... This reminds me of the "retranslation" efforts on SNES games, where literal interpretations are used without concern for flavor or "localization," an essential skill in bringing something across language barriers while maintaining readability and intent. While the Activision translation is full of inaccuracies, it also has a lot of character and more accurately preserves the intent of most of the dialogue changed here, and those lines rife with glaring inaccuracies could have been corrected in far less awkward ways.
For example, "... Seems you know this prosthetic very well," being translated to "Seems you are very familiar with killing," both removes the observational hesitation present in the Activision translation (Wolf is quietly assessing the Sculptor) and unnecessarily makes it that much more awkward. Wolf is perceiving that the Sculptor is more than he appears, and acknowledging that he's overly familiar with the shinobi prosthetic, a tool for killing. Had it been a sword rather than a prosthetic, "Seems you are very familiar with killing," would be just as awkward, when the intent (and natural response) would be closer to, "... This was your sword, then?"
That the Sculptor is familiar with killing, and a retired shinobi, becomes apparent rather quickly, and the Activision line has Wolf inferring what is only natural to infer, that the prosthetic once belonged to the sculptor, and if so, he must have been a shinobi, and if so, he must be familiar with killing. How else would he have been familiar with its use, installation, or maintenance? By using the damn thing. It's not exactly a common piece of equipment.
Anyhow, this comment is well-meaning, in spite of my potentially inflammatory tone. What I'm saying is, "Get yourself a writer." If you can't, read your translated lines aloud, consider their context, consider the tone and personality of those speaking them, and consider the intent of the original line, rather than its literal meaning.
Okay, I'm going to f*#@ off now. Good luck and godspeed, if you even care.
Trust me I would love to have a good writer since English is not even my first language, and even so I never stated these translations are 'better' than the official one.
In all honesty I'm not even accustomed to modding, I just wanted another reason to replay this awesome game myself and when I found out about mistranslations and such I decided to spend some of my time doing something of my own, since the other translation mod didn't change much at all. This was intended for my personal use only but then I said 'why not?' and decided to share it, knowing most people wouldnt even care about a translation mod lol.
I know it must be kinda cringe reading lines that dont even flow that well and lack character, but Im sorry I tried my best. That said I didnt follow blindly the translations of the spreadsheet. For example, I changed the line you mentioned slightly differently: instead of "Seems you know this prosthetic very well" I went for what I thought was a middle ground between the original and adding a bit more information with "Seems you know the purpose of this prosthetic very well", to imply the sculptor knew it was a tool for killing.
I take no offense with your post, but I know some mods can come off as a critique to a game's element like 'hey check this out I fixed the awful job done by the dev team, they should hire me instead', but I assure you it wasnt my intent. Maybe I should have changed the mod description without using the word 'fix', instead opting for 'change', maybe I'll do that later idk.
Btw I dont know if im going to change or add something more, if I do I'll probably keep it for myself. Anyway, I take your criticism at heart, thanks! :3
Been using this on my recent run, and it's very good so far. I've only just beat Genichiro. Still, there are some corrections and alterations that I think could be done:
->There are a couple instances where there are non-elipses double periods. Nothing a ctrl-F can't fix. I should have screencapped them when they showed up, will try to remember to do so. ->The dialogue in the item box for picking up a Divine Grass cuts off at "Divine". ->There are two instances where I believe the word "oni" could be adequately used: First is the tapestry dialogue explaining how to do the Lightning Reversal- in the dojo, right under where you fight Genichiro and Owl, and behind that one quickdraw miniboss. In it, it explains that ghosts used to run around the land. I've seen "ghost" be used as a translation of oni, and given that the tapestry refers to the Fountainhead warriors and not any yokai, I think that works. Second, during the Dragonspring Sake drinking convo with Ema, she specifically says oni, but it's translated as demon. ->I believe that Monkey Booze can be safely renamed to "Saruzake". I find it weird that there are three other sake items with "sake" in their name, and yet there's this very English name for another one. It's ill-fitting stylistically- if that's monkey booze, the others should be named "rice wine" instead of sake. There's a drink called amazake in Japan, and the characters in the game refer to the item as saruzake.
