How is text done in ps2 games? Translations

hi everyone,
I’m in Japan atm and buying lots of games..

I’ve picked up some ps2 and ps1 games which don’t have an English version.
How would I go about extracting the text and replacing it with English?
By text I mean the in game stuff (mostly rpgs)

Thanks

 

It depends how the strings are stored. Some games are packed which you might be able to find a unpacker for the archives. Otherwise you'll have to reverse engineer the files to decrypt. Also sometimes text strings are encrypted in some way.

You'll also need to find a way to encrypt the files back to how the game reads them.

Sometimes alternatively you can hex edit files and sometimes text are in plain view.

 

Pretty much what @HEX1GON said, if your very lucky you will find the unencrypted text strings in one of the files, you can then edit these with a hex editor and change them to whatever you want.

If your unlucky then the strings will be encrypted in various files across the disc, you will need to unpack/decrypt these files, extract the text, make your changes then repack/encrypt the files and then rebuild the ISO.

You may find some tools around the web to help you with the unpacking/decryption and getting them back together again

Good luck

 

Hmm maybe I should just stab a hole in a google cardboard and use the live translate app hahahahahaha