With Ys IV, I had to work with a rather sloppy translation by Deuce, which he made back in 2004. His translation was made for a GameFAQ walkthrough and was definitely not optimized for dubbing. Having gone through that, your script sounds like a breath of fresh air!
I looked up logs to refresh my memory on this as I thought I said something inaccurate elsewhere. Here's how it began, somewhat (
trying to be thorough with dates): I tried to get him to work on the Ys IV translation on around about Sep 20, 2003 because Shimarisu was being problematic (
the translator that founded the project originally with Akimaru and Neill Corlett). She had lost her work for a long time and I was waiting on her, so I was giving up... Oddly enough, 10 days later, she finds her script work which was about 94% complete and hands it over. On Oct. 19, I gave it to him fully prepared in my script management software (
Translation Station) and tried to get him to finish the 6% or so strings that weren't finished, review what was there instead of having to translate from scratch. Well, he didn't finish that till next year, July 25, 2004, cause of work, distractions, life, plus he didn't like her work to boot, etc. There was lots of pestering in between that time, instant messaging of, "Did you finish yet? Is it done yet? Purty please?" etc.
So as the script translation was finally nearing completion, on July 22, 2004, he asks me this: "
BTW, is there any chance of perhaps (I know, I know) dubbing the voices in Ys IV rather than subtitling?". I said no because I didn't know much about that myself at the time and David Shadoff hadn't yet produced the ADPCM utilities. 3 days later, the 25th, same day he finally finished the whole script, he remembers about a transcript that he ran into by a Japanese guy called Sugimo back in '03. Sugimo essentially listened to every bit of spoken dialogue, wrote it down in Japanese and made it public on his website. Anyhow, having found this, using WWWJDIC, his online Kanji dictionary dependency (
he can't do anything to Japanese without this), he translated it in about 5 days... This log is right before he finished:
DeuceBag: I still feel compelled to try to find a way to dub the ADPCM.
DeuceBag: What kind of work will be required to apply the patch? Will it work on a full ISO, or just ISO+MP3?
Sef1roth: Both.
DeuceBag: 
Sef1roth: I make it for both.
DeuceBag: Bitchin'.
DeuceBag: Is there any chance I could get you to sniff around to see if you can find a ADPCM conversion tool?
Sef1roth: I'll ask when it's all over.
DeuceBag: Aight.
Sef1roth: Dave would know.
DeuceBag: For now, at least the speech will be translated.
So yeah, it was made with the intent for a dubbing project and he pushed the idea. It was submitted to GameFAQs the day after, though. Seems on August 7, David Shadoff had succeeded in the ADPCM tools after I asked him about accomplishing dubbing and on Sept 27 is when Justus Johnston showed up and the first dubbing attempt became serious and fully possible, etc. But yeah, this was occurring during the wrap up of the textual translation and I got it done in time for Christmas. TurboRip was created about a year and a half later with this in mind so that redbook tracks could easily be replaced as Justus would come back from the dead, telling me not to declare that aspect of the project over and what not, but you know how that went.
Anyway, I'd say the problem is that speech translation had only 5 days spent on it. I thought I remembered a conversation where I was told that Justus had been given a slightly improved/edited version though. Not sure if it was for a couple of lines or what, but eh, don't matter now...
EDIT: OK, yeah, I found it.
DeuceBag: Justus and I are finding, btw, that the script is going to require some expansion to make everything sound good.
Sef1roth: Oh?
DeuceBag: Just because it takes a lot less time to say the English lines as-is than the original Japanese.
DeuceBag: So, I'm going to have to bulk up most of the lines a bit... which isn't really such a bad thing. It'll make them sound more natural in the end, I expect.
I distinctly remember trying to get this from Justus, but he couldn't find it or something... Part of the stuff he lost in his HDD crash maybe. =\
This was never publicly stated, but I'll be directing the dub for Spriggan Mark 2, after Sam's finished with the script.
Ah, so this is the next project. But eh, for a shooter, not worth it to me... I doubt I'd ever bother with this.
