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Want to translate a PSP or a PC game? Here's how you begin (with links to all of relevant utilities)

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no I'm not making some sort of official declaration as I still haven't finished Wiz-Emp-1 on PC (although It's nearing completion. the game will actually be translated in at most two or three weeks).

but i am making a thread concerning PSP game translation: the only roadblock I had been having previously is that I didn't know how to extract the files from the PSP game .BIN files; well now I do. I'm using utilities called quickbms.exe . my only experience so far is text editing.

so anyway point of the thread is that i can finally open up the elminage 2, 3 and 5 games that are on PSP (1 and 4 are on PC/PSP) and begin translation. at a bare minimum I can translate everything is pure text: i.e. 75% of the game. item names, spell names, monster names, area names, etc.

I use a tool called CrystalTile2 to manipulate the contents of the PSP game (and for any other game now; i've replaced the previous one I was using called WindHex32).

Right, the point of the thread: the point is there is HOPE. There is hope! *I* personally may not do it, but if you want to YOU can do it now.

Here are download links to the utilities:

1. first thing you're going to need: a hex-editor. With this utility you "write over" (as if you were using the INSERT function on your Keyboard) the japanese text that's in whatever file you opened with English letters. I started using one called WindHex32 and it's perfect for learning; right now I'm using one called CrystalTile2 which has many more functions that go beyond writing over the japanese text.

Link to WindHex32: http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/291/
Link to CrystalTile2: http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/818/

Link to script that extracts files from inside the PSP game .BIN folder (extracts files from any .BIN file including ones from PC games as well): http://aluigi.altervista.org/quickbms.htm

Translation software: www.google.com

Pictorial process of how I'm translating Elminage 2 Item names right now... (pictures are in progression of steps):

Pic 1: notice up top the utility, CrystalTile2 and next to it the name of the file I'm hex-editing called "ITMCSV.BIN". This file was inside the .BIN called "ETC.BIN" inside the PSP game Elminage 2.
Screenshot%202016-03-23%2001.17.18_zpswg5fiygt.png~original


Pic 2 and onwards are self-explenatory:
Screenshot%202016-03-23%2001.26.51_zpsuytohkll.png~original
Screenshot%202016-03-23%2001.28.13_zpsx76ip99b.png~original
Screenshot%202016-03-23%2001.28.17_zpspehym9bz.png~original


it's as simple as that. Obviously you can't do the same with NPC dialog. Well, you can, but the results would be... let's just say they'd be 'Codexian :D

As for how to know what to look for inside a file? Use trial and error. In Wizardry Empire 1 the entire reason I bugged MrRichard999 to help me learn how to begin doing at least a translation of the item names is because in the installation folder of the game all of the files are unpacked. There is literally a file called ITEMS.DAT in the games' folder. If you open that file inside a hex editor with a japanese Table (i'll link the japanese table in a second) you see the list of items. Seriously, that's the entire reason I got interested in this stuff: because the files were already named and sorted. There was a .DAT file for SPELLS, one for MONSTERS, etc.

In the case of the PSP games I had the roadblock of not having access to the direct files inside the .BINs so instead I had been doing what I personally call brute-force hex-editing or what should be called "retarded monkey editing"; which is editing the .BIN file itself without extracting all of the multiple folders inside of it first. It's POSSIBLE to achieve a translation like that, but it ain't likely.

The final thing you need in order to view the japanese characters in any file is a SHIFT-JIS table:

SHIFT-JIS table download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/van54gc6zqiuzoi/SHIFT-JIS-REGULAR.TBL?dl=0

Richard gave that one to me and it's perfect. I can't thank him enough. Without that you're not going to be able to see the japanese characters in any file.

So... that's basically it at least as far as text-translation goes. I tagged Richard so he can chime in if he wants to. As for me? I'll finish up text-translating Wizardry Empire 1 for PC (should be done in 2 weeks or so, perhaps less) and I'll be using Google translate for the dialog. I'll probably end up re-writing a lot of the dialog myself too. Does this matter? No. Does it matter to other people than me? Yes. In the case of Wiz Emp 1 i don't give a shit cos it has stupid dialog to begin with. A literal google translation with some human thought put into stringing together coherent sentences is more than enough for a dungeon crawling game like that.

In the case of Elminage 2 when and if i get to the point where I already google-translated the list stuff, i.e. item lists, monster lists, etc, and it comes time to the dialog i'll be bugging Helly to translate it. I might even end up paying real USD money to have the Elminage 2 script translated by a translation server; that's how much I love the Elminage series.

