Anearth Fantasy Stories - Translation Development Blog

[spenoza]

They already indicated subbing might be impossible due to memory constraints.

[SignOfZeta]

Subbing PCE games is probably hard or impossible much of the time. Most of these games had no title feature to put translated text into and there is no FMV to super impose it onto so you'd have to alter the very code of the game to print subs, which considering memory restraints probably is impossible in many cases. Keep in mind that a PCE can draw an entire map with less data than I typed into this post. We now think of text as a lightweight feature in a game but back then it wasn't as trivial.

[spenoza]

I mean, we know there's a whole FOUR giant pages of posts, here, but if you're genuinely interested in the project you should read those 4 pages before posting. That way we don't get a bunch of posts saying, "I'd prefer subs over dubs, please!" when it's been made clear subs are too daunting a technical challenge and don't align with the goals of the project.

[SignOfZeta]

To be clear: dubs are for morons so if it weren't a technical issue I would for sure be respectfully attempting to persuade the project to alter its chosen directions but we aren't in a scenario like that. That's more of a PS2/DC kind thing. As amazing as these guys are at many things it's really their organizational skills that impress me the most and if people with their shit that well put together are explaining it to me as the best way to do the project then I know I don't have any better ideas because I can barely translate the manual and I can't do anything with hacking and I don't know where my socks are right now.

[esteban]

I can't find any matching socks, either. Damn.

We weren't always this inept, were we?

[NecroPhile]

To be clear: dubs are for morons...

So are subs.  Real men watch/play in the pure original language only.

[spenoza]

Good dubs are as good or better than good subs. Bad dubs will always be the worst thing ever.

[CrackTiger]

Good dubs are as good or better than good subs. Bad dubs will always be the worst thing ever.

I don't think that a good dub could ever be better than a good sub for something like Tengai Makyou. Unless in Kabukiden the game switches to a dub when you arrive in London and Zeami casts the translation spell.

Even in The Apocalypse IV, being in America doesn't mean that English speaking would be appropriate, because of the nature of the series. Although there is supposed to be a lot of language play which would be difficult or impossible to translate, that's going to be lost in translation either way.

[spenoza]

I am speaking in the abstract, not of any specific case. A good dub makes the game's content available in the most accessible, natural form, and can provide a lot of nuance and meaning via performance that subtitles cannot. Unless you have a lot of personal experience with the source culture, having the original language and delivery will do little to nothing for you. So for many of us with experience with Japan, it's great to have the subs and the original speech, but if you're going for localization that extra info would be better replaced with good quality, content-rich English language lines.

[cccmar]

According to elmer though: "Every scene that is voiced also has a message box with the text of the speech inside it.", meaning there's no need for dubbing in this particular case, unless they really want to do it additionally for the sake of completion, which is what I was referring to (assuming the space limitations don't prove to be overwhelming). There are a few other PCE-CD games like that from what I recall (Dragon Knight 1 & 2 come to mind right now, we wanted to work on them at some point).

CrackTiger mentioned The Apocalypse IV for Saturn/PSP; that one had some voiced cutscenes without subtitles, as far as I recall, so it probably would be more of a pain to work with. And yeah, there are lots of songs and puns in that game, so that would likely be an interesting localization effort, but a rather difficult one nonetheless.

[CrackTiger]

I am speaking in the abstract, not of any specific case. A good dub makes the game's content available in the most accessible, natural form, and can provide a lot of nuance and meaning via performance that subtitles cannot. Unless you have a lot of personal experience with the source culture, having the original language and delivery will do little to nothing for you. So for many of us with experience with Japan, it's great to have the subs and the original speech, but if you're going for localization that extra info would be better replaced with good quality, content-rich English language lines.

That would only be true for live action or animated remakes. A dub is always going to be severely compromised by molding dialogue around the syllables/mouth movements of the original performance. Writing the best dub would require 70's martial arts style out of sync dialogue, which knocks viewers incapable of handling subtitles much further out of a "natural" experience.

[seieienbu]

I can't find any matching socks, either. Damn.

We weren't always this inept, were we?

Yesterday I was running late so I wore one white and one black sock.  Both had holes in them.  Every time I see this thread up at the top I get a bit excited.  In this case I probably shouldn't as I know that the Xanadu dub project is taking up most of SamIAm and Elmer's time. 

After Xanadu and the Tengai Makyou games, this is probably the game that I'd most like to see translated.

[elmer]

I mean, we know there's a whole FOUR giant pages of posts, here, but if you're genuinely interested in the project you should read those 4 pages before posting. That way we don't get a bunch of posts saying, "I'd prefer subs over dubs, please!" when it's been made clear subs are too daunting a technical challenge and don't align with the goals of the project.

You might want to read those 4 pages again. I don't think that I said what you think that I said. 

According to elmer though: "Every scene that is voiced also has a message box with the text of the speech inside it."

Correct! 

