First of all i know this topic is not about unreleased or protos games (well, unreleased in the western countries at least), so if it is not suitable please delete or move it. anyway i tought that it could be in the "0th Bit style"... i was wondering how much would it cost to pay a translator for translating some of the great games that never reached western shores (lots of SNES games and RPGs come to mind) and that already have all their text dumped, and how many people would be actually interested in donating for such tasks. For example, i would gladly donate 50euros or more (maybe up to 100 if i get the raise they promised me at work) for a complete, working Romancing SaGa 2 translation... and this is just an example. So there is any even slight chance of this happening or interest in the community? Thanks for all your replys, karsten
The translation part is almost the least of your concerns when it comes to "fan translations", in most cases, dealing with the technical issues requires much more work, specific knowledge and sometimes also time than finding a translator who'd be willing to take on the project. As for Romancing SaGa 2, it's on AGTP's project list (And it has a translator). So it'll evt. be out "some day".
i know, but he won't work on it (i asked)... anyway, 1 game is not the point... i tought it in a wider view... i.e. napple tales and segagaga for dreamcast is a great games we missed, on saturn there's sakura taisen, wachenroader and such.... each machine have great games concealed by language. the videogaming world is full of masterpieces only for japanese, and in most cases (like RS2) all the hacking is done and only translation is left... please don't just look at my example.
i have hacked a couple of snes games and translated them to german (tales of phantasia, breath of fire 2, starfox 2, for example). first of all, the amount of work thats required for such a translation is so massive, it can take a person 1 year and more to complete a single patch. second, this is a hobby. doing what you want when you want is where all the fun is at. as soon as someone jumps in and wants to either dictate what you should do or puts you under pressure, it stops being enjoyable. if someone was going to pay me by the hour for the work i've put in my translation patches so far, it would probably be a 5 to 6 digit figure even if you went by germanys minimum wage. donations are always welcome with most translators. i also know some people are honest and serious about paying money for a fan-translation. however, offering something in the range of 100 euros as payment for a complete patch is almost insulting. i'm not sure whether you are referring to a simple donation in order to support translators or if youre thinking more along the lines of paying translators to get the job done. the latter has been proposed many times before and has mostly resulted in translators getting mad. i'm afraid your only options are: 1. wait for someone to finish/create a patch on their own. 2. learn how to hack and translate the games yourself.
On my side, 7 years on Arabian Nights! And its only in beta! Well, d4s, once you get the tech stuff done, you are almost over with the hacking part... It depends from the game of course, the biggest work being the reverse engineering of all the routines etc... The other problem (and that's the worst part imo) is getting a continuous translator. Arabian Nights had like 6 up to now, mostly of them quitting after like two months. Only Hector had the will to go through all of it, though he didnt finish it for good, sadly. Anyway. If you had to pay a translator, well then i think you could talk with him about no less than 600-700 € to get one game's script translated (and i'm talking about a medium sized game like Arabian Nights). Remember, its a hell of work. Translations are time consuming and costy - very costy. Translating a non-tech (or content specifical) book could cost you up to 1,2 € a line if I remember it correctly, where a line is composed of 72 characters (not considering punctuation and spaces). So lets assume you have like 150 (full) lines, which could be a small sized script, and suppose you have a 5% of it being tags (which you need for reinsertion!), you'll have like a 143 lines to translate, which are 143*1.2=172 € And thats a small script, and the translation fees i mentioned could be low compared to the real ones. So your options are : a) go and learn japanese, which is time consuming and costly b) get a japanese girlfriend
didnt know you're translating games aswell, thats really cool! i was under the impression im the only one around. personally, ive always liked the hacking part better than the actual translation. breath of fire 2 was about 80% hacking/programming and 20% translating. however, i went a bit over board with that one: the new intro, vocal theme song, pseudo-3d overworld and translucent textboxes etc... turned out pretty nice, though. yeah, thats why i do everything i can myself. if my english wasnt as bad as it is, i'd handle the english version of bof2 myself, aswell.
The translation of Sega gaga actually is ongoing I hear and should be done quite soon. In fact its one of the more "professional" translations of games that currently are being translated as James Howell and Deltahead Translation Group are working on it. Apparently they hope for a release in summer 2007 or at least 2007. "I've got my fingers crossed that we can release a patch for Segagaga before summer hits, but I won't promise anything." You can always check the status of the project here at James's Blog http://www.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=5772603
i was offering that much (up to 100e) alone please read carefully what i write... i was thinking of a donation in sega xtreme style and concerning my options: 1) i'll wait 2) do you know japanese? i don't... also many games are already hacked and just waiting for text translation and re-insertion (at least on the snes part; can't talk about other machines...) by the way, kammedo, i was attempting a FFT translation to italian 4-5 years ago go up to the 2nd chapter before screwing something royally and giving up.... lots of translator here around uh?
I think I heard something about that..I even got contacted by someone else who was intrested in translating AN (Arabian Nights) into italian! Fan translations are a great hobby, but truly time-consuming indeed . You have to take into account to screw up everything once in a while - this is why you should use some kind of progress / source manager (for example CVS), they help alot . Wait, did you translate it from english to german or japanese to german? Very nice gems you putted in there, really! On Arabian Nights, I had to redo lots of font routines because of the way the game is coded - really shitty. I am currently working on another Pandora game (Traverse:Starlight & Prairie), and its predecessor (Soul & Sword)..which look more intrestingly coded up to now.. Lucky you..my japanese sucks, point. So i have no other choice than asking someone else..
I attempted game translating before (though in my case it was translating Sonic Adventure from English to Polish), and I eventually became bored of it. I much more prefer the hacking part rather than the translating part. I hate boring stuff =P I really admire people who can spend a lot of their time, sometimes years, to fully translate a game. If someone would ever approach me with will to translate something, but lacked the hacking abilities, I don't think I could say no, though
i prefer the opposite i can be fast, accurate, in translating and "localizing" but i just hate hacking and text expansion/insertion etc etc
