And of course no one wants to, since the
aspirant has nothing to offer, and a little while later they get bored
and perhaps leave an empty site to rot on Geocities for a few
years. It's happened so often that people in the scene tend to be
skeptical (perhaps overly so) of newcomers, especially those who don't
exhibit a willingness to learn and do some research.
Even
projects started by experienced and talented people can stagnate if
they hit a particularly onerous hacking roadblock or can't track down
other collaborators. Translators in particular are at a premium
(where do all the good anime fansub translators come from, I
wonder? And there are good ones. I suppose it's because
anime is hundreds of times as popular as 15-year-old video games), and
it's quite common for a hacker to get a script dumped, resolve most
major hacking issues, and then have to wait months or years for a
translator, if ever. Disnesquick
first put out a call for translators for Energy Breaker in, what,
2000? It wasn't until last year, I think, that there was any
change in that project's status, thanks mostly to satsu, I believe. Tales of Phantasia PSX is another six-year project I once figured was doomed (and I'm very happy to be wrong).
4) Are there any examples of translating English only games into Japanese?
I
helped someone once with a translation of Super Mario Bros. into
Japanese, but I've never heard of actual Japanese people doing any
translation hacking. 日本人の皆さん、お考えになってはいかがですか？
7)
Can you give me some idea of how long it takes to create a final patch?
Perhaps give examples where it’s been done quickly, and where it’s
taken a long time.
It totally depends on the amount of work
involved. Some people have changed a title screen into English to
make a complete patch in (I assume) an evening. Others (like the
ones I mentioned above) can take years. It depends on whether the
hacking is easy or how big the script is or how fast the translator can
work or whether there's someone to help with assembly hacking or if
there are bugs in the menu or if there are no translators showing
interest or...
Eight)
Are there many examples of fan translations being done for games that
have already been localised? The only two that spring to my mind is
Castlevania 3 (FC) and Metal Gear 1 (MSX).
Occasionally.
People have mentioned many good examples already. Usually the
reason for the retranslation is due to differences between the original
and the English localization, be it a shoddy official translation,
censorship, or even major content differences. Sometimes the
official localizers were jerks and chopped out a major part of the
story or gameplay; AGTP's Assault Suits Valken is a good example. Magical Doropie is another, even though it's not like we were missing much. I also retranslated Magic John just to compare it with the crazy official localization, Totally Rad, although in that case that wasn't a hack.
More
than one hacker has finished a small project only to find out later
that the game actually had an obscure English release they never knew
about.
9)
I’ve seen people talk about “OMFG teenage high drama” and related
antics (SD3, FFV, FF3j, Treasure Hunter G, etc.), and someone even
mentioned a “Romancing Saga curse”. Can you guys elaborate on these
tales of melodrama? What did they involve, the causes, the people, etc.
I
can't comment on the specifics of those cases (thank goodness), but I
think it's safe to say that one recurring point of discord is that,
since none of these translations are official, sometimes more than one
group will stake their claim to a project at once. I've seen
people upset or disappointed that others were taking "their"
project. Again I wonder how it works in the anime fansub world,
where you have like a hundred groups trying to claim fifteen shows a
year or whatever. Maybe they just don't care. Anyway, I
think that's one relevant factor in any tension in the translation
scene, but in general if there is any it's your usual internet whatever
B.S. I can think of one or two arguments I've witnessed, but as I
wasn't personally involved I don't trust my impression of events to be
accurate. Things have been pretty quiet the last few years, which
is fine.
11)
While I have my own ideas, what would you guys say were the 5 biggest,
most anticipated, or most influential translations produced? The
article is likely to dedicate at least half a page to five important
examples, so I’m curious to see others’ views.
Everyone's already covered the big ones (FF5, SD3, ToP for sure), but I'd like to suggest Neo Demiforce's Radical Dreamers
as another possible landmark. Not only is there its cachet as the
original sequel to Chrono Trigger and inspiration for Chrono Cross, but
it's one of the very few (and the first, to my knowledge) complete
translations of a visual novel. Certainly the sheer amount of
Japanese text makes it among the largest, if not the largest fan translations ever created; demi says the script was about 750 pages long.
Does
the community get much flak for providing a service, which if we’re
being honest, is derived from the illegal distribution of ROMs?
I
don't know of anyone getting "flak" from anyone, but I do think it's
fair to say that unofficial translations tend to receive very little
mainstream publicity. Occasionally you'll find a mainstream
magazine writer toss in a sentence like "Available for the first time
in North America (although English bootlegs have circulated on the
internet for years)...", but in general they seem to avoid talking
about piracy, especially speech that would seem to facilitate it.
I think one reason for the popularity of some fully legal
freeware/shareware translations I've seen is that there are more people
and more sites willing to talk about them openly. That's just my
impression, though; since emulation isn't underground or taboo in any
of the circles I move in I don't know what it's like elsewhere. |
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Szczepaniak
Newbie
Posts: 13
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Hmm.. what exactly are our options for being quoted and listed? Are you asking if we want our names or nicknames in there?
Apologies
if there's another question or point that I've not answered, but
there's a lot of stuff to read and go over here. Which I'll do a bit
later (or possibly on Monday!). But to answer Nightcrawler...
If I'm going to quote someone, it would be like:
And
leading community member "Nightcrawler" elaborated by saying "I really
like translating." Which another key member, "D", agreed with, "Yeah,
it's fun."
Now, I can keep your nicknames if you prefer, or I could say "23 year old Mr Xyz says this..."
It
depends on how you want to be mentioned in the main body of text.
Community Nicknames, or real names. Actually, my ed normally wants
proper names, but since you guys are credited on the games under a
pseudonym, I think it'll be fine either way.
As for general
thank yous, there's a lot of people answering, so I might not be able
to fit everyone in. But I'd prefer proper names for the formal "thanks"
bit, which is printed in small at the end. |
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D
Sr. Member
Gender:
Posts: 397
Annoying Grammar Nazi
Location: Xicheng, Beijing, China
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I guess you could use my real name ... it's not like I keep it hidden.
I think EGM also referenced Neill as Neill Corlett in their SD3 article
and Square never shit lead bricks on him, so it seems safe enough. |
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