Translation Ni no Kuni Translation [ENG]

Cyan

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Yeah, the pages/section/blocs are actually a "window" of text on screen.
it can be one word, it can be 4 lines of text.

Anjiera said she has to fix 740 sections for the pokémon Imagen's description text, because they expected a 4 lines description while translating in english while the game can only display 3 lines at a time :(
(you can see screenshot of the issue in the spoiler she posted above)
 
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Anjiera

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I meant the 34 000 Sections of dialogues that need proofreading.
Yeah, it is a massive game. The biggest cartridge used on the DS ever.

There's a reason this is taking forever, and that we're not attempting to translate the ~100ish pages from the physical Magic Master book, or the instruction manual as part of this release. We're not eliminating the possibility of doing those things later, but... this is a whopper of a game, and just getting the game to be playable and coherent is a serious undertaking. Plus, this is my first ROM hack project, so there's loads to learn (for instance, triple check your line length before you translate all of the 700+ imagen descriptions at the wrong length). I think I spent 3 hours rejigging imagen descriptions from 4 lines to 3 and only managed to make it through 85 of them, which is around 2 minutes per description. With 739 total imagen descriptions (so around 630 remaining) that means I have 21 hours of text juggling before the Imagen descriptions are proper. Then there are all the quests and the item descriptions (generally those are better, but... still).

I'll try to post more often than I had when my notifications stopped working, but if I don't respond for a week there's no need to send a search party. I'm not getting paid to do this, and I have a life and loved ones that deserve my time as much if not quite a bit more than this project. This is a project I'm working on because I love the game and the characters, and because it was one of the first RPGs I played through fully in Japanese (if you don't count the 2 Zelda DS games, which were more action adventure-y). As much as I love Level5 and Ghibli, and Oliver and Shizuku and all of the characters in this game, I definitely love my family more by several orders of magnitude, so... yeah. Don't worry if I don't post for a couple of days. ;)

Thanks for the enthusiasm, though. In some weird way it is almost comforting that people would be upset if this project died. It makes me feel like all of my time devoted to working on this is maybe worth it in some way to someone, even though I can likely never put this enormous undertaking on my resume or get any official credit for it.

For what it's worth, Clyde Mandelin's MOTHER 3 translation happened when he was an established name, and in a time where companies weren't really sure what to do with ROM translations, and I think they just lucked out in never getting a C&D. The fact that their translation is so revered and that they were able to talk about it publicly and keep their jobs is a luxury that I feel few ROM translators get these days.

Long story short: The project is still going, it is just slow going.
 

Yukikun55

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Hello there! Just want to say that, yes, we are all really looking forward to this release! Thank you for your time and effort!
 

Nightfury8583

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we just had one two days ago, after more than a month of work.
I don't think it changed so much after 72h.

At least, reading the messages posted by the project's owner to see if there's an update if the minimum. if not, there's no use asking for information to not read them.
note: the projet's owner is ONE post above yours, and it contains a status of what's left to do : read and correct 34 000 sections of dialogues.


edit:
I'll update the first post, to change the date of "last update", maybe that will help see the project is still alive.
Though, there's already a "Fall 2017 update"

Terribly sorry. I'm a bit lost on this site. So I couldn't find the information. Thank you for your reply!
 

kosterix

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" In those cases, for the sake of allowing the game to proceed mostly uninterrupted, we have the fully translated text for the riddle, but then the final line shown on screen will say something like
"Answer: <answer goes here>""
I'm not entitled to vote or anything, but would appreciate very much if
- answer was spelled backwards (rebif tsenif)
- answer provided in a text file with lots of blank lines in-between consecutive answers.

A lot of the many level 5 quests are quite clear, but in each game there is a handful where the english description is so vague I cannot figure it out and need a walkthrough. Much of the quality of a riddle appears to be in the actual wording.
 

Anjiera

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- answer was spelled backwards (rebif tsenif)
- answer provided in a text file with lots of blank lines in-between consecutive answers.

We hadn't thought of putting the answer backwards... that's an interesting idea. Until we get the rest of the playability issues (word wrapping) fixed, I don't think I'll make it a priority to go back and change them all everywhere, but if we have some extra time or idle hands I'll suggest it as an option for someone to work on.

We definitely won't be putting together a text file because we just have too many other things to do, but I assume that once the patch is out people will put together updated walkthroughs - there are several walkthroughs in English for the untranslated JP version of the game, and I'm betting some of those people would be willing to update their files to use the names we went with in the translation. Plus, after the patch releases I'm sure players will post here asking for help when they get stuck, and then we can iterate on wording or riddle clues.

Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it! :)
 

Madikan

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I don't know if you have been using it or not but Kuriimu just got a major update and now supports a range of new formats for translation projects
I'm quite sure it would be a pretty helpful piece of software to organize everything
 

Anjiera

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I don't know if you have been using it or not but Kuriimu just got a major update and now supports a range of new formats for translation projects
I'm quite sure it would be a pretty helpful piece of software to organize everything
Yeah, I'm part of the fan translation discord server where all the Kuriimu updates are posted. It looks like an interesting tool, but we do have our own for Ni No Kuni that the Spanish translation team wrote for their project. Since the translation work is done, I feel like it is more worth my time to just fix the strings we have left with the tools that we already know about, rather than spend time learning a new tool that may or may not work for our project.

Have you worked with Kuriimu at all? If you think the setup time is relatively short (set up meaning to install it, figure out how to use it, and then use it) then perhaps I'll carve out some time to give it a whirl.

Thanks for the tip! :)
 
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Madikan

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Yeah, I'm part of the fan translation discord server where all the Kuriimu updates are posted. It looks like an interesting tool, but we do have our own for Ni No Kuni that the Spanish translation team wrote for their project. Since the translation work is done, I feel like it is more worth my time to just fix the strings we have left with the tools that we already know about, rather than spend time learning a new tool that may or may not work for our project.

Have you worked with Kuriimu at all? If you think the setup time is relatively short (set up meaning to install it, figure out how to use it, and then use it) then perhaps I'll carve out some time to give it a whirl.

Thanks for the tip! :)

The installation part is practically inexistant, you just run the .exe present in the archive. And as for the installation of your whole project inside the program, it depends from game to game. You can try to import all your files and if it works without errors, you're in luck because you'll be able to do everything smoothly and without a hustle (I used it in the past to translate some things in a small scale project but it was with a 3DS game, it should be compatible with DS files, but I never tried).

Using it is relatively simple, it consists of three parts : a text editor with in-game preview, original strings and translated strings + individual notes + Hex view + fenceposts and possibility to check for possible broken strings (see http://sx.sytes.net/kuriimu/kuriimu06.png and http://sx.sytes.net/kuriimu/kuriimu01.png) => really helpful
An image converter that you can batch-use (see http://sx.sytes.net/kuriimu/kukkii02.png) => not so useful since you already edited and converted most of them but it's nice
An archive manager to manage your projects' files and open them with the appropriate part of the program (see http://sx.sytes.net/kuriimu/karameru02.png) => it's good to have everything in one place

It's pretty intuitive to use tbh, it's up to you to see if you find it easier with this tool or the ones from the Spanish Translation team, or you could just use both at the same time for conveniency :) And give it a go if you have the time, you can really batch through everything and the preview utility is really useful, it could really save some time if it works for you

Good luck anyway !
 
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Cyan

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if you try Kuriimu, do a backup, just in case
don't mess or lose your current work if it changes data in your current files.

with your new avatar, you look like you upgraded in rank, you became more mature and a "Anjiera-sama" instead of "san" :P
 
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DarkSynopsis

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I'm all for Kuriimu, its a great tool but considering you already have working tools as you mentioned I doubt its worth moving over.

Lots of formats are supported but I'd say its more 3DS titles, I'd be surprised if the files found in this game just worked and if they don't a plugin needs to be wrote which at this stage in time doesn't seem like its needed.
 

Anjiera

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I'm all for Kuriimu, its a great tool but considering you already have working tools as you mentioned I doubt its worth moving over.

Lots of formats are supported but I'd say its more 3DS titles, I'd be surprised if the files found in this game just worked and if they don't a plugin needs to be wrote which at this stage in time doesn't seem like its needed.
Yeah, I did a quick read through of their getting started page, and it is plugin-based meaning that teams starting a new project can write some plugins to get it to work. It is also, as you mention, mostly being used for 3DS titles and since this game was a beast of a crazy DS game we're just going to stick with the tools we have.

Kuriimu is really interesting for future projects I might join that are working on 3DS titles, but this game is my focus until it is done enough to be released. :) Thanks for the suggestion, though, whoever it was that first brought up Kuriimu...!
 

mimshipio

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once the patch is released will you guys have further revisions where you make any corrections you didn't notice the first time round or are you going to just leave it?
 

Cyan

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yes, it'll still be an active project for some time.
a new fixed version is planed. I don't know if they planned more than one, it will probably depends how many report they have and for how long after the release.
 
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Anjiera

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yes, it'll still be an active project for some time.
a new fixed version is planed. I don't know if they planned more than one, it will probably depends how many report they have and for how long after the release.
Yes, the plan is to provide occasional new patches and fixes after the first release.

We know we won't be able to catch everything, but we want to try to get all the basics covered. Right now we're dealing with a lot of the explanatory flavor text that gives the game its character - things are translated, but not nicely line wrapped in places, and it is slow work.

For details on why it is slow, please see calculations I included earlier in this thread showing how much time it takes just to fix one area of string wrapping issues: https://gbatemp.net/threads/ni-no-kuni-translation-eng.373770/page-32#post-7632795
 

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