Steam Hearts translation, anyone?

[SamIAm]

This is not exactly a final draft, but it is complete, and I think it's ready to share.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32377930/SteamyEnglish.rtf

I translated this mostly by listening to an audio rip of this youtube video:

Watching the video while reading the script will give you a good idea about the story, and hopefully will be entertaining, too.

If anyone is serious about doing a dub, then the next step is to measure the timing of each line and adjust the translation to come closer to each one. A few of the English lines are definitely short or long by too much to be useable, however, I don't want to make any adjustments until I know exact timings. Also, it would be good to add more direction comments so that the voice actors know how to approach each line.

I think that my time is best spent turning Japanese into English for other projects, so I won't be measuring each line myself. If any of you are interested, it's quite easy to do if you just open up the audio tracks in Audacity and highlight the specific part of the waveform you want to measure. The timings you record should include 10ths of seconds, or else they won't be accurate enough. You could stick the timing at the end of each line, like this:

BLOW
Fara, if we don't do this, Westina will be destroyed. [3.6]

If someone does this for the whole script, and also expresses interest in helping to recruit voice actors and mix a new dub, then I'll come back to edit and help out however I can.

[Trenton_net]

+1 for any kind of Translation work. I just wish someone would do Dead of the Brain or Snatcher. But that's just me. (^_^);

[Necromancer]

"Sierra, calm down! This is how I'm going to cure you!

Sorry for taking off your clothes, but I have to or I can't inject the antibodies.  Forgive me."

Yep, it's awesome.  Now we just need some talented peeps to dub this goofy stuff. 

[esteban]

I'll dub this. I can do sultry sexy feminine voices.

Of course, I probably shouldn't do *all* the parts.

But I will, if you bastards don't help out.

[GohanX]

I'm not much of a voice actor, but I can help coach any female voice actresses that may need some inspiration.

No, not you esteban.

[esteban]

I'm not much of a voice actor, but I can help coach any female voice actresses that may need some inspiration.

No, not you esteban.

Dammit.

Don't you have a TurboStick to raffle off?

[SamIAm]

I mentioned in the other thread that getting female voice actors is a challenge in general, and that this particular project would be all the tougher because of the embarrassing subject matter. However, if you look at the whole script, you'll see that it actually isn't so bad. Fara/Falla has a few naughty lines, but for the rest of them, the only embarrassing part is that they would have to fake an orgasm into a microphone.

Oh, and I just noticed this morning that if you leave the game at the title screen for long enough, it will play a second voiced introduction that sets the story. I'll translate that soon.

If any of you are interested, the Saturn and the PCE versions seem to use the exact same recordings. The Saturn version swaps the voiced intros for an FMV, but I think that's it on the story side. On the game side, apart from noisy sound effects and slowdown, the Saturn version is substantially better, IMO. If a dub gets made, I would like to make a release for both systems.

Finally, the PC-98 original came on floppies and had no voices. It also has a substantially different script...and waaaaay filthier cutscenes. Somehow, most or all of it exists on youtube. I'd check in more detail, but I'm at work now...


Anyway, I think I'm going to aim for stuff like Shubibinman 3 now. Spending too many hours on games like Steam Hearts makes me start to question what I'm doing with my life. But hey, at least the music is actually pretty good, especially in the CD versions.

[geise]

Haha thanks for the translation.  I actually happen to love the pc-98 music, especially in MIDI.  This is way off topic but what is going on with the Princess Crown translation?

[Arjak]

As a perverted amateur game voice actor with no shame, I would be proud to audition for a role in a potential translation of this game!