I've been interested in playing the game again so that I could use mods like this for a while. I finally got around to it recently and have some suggestions.
The new text on Divine Grass should say "However, after the Divine Dragon..."
This one is from the base game as far as I can tell, but since you're editing the subtitles already you may as well fix this typo from the Divine Child after you give rice to Kuro. "Hey may be the Divine Heir..."
I started playing again, I didn't notice you had a second update until just now, so I don't know if these are different or not, but a few things I noticed in 1.1:
If you talk to the priest in the Senpou Temple Main Hall before talking to Genichiro, his initial line reads something like, "She must be lonely... Staying in that room by herself... she must be so lonely..." I don't remember if that was the exact words in the subtitle, but the words were fine. The issue is the second phrase was capitalized and I don't think that's grammatically correct, as it's all the same sentence.
Ema still has the odd (!) when she tells Wolf she means him no harm after defeating Genichiro (she's speaking too calmly to warrant it.)
I saw you changed Genichiro's "??... ??..". to "Yes... Yes...", but I think the original translation of "Yes... Indeed..." was already correct and it reads better. My understanding is that it's an emphatic affirmative in Japanese, which the original translation conveyed.
If you send Kotaro to the Halls of Illusion, when Wolf greets him the subtitle has him call him "Kotaro" but that's clearly not what's he saying. I don't know what he's actually saying, but it wasn't "Kotaro". I think it might just be a Japanese equivalent of "Hey" but I don't know. Something to look into.
On a positive note, I really liked what you did with the prefix for the Lone Shadows. Making it "Lone Shadows - [name]" like it already is with "Seven Ashina Spears - [name]" helps convey that Lone Shadows are a group while keeping it legible. Well done!
Very nice mod. For the most part I like what you've changed. There's a few things like changing Chained Ogre to Red Ogre and Shichimen Warrior to Seven Faced Warrior that I feel makes no real difference overall, but it's still good work. I just downloaded the updated version so I'm curious to see what's new.
Edit: I noticed that the Guardian Ape boss is now Lion Monkey which is better IMO, but the when you take the finger back to Sculptor afterwards the convo will still refer to it as Guardian Ape. Still a great mod. :)
Nice mod, thank you for putting in the effort to make it! Couple of comments: The Memory and Remnant for Phantom Butterfly still both describe her as "The Phantom Lady Butterfly", that should be changed to just "The Phantom Butterfly" or "Lady Phantom Butterfly", since "Phantom Butterfly" is her proper name so you can't put "Lady" in the middle of it. Additionally, the translation of Shishizaru is "Lion Monkey" not "Lion Ape", and indeed he seems to be based off the Japanese Macaque, which is a monkey not an ape.
Also how did you edit the item.msgbnd.dcx and menu.msgbnd.dcx? I use Yapped to lightly mod my game, but it doesn't seem to work for those files.
Thank you for letting me know, I'll update the mod as soon as I find out more things to edit, since I'm playing the game right now and still finding more smaller inconsistencies I want to fix. Btw I used Yabber to unpack item.msgbnd.dcx and menu.msgbnd.dcx, after that you also need to unpack the various fmg files inside of them to make them editable. After that you repack everything and you're done. Hope that was clear enough :>
Ah you need to unpack the files with Yabber, okay thank you! One other thing I discovered: In that spreasheet you are using as a reference, it says that when you first encounter Junzaemon, the correct translation is that he apologizes rather than saying you have bad manners, but having just gone through that part, it still has the original translation.
Here's a few others from the spreadsheet which I noticed remain unchanged: When you present the Healing Gourd to Ema, Wolf still asks if it can be improved instead of what does she mean by helping him as a doctor. The unnecessary (!) when Ema tells Wolf she means him no harm after defeating Genichiro is still there. The Basket Man in Mibu village still asks if Wolf is honourable rather than asking if he's sane.
