Author Topic: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread  (Read 18549 times)

seieienbu

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #120 on: January 24, 2016, 06:31:06 PM »
Out of curiosity, how accurate is everything by the time you actually run through a play edit?  Do you still find errors or by that time is it close to the way you want it in the final version?
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SamIAm

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #121 on: January 24, 2016, 07:34:48 PM »
If "how accurate" means "how many straight-up mistakes are there", then there aren't very many of those. Typos and formatting issues affect maybe 1 in 20 text boxes. Contextual mistranslations only happen once or twice a chapter.

Have you ever looked at the script of a movie you really like? You know how the plain text on a plain white page can come across in a very different way than the real lines in the movie? The same thing happens in reverse. There are all kinds of things that look good enough when they're in a text file, but are a bit out-of-wack when they're playing out on the screen. Most of what I do during play-testing is just re-wording things to make them sound more natural and flow a bit better. That's kind of vague, I know, but if you want to know more of the nitty-gritty, that will have to wait for another day when I can dig up some examples.

In addition, there's the simple fact that most things benefit from editing and revision. Translation is not an exact science, that's for sure. You write something, you come back to it a week later and think you should change this, that, and the other thing. The best way to judge how well a translation is working for something like this is to see it happening in the game itself.

When I do the "proofreading" after I get a chapter to 100%, I'm really just scanning for typos, missed spots, inconsistencies, and anything else that's easy to fix.

elmer

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #122 on: January 25, 2016, 03:27:32 AM »
In addition, there's the simple fact that most things benefit from editing and revision. Translation is not an exact science, that's for sure. You write something, you come back to it a week later and think you should change this, that, and the other thing. The best way to judge how well a translation is working for something like this is to see it happening in the game itself.

Even after the years of work that SamIAm had put into Zeroigar before I started working on it, we still went through many, many playthroughs in order to get the translation "sounding" as good as we could when you see it on the screen ... and by "we", I really mean 99.5% SamIAm.

We were changing single words right up until the day before the release.

It was a lot of work, but (IMHO) the attention to detail really shows when you are reading the text on the screen, and nothing sounds "off".

When he says "I finished my first test-play-edit of Chapter 2 and started Chapter 3.", I fully expect that he'll end up wanting to do a lot more passes after all the levels are translated and everything has had its "first-pass".  :wink:

SamIAm

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #123 on: January 25, 2016, 01:35:34 PM »
Here goes nothing. Behold, a preview of the Xanadu translation:


Background: the game starts with a 10-minute cutscene, which you can watch here (in Japanese).

In it, the audience learns that Arios (yes, that's how we're going to spell it), is the descendent of a great hero and has quickly climbed to a high-ranking position in the Imperial Army of Ishtaria. His lineage, however, is not widely known.

Arios's superiors send him to the distant frontier to fight monster hordes with little support. He's accompanied by his friend, a great warrior and general named Daimos; however, they find themselves on the losing side of a huge battle with the monsters. Daimos tells Arios to get himself to safety and dives back into the fighting. Suddenly, Arios is knocked out by a mysterious purple-haired man.

He awakes aboard a ship. The mysterious man explains to him that he cannot say who he is or why he is doing what he is doing, but that Arios has an important destiny. Arios is dropped off on an island and told simply to wait. This is where the video begins.

---------------

I made this an unlisted video, and I might delete it in a few days. Please do not share the link outside this forum. I wanted to show this to you guys because PCEFX is like my home-base, and I think it would be fun. However, it's not ready to share with the whole world yet.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2016, 12:04:54 AM by SamIAm »

johnnykonami

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #124 on: January 25, 2016, 01:41:38 PM »
Bad ass!  Nicely done, Sam!

ginoscope

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #125 on: January 25, 2016, 02:35:00 PM »
Thanks for sharing the video and great job on the translation.

 It looks really good so far.

SamIAm

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #126 on: January 25, 2016, 11:59:31 PM »
Thanks, guys!

Elmer's hacking work looks really nice, doesn't it? ;)

Also, I wrote "you're inventory" and didn't capitalize "Sister" in one instance when I should have.  ](*,)

The contents of a few of the lines themselves are probably going to be different by the end (a couple in particular bug me already), but this is fairly close to done. Once I get through that first play-test of Chapter 3, I might go back and give the Prologue here another pass.

« Last Edit: January 26, 2016, 12:04:16 AM by SamIAm »

esteban

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Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #127 on: January 26, 2016, 12:13:22 AM »
Utterly.
Fantastique.

