Xanadu II Translation Development Blog

[elmer]

Atlas ? Is that that translation software used by professionals in the industry ? I had a translator once for Falcom's Zwei! PC game from Finland or Sweden (forget) who used that.

NO, it is most-definitely NOT a professional-level solution. 

It's a hacking scene tool that lets you insert stuff into a file image (i.e. a ROM or an ISO).

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/224/

Even on romhacking.net's download page it says "Level: Beginner".

I'm sure that people can get it to do some reasonably decent results if the game's text is stored simply enough, and you're willing to put up with the ugly syntax.

Whenever I've done translations (i.e. lots of EFIGS, and some Japanese), both the publishers and the translation companies were happiest with Excel files.

Then it's up to the developer to get the translated text out of the excel file and into their game source/data ... preferably in some automated fashion.

[NightWolve]

NO, it is most-definitely NOT a professional-level solution. 

It's a hacking scene tool that lets you insert stuff into a file image (i.e. a ROM or an ISO).

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/224/

Ah, I see. It's a just generic command-line app to insert text back into the game.

EDIT: Just to check that my memory isn't fading, this must be what that translator would use for his translation business:

https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/software/packaged-software/translation/atlas/

He talked about an interesting feature it has, this "translation memory" which he said helped him a lot. And I found his website again:

http://www.loekalization.com/

That's right, he was from the Netherlands! And his tag, lol, "Don't localize. Loekalize."

Kinda interesting, one can get an idea of what professional translators charge videogame companies for things like manual translations. He once wanted to license "Legend of Heroes VI: First Chapter" from Falcom way before those bozos at X.X.XSEED Games came along, even had saki with somebody from Falcom on his visit to Japan, but the deal fell through even though it got as far as Falcom giving him hundreds of script files to get started on it.

Whenever I've done translations (i.e. lots of EFIGS, and some Japanese), both the publishers and the translation companies were happiest with Excel files.

Then it's up to the developer to get the translated text out of the excel file and into their game source/data ... preferably in some automated fashion.

Yeah, the "primitive" way to do it (I've seen Falcom's EXCEL files from X.X.XSEED), or just straight text files... I always wanted to provide something better when I got started that would put my name on the map, but it's a lot of work/planning for something extensible, universal, etc... It would still wind up being a hackish solution even though I thought I was better than that... :/ I would just tell myself at the end, well, I produced an English patch with everybody involved at least, I still got the job done for whatever project (most cases)...

[elmer]

Whenever I've done translations (i.e. lots of EFIGS, and some Japanese), both the publishers and the translation companies were happiest with Excel files.

Then it's up to the developer to get the translated text out of the excel file and into their game source/data ... preferably in some automated fashion.

Yeah, the "primitive" way to do it (I've seen Falcom's EXCEL files from X.X.XSEED), or just straight text files... I always wanted to provide something better when I got started that would put my name on the map, but it's a lot of work/planning for something extensible, universal, etc... It would still wind up being a hackish solution even though I thought I was better than that... :/ I would just tell myself at the end, well, I produced an English patch with everybody involved at least, I still got the job done for whatever project (most cases)...

Excel (or any spreadsheet) isn't that bad a tool to use if you're willing to do some work on producing tools to surround it.

Producers and translators generally don't want to deal with game-code, or with trying to find strings in the middle script files that keep on changing.

Post-mortem fan translations are a very different beast to still-in-development, got-to-simultaneously-ship-in-5-or-more-languages translations.

It's easy to import/export an Excel spreadsheet into a text format (I used it's HTML import/export capability), and once you've got the ability to read/process/re-generate a translation spreadsheet at any time, then you can put it under source-control, and have it automagically color-code and put any "changed" text strings at the top of the file so that you're not wasting the translator's time.

As you've already found ... it's easy to "tag" and process text strings just by using CRC32 values, and it's easy to parse C source files (or LUA, or whatever script language you use) to export/import text strings into your game's desired format.

[elmer]

Sometimes you spend ages writing something, and the end result is so-darned-subtle that you can hardly notice where all the effort went! 


Xanadu 2 text without drop-shadow:




Xanadu 2 text with drop-shadow:




The drop-shadow can be made more obvious by putting it in a darker color, but since Falcom never planned for one in the game ... there isn't a consistent palette entry available that works.

Perhaps it's for the best that it doesn't scream-out its presence ... I'd have felt bad if it looked out-of-place.

As it is ... it just makes things just-that-tiny-little-bit more readable.

EDIT:

I just couldn't leave it alone! Here's another version with a slight improvement ...

[elmer]

OTOH, the drop-shadow really does help the text in Xanadu 2's Weapon Shops, particularly when using a condensed font for the item descriptions.

Hopefully everyone will like how this looks!


Xanadu 2 Weapon Shop with drop-shadow and condensed font ...

[Black Tiger]

The drop shadow is definitely necessary and works great.

[geise]

It really does look better.  You have no idea how much I appreciate the work you and everyone are putting in.

[dejan07]

I can notice the slight differences in fonts you showed us!

[esteban]

I think the font should be translucent + no drop shadow. Thank you.

[NightWolve]

It's easy to import/export an Excel spreadsheet into a text format (I used it's HTML import/export capability), and once you've got the ability to read/process/re-generate a translation spreadsheet at any time, then you can put it under source-control, and have it automagically color-code and put any "changed" text strings at the top of the file so that you're not wasting the translator's time.

Oh, that's pretty useful, color-coding changed/updated strings, I didn't know about. I used to be pretty good with Corel's spreadsheet app in their WordPerfect suite, till Microsoft took things over. But you gotta hand it to MS, the idea of VBA/Visual Basic for Applications integration with Word, Excel, Access, etc. is very powerful. Comes in handy very much.

[elmer]

I think the font should be translucent + no drop shadow. Thank you.

Now that's out-of-the-box thinking for you! 

Oh, that's pretty useful, color-coding changed/updated strings, I didn't know about. I used to be pretty good with Corel's spreadsheet app in their WordPerfect suite, till Microsoft took things over. But you gotta hand it to MS, the idea of VBA/Visual Basic for Applications integration with Word, Excel, Access, etc. is very powerful. Comes in handy very much.

You can do some pretty-darned-amazing stuff with VBScript, I've definitely been impressed with what Microsoft created there.

I'm much-less impressed with their current efforts to shoe-horn megabytes of .NET runtime into everything. 

[elmer]

SamIAm has found that Xanadu 2's English font can be a bit difficult to read on a TV because the background pattern is a bit too bright.

So I tracked-down where Falcom are storing their palettes, and did a bit tweaking. That also let me make sure that the drop-shadow is drawn in the darkest background color.

What do folks think?


Xanadu 2 Message Box - Normal




Xanadu 2 Message Box - High Contrast




Xanadu 2 Pause Menu - Normal




Xanadu 2 Pause Menu - High Contrast

[Necromancer]

The text definitely pops out more, but I can't say the original is that hard to read.

[esteban]

I like the high-contrast versions, especially because I'll be playing on an old CRT.

[Gredler]

I really like the changes, it makes it much easier on my eyes