Additionally, I have some notes on the spreadsheet's change suggestions. I think you haven't changed Genichiro's "Yes... indeed" after he is first defeated and you should probably leave it as is, because I think the guy who made the spreadsheet got that one wrong. Genichiro isn't speaking clearly because he's in pain, but he is definitely speaking not just moaning. Additionally I didn't get to talk to the priest guy in the Senpou Temple in my current run, but his dialogue, I think the best translation would be: "She must be lonely... staying in that room by herself... she must be so lonely..." and "It's my fault... The child, she's confined herself within the Inner Sanctum." The use of "holed up" suggested by the author sounds kind of awkward.
The Lone Shadow Longswordsman and Masanaga the Spear-Bearer, their epithets in Japanese are ??? and ??. You have translated this as "Longswordfoot" and "Spearfoot". I think a better translation is "Sword Leg" and "Spear Leg", or alternatively "Sword Kick" and "Spear Kick". It's less literal but it gets the intended meaning across better, since it's supposed to convey that their kicks are like weapons, which in English is best conveyed by referring to the leg rather than the foot. So they should be Lone Shadow Sword Leg (or Sword Kick) and Masanaga the Spear Leg (or Spear Kick), because using foot just sounds odd in English.
These are fine suggestions, thank you again. Unfortunately im not an english native speaker so I'm sorry if some things came out sounding awkward lol. I think I have enough changes to update the mod, expect an update soon! And let me know if you find some other issues :>
23 comments
For example, "... Seems you know this prosthetic very well," being translated to "Seems you are very familiar with killing," both removes the observational hesitation present in the Activision translation (Wolf is quietly assessing the Sculptor) and unnecessarily makes it that much more awkward. Wolf is perceiving that the Sculptor is more than he appears, and acknowledging that he's overly familiar with the shinobi prosthetic, a tool for killing. Had it been a sword rather than a prosthetic, "Seems you are very familiar with killing," would be just as awkward, when the intent (and natural response) would be closer to, "... This was your sword, then?"
That the Sculptor is familiar with killing, and a retired shinobi, becomes apparent rather quickly, and the Activision line has Wolf inferring what is only natural to infer, that the prosthetic once belonged to the sculptor, and if so, he must have been a shinobi, and if so, he must be familiar with killing. How else would he have been familiar with its use, installation, or maintenance? By using the damn thing. It's not exactly a common piece of equipment.
Anyhow, this comment is well-meaning, in spite of my potentially inflammatory tone. What I'm saying is, "Get yourself a writer." If you can't, read your translated lines aloud, consider their context, consider the tone and personality of those speaking them, and consider the intent of the original line, rather than its literal meaning.
Okay, I'm going to f*#@ off now. Good luck and godspeed, if you even care.
In all honesty I'm not even accustomed to modding, I just wanted another reason to replay this awesome game myself and when I found out about mistranslations and such I decided to spend some of my time doing something of my own, since the other translation mod didn't change much at all. This was intended for my personal use only but then I said 'why not?' and decided to share it, knowing most people wouldnt even care about a translation mod lol.
I know it must be kinda cringe reading lines that dont even flow that well and lack character, but Im sorry I tried my best.
That said I didnt follow blindly the translations of the spreadsheet. For example, I changed the line you mentioned slightly differently: instead of "Seems you know this prosthetic very well" I went for what I thought was a middle ground between the original and adding a bit more information with "Seems you know the purpose of this prosthetic very well", to imply the sculptor knew it was a tool for killing.
I take no offense with your post, but I know some mods can come off as a critique to a game's element like 'hey check this out I fixed the awful job done by the dev team, they should hire me instead', but I assure you it wasnt my intent. Maybe I should have changed the mod description without using the word 'fix', instead opting for 'change', maybe I'll do that later idk.
Btw I dont know if im going to change or add something more, if I do I'll probably keep it for myself. Anyway, I take your criticism at heart, thanks! :3
->There are a couple instances where there are non-elipses double periods. Nothing a ctrl-F can't fix. I should have screencapped them when they showed up, will try to remember to do so.
->The dialogue in the item box for picking up a Divine Grass cuts off at "Divine".