So at the moment I can't really think of anything else to add really. If anyone actually decides to read this and downloads the utilities mentioned and has any questions please, PLEASE, post everything HERE in this thread and we'll help each other out. For example one of the handiest utilities in WindHex32 is dumping the contents of the file you're hex-editing into a .txt file, for obvious reasons. You can do that by pressing F10 or using the program's Toolbar. That's one example of something someone might ask when using a hex-editor for the first time and is looking at a japanese file for the first time.

Remember to always load the SHIFT-JIS table after loading the japanese game file; otherwise the japanese characters won't show up. How do you load the SHIFT-JIS table? Scroll up again and look at pic 1, and notice in the toolbar where it says TBL. In the case of WindHex32 it's under "File" in the toolbar. It'll become second nature after a while; first fire up the hex editor -> open the game file you want to hex-edit -> load the japanese SHIFT-JIS table.

what i'm describing in this post is basically what one calls a best case scenario in terms of editing a japanese games' files. if you're unluckly the game you want to translate will NOT have everything sorted and listed with obvious file names that tell you specifically what's inside the file (spell.dat, itmcsv.bin, etc). Once again, any questions bring them to this thread and we'll see what we can do.

(by the way, MrRichard999, this also means I can translate the entirety of Wizardry Empire 3 for PSP. all that i need to do is figure out a .bms script to extract the umddata.bin that's 70mb's. i already have a few ideas concerning this, btw.)

oh! almost forgot: whenever you dump a japanese file's contents into a .txt file (such as the npc dialog; in the case of elminage 2 all of the npc dialog is inside the SCP.BIN, and in the case of Wiz-Emp 1 it's inside NPC.WZA. You can either extract the contents from the files or hex-edit the files themselves: sometimes you get lucky (you can hex-edit translate/script dump NPC.WZA, for example, without any problems whatsoever but in the case of Elminage 2 it's better to first extract everything from the SCP.BIN so you can have all of the game dialog sorted out).

anyway, once you have the file loaded in your hex-editor, shift-jis tbl loaded, and you're looking at an endless ream of japanese characters that are the game's dialog what you do is you dump everything into a text file. (function is obviously in the hex-editor's toolbar). Once that is dumped you need a text-viewer that has search and replace functions, ability to load a SHIFT-JIS table, and ability to program macros. (to automate process of ordering the dialog lines into paragraphs and such).

the best free one is Notepad++. I won't provide the link cos you can just google it and download it. Notepad++ is VERY powerful text editor and its macro functions and search/replace functions are top-notch.
 
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oh, i thought of a perfect way to give an example of the difference between doing text-translation and graphical-translation. look at this picture:
Screenshot%202016-03-22%2010.34.20_zpsbo8hcoih.png~original


As i mentioned previously this game falls under the "best case scenario" category because you see all those english headers there in italic light blue? Like the attributes for example? THEY WERE ALREADY IN ENGLISH. (thanks japan!)

in the case of Elminage 2 it looks like this:
Screenshot%202016-03-23%2002.31.46_zpsguoio4pb.png~original


if i want to translate the menu commands, and the japanese characters for the primary attributes, etc, I need to edit the image file. that's the basic difference between the two methods. you need both skillsets to successfully translate a complex game. like elminage, for example. and yes, i WILL learn how to graphics-hack. I fucking swear it.

this is why you see so many times the answer of "depends on the game" when asked how viable a translation is.

EDIT: on the plus side playing so much of the Elminage games and the wiz-empire games in Jjapanese helped me learn a little bit of the language :D :D

I know exactly what each one of the japanese characters means that's next to a number. I know the character for the gender, the class, the STR attribute, etc; IMO it's one of the best ways to familiarize yourself with the type of japanese characters you'll see a lot of in a specific game genre. It ain't rocket science, after all. You just compare and contrast and deduce. Obviously it helps to first play an english version of a game series, then play the japanese sequels. If the sequels have shit in the same place, graphically speaking, then you can deduce what the japanese character means and begin building your own personal meta-dictionary.

for example the first attribute, the "18", is the STRENGTH attribute. it's a KANJI character. KANJI is a symbological language that the japanese island dwarves stole from the chinese back in the days of the nintendo. The first character i don't know what it represents, but the second one that looks like |-| but curved to the left? (i know, a horrible representation lol)-- that one is a chinese character that can be translated as "Force", Towering", "Imposing", etc. It's universally used to represent the strength attribute in these type of games. And now you also see immediately why translating kanji is difficult: each symbol represents different things when paired with another.

