:world of insanity

During al|together 2006, I had the honor of serving in a mentorship role to five different translators, all of whom are affiliated in one way or another to my amateur visual novel localization circle, insani. Each translator came to me from a different walk of life — there was not a single common factor to be found among any of them save for the fact that they were attempting, in one way or another, to translate a piece to be presented at festival’s end.

In the next few days, some of them may be presenting their debriefings for their individual projects on our development journal; indeed, Edward has started us off strong with his very insightful analysis of what happened over the course of his project. I will be attempting to do something very similar in this five-part series of Mentor’s Debriefings, but with a somewhat different focus. As Edward has led us off quite well, I have chosen to start with his project first. (more…)

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During the al|together 2006 game translation festival, I tackled the short visual novel “Mukou no Yume”, retitled “Visions from the Other Side”. This was my second excursion as a game translator, after last year’s “The Poor Little Bird”, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of attempting it without having gp32 around to sanity-check my work.

During the month of the festival, I kept a brief log of my progress, so I thought this might be interesting to post, to show what goes on behind the scenes of the game translation process. As well, it’s worth discussing some of the lessons learned from all this. (more…)

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Game data archives almost always employ some type of compression for their contents, and sometimes will even mix and match different algorithms for different types of files. Understanding the typical compression formats is therefore crucial to the success of a game hacker.

Moreover, you need to be able to recognize the common algorithms just from their compressed data alone, so when you’re staring at hex dumps, you will know how to proceed. In today’s installment, we’ll go through some of the most popular formats, how they work, and how you can recognize them “in the wild”. (more…)

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In the last installment, we analyzed the Cross+Channel archive format with our trusty hex editor, and after a proof-of-concept manual image extraction, we believe we know what’s going on in that file. But of course there’s only one way to be sure: build some tools, and try to modify the game!

So today we’re going to run through some quick code prototyping to create some suitable tools for dealing with the archives. My intention is to make this as simple and straightforward as possible, so if you come out of this installment saying, “You mean that’s all I have to write to hack a game?!” then… mission accomplished. (more…)

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Dear X,

Greetings in haste. I was surprised to see how quickly you responded to my last letter, and I was gratified to see that you were putting many, many thoughts on paper. This is wonderful — you are beginning to develop, no doubt, a sense of your place as a translator, and by some of the often-pointed questions you ask I see that you are beginning to come to your own conclusions about the validity of what you are doing and saying — and also what I am doing and saying. Since you have asked these questions of me, though, let us spend some time talking about the issues they raise. (more…)

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Dear X,

It has been some time since our last correspondence, and I hope this letter finds you well. You say that you have spent a good deal of time reading through the piece that you hope to translate, and for this I applaud you. All the time you spend in this lonely task, straining to see and hear all that which is most unseeable and unhearable about a piece, will prove its own reward. For there is no art save that which is found in solitude, no goodness in translation save that which you find in yourself. I know you will smile at this, and say to yourself, knowingly, condescendingly, that there is a target audience, and that translations are made for the purpose of being read.

In a sense, you are right. (more…)

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Let’s get started, then. Today we’ll be looking at a simple example archive format, as a springboard to talk about the “standard” parts of a game data file. Keeping this sort of template in mind as you gaze at an unknown format will be a great help to try to make sense of the random-looking bytes you run across.

The game we’ll be looking at for the moment is Cross+Channel (the trial edition download link is at the bottom of that page), which has a translation project already in progress. So, grab a copy if you like, and let’s take a look. (more…)

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“I want to translate games, but I don’t know any Japanese.” If I had a byte for every time I’ve heard that, I could replace my hard drive…

Fortunately, there is another path than that of the translator — a skill-set completely different from juggling kanji and wondering where all the pronouns went. And yet, the job is equally valuable, for how can a translator translate without the script that you provide, and how can a graphic-editor edit without the images that you extract, and how can a player play without the very game that you put back together for him?

So, the question becomes, do you want to be a hacker? (more…)

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Dear X,

In your last missive to me, you spoke of getting together with a few of your friends and starting a group to translate a visual novel or two. I was glad to hear it; I have found translation to be an enjoyable, challenging, and fulfilling hobby, and I am always excited to see new blood coming in to fill the ranks. I thought, then, that I should give you some encouragement, some tips and tricks of the trade that you might find yourself wanting in the near future. These are lessons that I have had to learn — mainly the hard way — and I hope that you do not end up making some of the mistakes that I have made in the past.

But we get ahead of ourselves. Let us begin at the beginning. (more…)

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