->There are two instances where I believe the word "oni" could be adequately used:
First is the tapestry dialogue explaining how to do the Lightning Reversal- in the dojo, right under where you fight Genichiro and Owl, and behind that one quickdraw miniboss. In it, it explains that ghosts used to run around the land. I've seen "ghost" be used as a translation of oni, and given that the tapestry refers to the Fountainhead warriors and not any yokai, I think that works.
Second, during the Dragonspring Sake drinking convo with Ema, she specifically says oni, but it's translated as demon.
->I believe that Monkey Booze can be safely renamed to "Saruzake". I find it weird that there are three other sake items with "sake" in their name, and yet there's this very English name for another one. It's ill-fitting stylistically- if that's monkey booze, the others should be named "rice wine" instead of sake. There's a drink called amazake in Japan, and the characters in the game refer to the item as saruzake.
Both are in NTC_????????.fmg (the fourth file) inside menu.msgbnd.dcx
Great mod btw
just updated the mod, thank you for letting me know :>
The new text on Divine Grass should say "However, after the Divine Dragon..."
This one is from the base game as far as I can tell, but since you're editing the subtitles already you may as well fix this typo from the Divine Child after you give rice to Kuro. "Hey may be the Divine Heir..."
If you talk to the priest in the Senpou Temple Main Hall before talking to Genichiro, his initial line reads something like, "She must be lonely... Staying in that room by herself... she must be so lonely..." I don't remember if that was the exact words in the subtitle, but the words were fine. The issue is the second phrase was capitalized and I don't think that's grammatically correct, as it's all the same sentence.
Ema still has the odd (!) when she tells Wolf she means him no harm after defeating Genichiro (she's speaking too calmly to warrant it.)
I saw you changed Genichiro's "??... ??..". to "Yes... Yes...", but I think the original translation of "Yes... Indeed..." was already correct and it reads better. My understanding is that it's an emphatic affirmative in Japanese, which the original translation conveyed.
If you send Kotaro to the Halls of Illusion, when Wolf greets him the subtitle has him call him "Kotaro" but that's clearly not what's he saying. I don't know what he's actually saying, but it wasn't "Kotaro". I think it might just be a Japanese equivalent of "Hey" but I don't know. Something to look into.
On a positive note, I really liked what you did with the prefix for the Lone Shadows. Making it "Lone Shadows - [name]" like it already is with "Seven Ashina Spears - [name]" helps convey that Lone Shadows are a group while keeping it legible. Well done!
Edit: I noticed that the Guardian Ape boss is now Lion Monkey which is better IMO, but the when you take the finger back to Sculptor afterwards the convo will still refer to it as Guardian Ape. Still a great mod. :)
Also how did you edit the item.msgbnd.dcx and menu.msgbnd.dcx? I use Yapped to lightly mod my game, but it doesn't seem to work for those files.
Btw I used Yabber to unpack item.msgbnd.dcx and menu.msgbnd.dcx, after that you also need to unpack the various fmg files inside of them to make them editable. After that you repack everything and you're done. Hope that was clear enough :>
Additionally, I have some notes on the spreadsheet's change suggestions. I think you haven't changed Genichiro's "Yes... indeed" after he is first defeated and you should probably leave it as is, because I think the guy who made the spreadsheet got that one wrong. Genichiro isn't speaking clearly because he's in pain, but he is definitely speaking not just moaning. Additionally I didn't get to talk to the priest guy in the Senpou Temple in my current run, but his dialogue, I think the best translation would be: "She must be lonely... staying in that room by herself... she must be so lonely..." and "It's my fault... The child, she's confined herself within the Inner Sanctum." The use of "holed up" suggested by the author sounds kind of awkward.
The Lone Shadow Longswordsman and Masanaga the Spear-Bearer, their epithets in Japanese are ??? and ??. You have translated this as "Longswordfoot" and "Spearfoot". I think a better translation is "Sword Leg" and "Spear Leg", or alternatively "Sword Kick" and "Spear Kick". It's less literal but it gets the intended meaning across better, since it's supposed to convey that their kicks are like weapons, which in English is best conveyed by referring to the leg rather than the foot. So they should be Lone Shadow Sword Leg (or Sword Kick) and Masanaga the Spear Leg (or Spear Kick), because using foot just sounds odd in English.