For example, If you take the same symbol on the right and add one that looks like a little skinny rocket to its left it means "lack of strength" or "little stature" or fuck, a dozen different interpretations.

Helly taught me that :D

if your translation project falls under the "best case scenario" category you won't be seeing a lot of kanji and instead everything will be in hiragana/katakana, the two standard japanese alphabets. Remember up above the picture of the short sword translation in the OP? that's katakana. The hiragana characters are usually curvy and loopy or look like elongated numbers or circles, whereas the katakana characters are usually "slashes" like a reverse-V, or a straight up triangle. the japs only use kanji when they're limited on space or because of tradition i dunno; it's retarded anyway (not kanji itself, but the use of it in games what with how much memory space we have available nowadays).

think of it this way: STR is the universally accepted abbreviation for STRENGTH in a western RPG, and sometimes even just ST is utilized. Same concept with the Kanji. usually you won't be dealing with kanji much, if at all, if you're doing a translation of the game text as characters don't normally SPEAK in kanji, they speak in hiragana/katakana.
 
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I was rooting around using Google to see how I could teach myself graphics hacking for my hobby/project of someday translating Elminage 2 and I stumbled upon the easiest and best idea ever imagined:

- since Elminage 1 (Original) for PSP is in english... i can just cut the part of graphical image i need (say for example where it says GENDER in the status menu) and just fucking paste it onto the graphical image of Elminage 2's status menu right on top of the "GENDER" kanji.

Sure it would look amateurish since i know shit about graphics editing but _it would be translated_. :D

man, if only RPG's contained their dialog in graphical images translation would be super easy. You could just cut out the japanese text and "Photoshop"-fu the english text into the image. Unfortunately that's just pure fantasy: there's a reason text isn't inside image files and there's a reason images aren't inside text files. Just wishful thinking; excited because of the idea I had about editing the Elminage 2 status screen.
 
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one thing i haven't mentioned is "patching". translating japanese PC games is best because you don't need to deal with read-only media (i.e. the disc/umd/etc the game comes in) that's closed off and encrypted. you just load up the japanese language file in your hex-editor and start google-translating away like a muthafucka, hit control + S, close the hex-editor, fire up the game and see your changes in action. or not; you might've fucked up. :D

when attempting to translate a psp game, or a psx game or any other closed-hardware game you have to do the exact same thing i described in the paragrah above and then use a tool to create a patch, and then use a second tool (depending on the console/hardware sometimes 1 tool does both things)-- to apply the patch to the game disc/umd/whatever.

for Playstation 1 games: google "PPFStudio" for patch creation (Playstation Patch Format) and then google "PPF-O-Matic" for applying the patch containing the newly translated file onto the game disc itself. Once it's applied it's in there for good so you don't need to worry about having the user, i.e. the player, having to apply patches themselves. Sometimes some translators do it like that tho and keep the patch seperate because they of legal reasons; it's YOUR business to seek out the ps1/ps2/psp/whatever japanese game ISO and then apply the patch. that way no legal firm cam say that they meddled with their copyrighted game; all they did was create a file that has no legal relationship to the game itself.

for the PSP i haven't even yet googled which tool to use as i'm busy translating wizardry empire 1 for PC; but finding utilities is the easy part... i don't have any worries on that front.

at any rate things are looking brighter in the elminage 2 front: i asked around on gbatemp and there is actually a guy doing some work on it already by the name of rastam. i already messaged him and he agreed to let me help so he says i should begin doing the list stuff translation first, i.e. the items, weapons, etc, and he's currently doing the graphical hacking for game. he's actually the guy that told me how to unpack the PSP game .BIN files.

i guess the lesson here is if you don't even bother to ask anyone... no one will respond. good thing i like to bother people. :D
 
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here's a quick video of me doing the uber-exciting process of translating item names in ELMINAGE 2. you're going to see excel sheets instead of a hex-editor because the ELMINAGE devs were nice enough to document the game "lists" in .CSV's :)

 
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for those curious the list already in english is the item list from eliminage 1; i compare the prices/etc of the items in the japanese-language item list from elminage 2 and then insert the english name in the elminage 2 list. the problem of course is that for elminage 2 they added around 110 new items, so i can't do that for every entry and it means i also can't just copy/paste "sets".

and in any case this is one of those "best case scenario" games as well; i mean the devs put the freaking game lists in motherfucking excel sheets! how cool is that, eh? btw, if anyone actually wants to help me finish off that list by all means, cuz there's still a spells list, a monsters list, etc, left to do so... please dear god you are more than welcome to :D
 

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lol @ the anime chick from the google search.

