at least give some tools that would do the job.
One of the tricky things about this is that we have to make a lot of the tools ourselves, in the sense of scripts that run to update text, and to format the translated text in a way that can get easily edited and then convert that back into the format that the DS files require. We also get a lot of help from the Spanish team's tech guy for some of the more intricate rom hacking to move around graphical elements when the English text just can't be shortened enough to fit in the space where the Japanese text did. This happens a lot more often than you would imagine, and a lot of the remaining work on the battle system images is tweaking things at the hex- and byte-code level to make stuff work correctly.
Perhaps your statement was true at some point in time, but not any more.
There is an english version of the book in pdf online, for free.
Are you referring to the English version of the in-game PS3 book? I have done a comparison of that book and the DS book and there are about 100 pages of differences, actually. Several imagen are DS or PS3 exclusive, and of course the English book doesn't have the Dream World map which is key to solving all of the Riddle Rabbit's puzzles. If someone has translated the DS book, I'd love to be put in touch with them so we can link to their work when we wrap this project.
I would very much appreciate if you could show what tools you used and how I can use them to translate the game into Dutch. Thanks in advance!
The project lead and OP is actually Dutch but wanted to work on the English translation first in order to reach a wider audience. If you are serious about translating 30,000+ and 1800+ graphics into Dutch, I'd suggest you talk with him as we have a pretty good file setup right now and he knows the ins and outs of the game and what parts are hard to work with.
would need guidelines and conventions, and I'm not aware of the existence of those, nor whether any or all of the translators consistently apply those.
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If I had the tools I would just use some babel-fishy automated translation and be done with it
Funny story, actually - we have a project style guide, we have a glossary of common terms, we have documented conventions on how to refer to places and people, and though it is an effort to do so we are consistently using them. That is one of the reasons why we each file takes time - to make sure we don't have to go back and correct it too many times as we go, since there is so much text that we honestly don't want to have to do too much rework.
Also, due to the format of the furigana text in the DS code it would be very difficult to just take the text and stuff it into a translation program and expect it all to work. There would need to be some heavy massaging done upfront, and even then kanji and slang and especially accents tend to trip up automated translation tools. All of those things exist in abundance in this game, so I doubt an automated approach would be very comprehensible or coherent.
Plus, you would miss out on all the punny names of the imagen and NPCs and places, which is part of the fun of playing a Level5 game, in my opinion. I appreciate that it may seem that there are faster ways of doing this, but until you have actually worked on a translation project and seen the results of bad translators (people) and bad translations (from automated translation tools) I think it may be difficult to appreciate why humans are better for quality, but perhaps not for speed of progress.
Can I receive access to the google docs files with dialogs to translate. I would like to contribute and translate some dialogs in my free time.
rmladenov - all of our translators and editors need to go through a quality check before we give access to the files, as we've been bitten by some well-intentioned volunteers that did more damage than doing nothing would have. Please PM me with preferably a gmail address and I can send you our translator test. Please also let me know of any Japanese experience you have, formal or otherwise, when you PM me so I can gauge your level of accent/slang abilities.
For everyone else on the forum
Thanks for your support and your patience! This game is epic and takes an epic amount of energy to keep working on, since at times it does feel endless - as one forum post pointed out recent progress points at a 2020 release, which is depressing for everyone involved. BUT! We carry on, and we have our productivity ups and downs, and hopefully you'll be satisfied with what we release in the end.
I'm catching up on other questions in the forum, sorry for the delay. I live above the 51st parallel in the North, so we really only get June/July/August as pleasant months outdoors. I've spend a number of weekends getting outside and enjoying the sun while I can at the expense of spending time on translation work. While I am probably the northernmost member of our team, I know other people have been doing the same. That, and the usual life stuff: moving, having kids, finding new jobs, getting married, etc. We're a busy bunch, but we are still very much working on this project.
Again, for anyone who has a positive attitude and would like to help edit translated text, or translate Japanese to English (need JLPT ~N2 at very minimum and an excellent command of English grammar and spelling) please contact me or the OP via PM so that we can send you our Editor / Translator test. Once you pass that you'll get access to files and guidance on how to help.
For reasons previously stated, we will not be releasing the patch until we are sure that it is fully playable. Not perfect, as no translation can ever be perfect, but playable from start to finish.[/QUOTE]