Anearth will have subs instead of dubs, because all spoken text is already subtitled in the game, and the subs can be (fairly) easily replaced with English. Timing the text against the original Japanese voice will be a bit of a PITA, but there's no on-screen animation to sync to.

Some crazy lunatic can come along and do a dub patch later on for the voice if they want to. 


The LoX games, OTOH, have no sane way to sub the cutscenes, and dubbing is the only way to tell the story properly. The only reason that we have a chance of dubbbing the LoX games competently is because Falcom released the entire backing tracks to both games on CD so that we can mix in our own voice recordings onto the original music.

[EmperorIng]

The only reason that we have a chance of dubbbing the LoX games competently is because Falcom released the entire backing tracks to both games on CD so that we can mix in our own voice recordings onto the original music.

Wow, I wish more games did this. There are always at least a few cutscene tracks that I wish I could listen to isolated, but people must never think (or thought) they were important.

[spenoza]

I mean, we know there's a whole FOUR giant pages of posts, here, but if you're genuinely interested in the project you should read those 4 pages before posting. That way we don't get a bunch of posts saying, "I'd prefer subs over dubs, please!" when it's been made clear subs are too daunting a technical challenge and don't align with the goals of the project.

You might want to read those 4 pages again. I don't think that I said what you think that I said. 

Yeah, you're right. I'm in the wrong place. You're talking about Anearth instead of Xanadu. I apologize, folks. I've been talking out my ass.

I will have to admonish folks for not reading something I haven't read somewhere else, instead.

I would absolutely not expect Elmer and SamIam to do a dub if they don't have to, simply due to the sheer amount of work. Though I do still stand by my statement that a good dub is the best translation/localization option. It's just so resource intense that fan projects can't reliably do that.

[NightWolve]

To be clear: dubs are for morons...

So are subs.  Real men watch/play in the pure original language only.

[dejan07]

Some crazy lunatic can come along and do a dub patch later on for the voice if they want to. 

You meant NightWolve?

[NightWolve]

Technically, my plan was always to delegate dub management out to another project partner. I waited 8 years after 2 dub managers failed which is when I met BurntLasagna and third time was the charm. ;)

I had enough motivation to develop TurboRip in 2006 (I retired from fan projects in April 2007 and briefly returned summer 2012 to work with BurntLasagna) after Justus Johnston returned promising to finish finding voice actors to record their lines - he was the first manager that joined the team and you can thank him for his friend Chris Adams who reprised his role as Dogi.

Justus also engineered the excellent Darm opening battle that plays when you start the game. He mixed in Alan Oppenheimer voice acting from Ys Book I&II which worked out beautifully so we kept it.

2nd guy I met that wanted to try completely failed, had set up recruitment thread on Voice Acting Alliance, looked like he was serious, but he suddenly had offline life problems; before he was disconnecting his home ISP, he said he'd give me any recording work that was done and hoped I'd continue the project, but he disappeared, never heard from him again. He called himself GeeMac32bit, Aussie fella from the land down under.

Ran into BurntLasagna in early 2012 I believe. There was some drama here thanks to Psycho John Schizomaniak of HG101 who harassed the project and some actions BurntLasagna took that let me down and means we wouldn't work together again, but I'll avoid details and simply say at least the dub effort was finally finished!

With Justus came TurboRip so Japanese wave files can be replaced easily with our English dubs, with BL, I upgraded the Get/Put ADPCM voice acting batch files to work with Sound Exchange, then released the Ys IV Dub Kit to help others learn which someone actually used to raise the volume on all voice acting at the risk of clipping but whatever.

All in all, the point is I didn't feel I should be the one to also do the grunt work of emailing voice actors back and forth, just wanted another partner to do it, give me back English recorded files so then I could finish the patch for release... The cock flashing translator, Le DeuceBag, never felt like doing it either, but he did his part, found a transcription of voice acting from Japanese Ys fan, Sugimo, and he converted it to English, as well as matched up a line to the ADPCM naming convention I adopted with my batch files.

I just liked the model of an expert sound guy like Justus being the one to manage this aspect of the project and I was more interested in new Falcom Windows PC projects at the time before I had to retire for a couple of years in April 2007 to get my offline shit in order.

Some crazy lunatic can come along and do a dub patch later on for the voice if they want to. 

You meant NightWolve?

Thus, you might say BurntLasagna was the crazier lunatic to do all the grunt work of emailing voice actors back and forth after recruitment, collecting samples, providing recording tutorials, etc.

Not rocket science, but neither I, DeuceBag or others prior to Justus were interested in doing it. I did everything else, poured my sweat into it, all the advanced technical problems were out of the way, all you had to do was record wave files and get them back to me, but yet I ultimately had to wait 8 years for a 3rd partner to finish the job...

[LentFilms]

It may not be rocket science but running the audition, organizing all the actors, getting the recordings to match the timing of the original game and re-inserting all the audio back into the game without it popping or glitching was very difficult. I only watched my brother from the sidelines, mainly helping with sending invites to actors/actresses during the audition, but it makes complete sense to me why it took so long for a project like the Ys IV dub to get finished since getting all these elements to line up is a real pain in the neck.