But yeah, godspeed my crazy friend, I'd never attempt what you're trying to do.
 

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You're translating Elminage 2? You will be a GOD if you get that done, man! Can't wait to see your progress on that one. Good luck! :)
 
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well, me and 2 other people from GBATemp. the only reason i was even allowed access to their Google Drive of their translation of the game is because i personally PM'd the guy on GBATemp and stated that i wanted to help translate the game.

at first he told me no, so i went to MrRichard999 and i asked HIM to help tell me how the hell i can go about beginning to attempt translating an RPG game. since he had translated wiz-empire 2 he sent me the wiz-empire 1 files and told me to practice on those and gave me tips.

all of this was like 2 months ago. anyway, now i'm about halfway done translating wiz-empire 1 (i know, i know, i keep giving different dates as to when it will be finished it's just that more game content keeps popping up just when i think i already found everything) and i can say i know the basics of rom hacking translation.

so anyway about 1 week ago i went back to GBATemp and i messaged the elminage 2 translation team guy again and said "remember me? hey look at these videos i've uploaded to youtube of me translating this game... etc, etc now i can help you guys out" so this time he said yes and he gave me access to their elminage 2 translation project google drive. i'm currently doing the text translation on the item/monster/spells/etc lists, basically data entry when it comes right down to it. it's incredibly tedious and the only reason anyone would want to do something like this is because they actually want to.

meanwhile i'm still translating wiz-emp 1 eveyr single day, sometimes a little bit and sometimes a huge chunk of it. it's been a tremendous learning experience as i've learned a lot more thna just text-editing from it.

btw fluent the elminage 2 translation isn't officially announced yet on gbatemp because the two other guys doing it are very serious about it and nothing's going to get announced officially until things look like they can get done. at the moment it's just 3 guys (or more, i'm not sure) fooling around with the game files, myself included.
 
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btw, for anyone curious here's the difference in project scale between wiz-emp 1 and elminage 2:

wiz-emp 1 item.dat: contains 70 entries.

elminage 2 item.csv: contains 575 entries.

:D
 

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Well, kudos to you, aweigh. Seriously. Being a part of something incredible like you're doing is really special. I can't wait to see the results!

Keep it up, man. You are doing very important work. If Ghostlight won't do it, we have to do it ourselves, eh?
 
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Looking at how you google everything i suggest translation aggregator. This thing uses several online translation engines + atlas dictionary. It's even possible to translate script into something which makes sense (after some editing of course). I used it with agth to play some jp games.
 
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thank you ThisNameIsFree! I tried it out and it is fantastic. however i don't use software to translate NPC dialog. Well i have done so before on the Wizardry Empire 1 translation but it is only as "place holder" text, for my own benefit and becuase I'm also playing the actual game itself while I translate it.

For example right now I am starting the process of organizing the all of the game's NPC dialog into a human-readable format then put it in a text document so i can give it to Richard and he will hand it over to someone who do a translation on the game dialog. once that is done, hopefully i'll have the english translation of all the npc dialog in coming two weeks (crossed fingers) i'll hack the english into the game.

but for everything else most rom hackers / hex editors / amateur translators etc well it's safe to say that people usually start translating a game THEY want to play; it's rare for a lare group of people all with the 3 main skill sets (hex editing / image editing / language knowledge) to all suddenly organize and decide to translate that one specific game that you want to play. So there are a lot of times a translation project will begin with one person doing the rom hacking and obviously when it comes to stuff like translating the file that contains the RPG game's list of monsters, or translating the file that contains the text that the player sees when he enters the weapon shop; you know, stuff like that: well obviously the guy in question will turn to software translation.

and btw, i don't doubt that even so-called professional localizations of japanese games from small studios have done software translation of their item lists because Google Translate has given me the EXACT SAME ITEM NAMES that the supposedly officially localized Elminage 1 on PSP utilizes in many instances...

in any case thank you for alerting me to this software. it is very useful. however there is of course no software recourse for translation of japanese dialog because of the 2 alphabets + kanji; the only solution is to find a fluent translator and get him involved in the project; learn the language yourself; or finally just straight up spend USD money on a translation service.
 