:)
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incrediblehark

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #128 on: January 26, 2016, 12:52:23 AM »
I can't begin to express how excited I am to be able to one day play this in English! Back when we were doing playthroughs here, I had a lot of fun even though I didn't know what to do. Did a ton of backtracking, picking out bits of kana in the text and finding other matching words in dialogue to stumble my way through, and I only got through the 1st Chapter. Someone on here finished the game (was it you esteban?) but as good as it was, its going to be infinitely more enjoyable for me translated.

The work you've put in looks amazing, and the final product will definitely show the dedication given to this title. Its painful to think that certain text in the game I would have viewed in Japanese because I had no idea what was going on, but because I will be playing in English will inadvertently skip entire sections of text that was translated just because I won't have to backtrack as much.

jtucci31

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #129 on: January 26, 2016, 06:57:16 AM »
Ah it looks SOOO much better when it's actually in action! I'm so excited for this I can't wait!! :mrgreen:

Keranu

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #130 on: January 26, 2016, 06:36:33 PM »
It was hardly imaginable to have thought a Legend of Xanadu translation could've been possible ten years ago. The dream has come true!
Quote from: Bonknuts
Adding PCE console specific layer on top of that, makes for an interesting challenge (no, not a reference to Ys II).

SamIAm

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #131 on: January 27, 2016, 12:47:38 PM »
Thanks for the positive feedback, guys. It really helps. :)

Chapter 7's proofreading is finished. The "hump" is officially passed.  :dance:

Chapter 8 is average-sized and slightly smaller than any chapter I've done since Chapter 4. Chapter 9 is smaller still. Then, Chapter 10 is literally half the size of a normal chapter, and Chapter 11 is so tiny, I knocked it out in one short session a couple of weeks ago. We're getting really close now.

I'm still play-testing Chapter 3. These things really just take time. The triggering of events in the game makes you talk to Guy A, talk to Guy B, then talk to Guy C in order to proceed. However, if you talk to Guy B before you talk to Guy A, he'll say something different when you come to talk to him after you talk to Guy A. I need to test all of that, and this is just the kind of area where contextual mistakes tend to happen.

When things get fixed up, though, they look pretty good. I'll still need another pass or two, but we'll be chasing smaller and smaller problems each time.

elmer

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #132 on: January 27, 2016, 02:02:22 PM »
I'm still play-testing Chapter 3. These things really just take time. The triggering of events in the game makes you talk to Guy A, talk to Guy B, then talk to Guy C in order to proceed. However, if you talk to Guy B before you talk to Guy A, he'll say something different when you come to talk to him after you talk to Guy A. I need to test all of that, and this is just the kind of area where contextual mistakes tend to happen.

Ouch!  #-o

I know that I saw a lot of tests for specific flags and states in the scripts that we extracted, but I had no idea that it was that complex.

The original Falcom team must have really put their heart-and-soul into this game!

SamIAm

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #133 on: January 27, 2016, 09:39:59 PM »
Ouch!  #-o

I know that I saw a lot of tests for specific flags and states in the scripts that we extracted, but I had no idea that it was that complex.

It's certainly not that complex all the time. Basically, you just have to be on your toes about when someone might have a unique line to say, and be aware of what "flags" trigger progression and what options the player has around them.

Not letting any lines slip through the cracks is going to be a major challenge as we edit this. I might want to look at the text dumps again and check off things that I see while I test-play.

Quote
The original Falcom team must have really put their heart-and-soul into this game!

Xanadu I was absolutely a big deal for Falcom. This was their first console game and their first CD-ROM game made in-house. The marketing effort was huge, and there was definite buzz in the gaming world. But in addition to all that, Legend of Xanadu is the final game that the guy who made Falcom's Dragon Slayer series worked on at that company. I think he wanted to go out with a bang.

I ought to search my PCE magazines for more interviews about it. For now, though, I want to focus on getting that first draft of the game-script done.  :wink:
« Last Edit: January 27, 2016, 09:50:20 PM by SamIAm »

jtucci31

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Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread
« Reply #134 on: January 28, 2016, 05:14:07 AM »
Chapter 11 is the one with the endless desert maps, right? I took a long time on that one but primarily because navigating through that desert required me to draw my own map.

But which area is the mountain one with the slave/worker guys? That's either 9 or 10, or maybe 8. That one took me awhile too, but I can see there being not a whole lot of dialogue, it was just really goddamn confusing.