Even before starting the Ys IV dub project proper, my brother got his feet wet by learning how to insert audio into PCE-CD games with Rondo of Blood and was experimenting with the idea of dubbing Ys IV for a year or two before actually starting the project (he even mentions wanting to dub Ys IV in Rondo's readme). So it wasn't just a matter of my brother getting some voice clips and putting them in the game but a long period of him getting his skills to the point where he could start the project and then spending the better part of a year getting each line recorded, tweaking each file to fit in the game and tirelessly re-inserting each file back into the game himself (plus testing each voice clip ingame). He basically worked on the project every free moment he had in 2012, doing almost nothing else.

So, again, I totally understand why so few people would attempt a fan dub project or why GeeMac32bit and Justus would throw in the towel when they fully realized how much work it would be. Even though my brother managed to finish the dub, I know that the project really burned him out on fan translations in a lot of ways and even made me back away from the scene for a while. All the more reason I really respect Elmer and SamIAm for attempting to dub Legend of Xanadu I/II and understand why they wouldn't want to do the same thing with Anearth Stories. If dubbing Ys IV was hard I can only imagine what they are going through right now with their project.

Anyway, I guess what I am basically trying to say is dubbing a game is a lot more work than most people might think and it shouldn't be downplayed.

[seieienbu]

It may not be rocket science but...

For the type of persons that can translate games, I'd wager that the two most necessary skills are programming and translating.  I feel it's unlikely that someone who's expertise is in dubbing/organizing 50 or so people into getting you high quality dialogue.  For that reason I think the hardest part is likely the dub given that it's outside of peoples' presumed skillsets.

[LentFilms]

It may not be rocket science but...

For the type of persons that can translate games, I'd wager that the two most necessary skills are programming and translating.  I feel it's unlikely that someone who's expertise is in dubbing/organizing 50 or so people into getting you high quality dialogue.  For that reason I think the hardest part is likely the dub given that it's outside of peoples' presumed skillsets.

Plus you need to keep in mind that you have to work at a faster pace. When you are translating/hacking a game with a group of two or three people you can take as much time as you are willing to sacrifice. However, with a dub, you need to do a lot of pre-planning so that when you get all the actors/actresses together you can create the dub relatively quickly. Keeping 50+ people on standby for 3 or 5 years is not going to work and the performers' voices might even change over time. So you have to dedicate a lot of time over a shorter period instead of pecking away at something in your free time for years.

[NecroPhile]

It might as well be rocket science, as all aspects of translating games are well beyond my abilities (because I am le dumb).

[SignOfZeta]

In the past if you had asked me about putting together a highly timed audio play over the Internet with fans I would have thought it not that big of a deal. Now we have Podcasting though and people's standards have fallen so low when it comes to audio I would almost think it impossible. Whoever is in charge of this either got really lucky finding the right people or they had a LOT of VERY long and patience testing AIM conversations about, room tone,  how to not explode the mic...breathing sounds. Regardless, this is not a small task to say the least!

[Jester82]

Really looking forward to this one. I wish I had the skills to help. How far along would you guys say this project is?

[elmer]

How far along would you guys say this project is?

It's been quite a few months since I even looked at it.

The main game and battle sections have been investigated and I know how to hack in the translations for them. The only section left to investigate is the one that displays the static picture and scrolling text when you hit 7 years old (or something like that).

However ... SamIAm doesn't have the time to even look at doing the translation until after the LoX dubs are finished, and so there's been no pressure on me to move things further forward.

Sadly, we're at the "don't hold your breath" stage.

[seieienbu]

Thanks for the update.  It's pretty much exactly what I expected.  Also, given how far along the Xanadu translations are, it's exactly what I'd want too.

[DigiDigi]

Interested in any outside help at this stage? I'm a kind of knower of Japanese. (Don't really know where to place my level.) A couple years ago I discovered this gem for myself and gained an interest in hacking it.

I mined google for information and reproduced a python LZSS decompresser based on Tomaitheous's notes. Wasn't sure whether there was an ongoing project so I ended my explorations there.

More recently I wrote some not-too-well-informed CD patching scripts. Looking at the amount of work accomplished here though, I was clearly out of my depth. But well done on all the progress so far!

[elmer]

Interested in any outside help at this stage? I'm a kind of knower of Japanese. (Don't really know where to place my level.)

Thanks for the kind offer, but I'd really prefer to wait for SamIAm to have the time to work on it.

It's not just a question of translating the words themselves, it's a question of making the translated language sound good to read on the page, and giving the characters their own personalities with your choice of words.

I know that SamIAm has both the translating, and story-telling skills to do that.

You have no idea just how much time we spent on the LoX translations/scripts tweaking the lines to try to give each character their own "voice".

I don't know how well we succeeded ... but I don't really want to approach Anearth with any less care and attention.

[DigiDigi]

Quite fair. Sounds like Anearth is getting a very good treatment! Good luck to you.