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Well, kudos to you, aweigh. Seriously. Being a part of something incredible like you're doing is really special. I can't wait to see the results!

Keep it up, man. You are doing very important work. If Ghostlight won't do it, we have to do it ourselves, eh?

that's exactly right. i'd like to point out that i've actually played through Elminage 2 in japanese already (although i didn't do the post-game) and i was starting elminage 3 when it hit me like a truck:

i was not actually enjoying these games because i was skipping every single line of dialog. it made me remember all of the fun stuff and great moments i had experienced playing elminage 1 and 4 in english and how much even one single NPC can add to the game playing experience that i immediately quit playing elminage 3 and that was when i went and messaged the person on GBATemp.

to be honest the main reason is because i want to play the game *myself* in english. it's probably the best motivator a fan could have.
 
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yes, machine translation. it has gotten quite sophisticated. it's even used by "official publishers" nowadays so they can save money on the localization of the npc dialog. :)

if you don't believe me extract the list files from your favorite recent japanese RPG, one probably released on the PSP or the DS i will imagine and do a Google Translation of all the items in the files; then find the official localization of the very same game and compare the item names. you will find that the translations google gave you match the translations used for the item names 100% of the time.

if the studio is of mid-size or small-size and the publisher on the level of Ghostlight, i.e. not exactly indie but definitely very small then rest assured that the english version of whatever RPG it is you're playing features a big amount of software translation; so get off your high horse deuxhero. it's this kind of attitude that is holding back the translation efforts of many games.
 
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Stranger-of-Sword-City_2015_12-18-15_002.jpg


you're going to tell me with a straight fucking face that this was not software-translated? AGAIN i repeat: stop bashing machine translation because all of the RPGs you play use it. only the main dialog files are ever sent to a human translators for money-reasons.

human translation services usually charge anywhere from 1-3 dollars per sentence depending on language/contract/other variables. if using google to translate an item name into SHORT SWORD costs $0, and using a human translator to translate the same item name into SHORT SWORD will cost the publisher $2 dolalrs; which do you think the publisher will use? hmmm i wonder!
 

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That's because ショートソード is literally the English word "Short sword" written phonetically. There's no way to get a different translation.
 
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btw in the jrpg thread about the nobuo uematsu kickstarter vaporware game there is a new video posted where the devs admit they use only software-translation.

so i guess you have no point to make? you dislike machine translation yet it is the standard of usage in the industry... gotcha.
 
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from another thread:

i dropped the psx version immediately. i'm also no longer doing a software translation of the npc dialog; richard said he found a translator for wiz-emp 1 so i'm formatting the script dump for him. i hope to get that done and have an english script back and coded into the game in 1 month hopefully.

as for the lists (items/spells/monsters) not even official publishers use human-translation for listings. they use software translation. only in cases of big, big publishers do things like item names, spells and the like get the human-translation treatment.

the majority (if not all) of the japanese RPG's you play on your psp/ds/etc feature massive amounts of software translation. please always remember that the only files that get sent to a human translator are the dialog files, never the other stuff.

if you have some personal dislike of the usage of software translation then by principle you must stop playing localized games right this moment. the only files that ever get sent to a human translator are the main dialogs, nothing else, unless it's something like Square Enix localizing the game (and even then i'm sure they have "sophisticated" software translation programs in-house).

since human translators charge so much almost no game translated from jap to english uses human translation much. they try to use machine translation as much as possible for the biggest possible chunk of the game.

btw, yes, this is also the exact reason why fan translations are ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS better than official localizations.

i mean how the fuck else do you think shit like Atma Weapon makes it into the franchise canon? if you think a human being translated that... i got a magic bean to sell ya.
 

Severian Silk

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I prefer hardware translation to software translation. In fact, my PCIe Weeaboo-to-Engrish expansion card is in the mail right now.

Translating Japanese games properly into English is a serious and big deal.
 
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it is very expensive that's for sure. 1-3 dollars the sentence is outrageous! don't they know there are fan translators on the internet who will do it for free???
 
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helllo there im really intrested in translating psp game and wanna learn how to, can you give me way to learn it i would like you to teach me in many way- a simple way as long as there a full instruction
 

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