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Square Enix sends cease and desist letter to FF Type 0 translation group

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Supast4r

Junior Member
I swear ever since square soft became square Enix they have treated their fans like dirt by delaying games til infinity, making final fantasy games not play like final fantasy, and now this...
 

wrowa

Member
So we agree that the actual quantity of lost sales would be pretty minuscule, all things considered?

To be honest, I think the biggest threat to Type-0 HD's potential success is not that some hardcore fans played the fan-translation and won't be buying the game now, but that the ones who played the translated Type-0 realized that it's actually a deeply flawed game and not the hidden gem everyone thought it is. The possibility of negative word of mouth catching on long before Type-0 HD is even out might be the biggest threat.
 

MagiusNecros

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
To be honest, I think the biggest threat to Type-0 HD's potential success is not that some hardcore fans played the fan-translation and won't be buying the game now, but that the ones who played the translated Type-0 realized that it's actually a deeply flawed game and not the hidden gem everyone thought it is. The possibility of negative word of mouth catching on long before Type-0 HD is even out might be the biggest threat.

They should just do a collab with Koei and make a fun FF Musou game with Type 0 as base and add a dream mode with all the other FF characters joining in on the fun.
 
Instead of a Cease and Desist, why not make an offer on the work they've done? Sounds like the brunt of the labor involved is finished, or at least a substantial amount.
 

Mandoric

Banned
Instead of a Cease and Desist, why not make an offer on the work they've done? Sounds like the brunt of the labor involved is finished, or at least a substantial amount.

Haven't we known since well before the TL patch that a substantially-complete version was sitting in the vaults at S-E? Same deal as FF5 and presumably FF2.
 
I swear ever since square soft became square Enix they have treated their fans like dirt by delaying games til infinity, making final fantasy games not play like final fantasy, and now this...
Yes because delaying a game for over eight years just to get a few fans pissed is part of their mission statement.
 

VLiberty

Member
Although it would be difficult to prove, I believe that the PSP suffered from piracy far worse than any system before it for a couple of reasons. First, the PSP was pretty easy to jailbreak relatively early on, and it required no purchase of additional hardware to do so. Over time it became so easy to load CFW on a PSP that all you have to do is copy a couple files on your memory stick and run one of them. No other console has ever had such a low barrier to piracy. Also, the hardware continued to sell fairly well in the West after three or four years but the game sales were pretty much abysmal. MGS Peacewalker sold something like 60,000 copies the first few weeks after release in North America, but when I checked Pirate Bay three or four weeks after it came out, the English version ROM torrent had more than 2,000,000 downloads... Anecdotal, admittedly, but I would argue that it is telling as well.
As I'm saying right now in the other thread, PSP's software sales are just in line with the other handhelds.

And although it didn't need any external hardware to get pirated, people always forget (or maybe just don't know) that since late 2008/early 2009 the new PSP produced were not hackable until early 2011.
 
SE : Hmm... Localizing Type-0 would cost time and money and so won't be worth it.

Fans : Oh! That's a shame! We are your biggest fans so we'll translate it ourselves!

.....
Years later when the fan translation is complete.
......

SE : Alright those sorry fucks did our work for us. Steal their work and make few edits so they aren't identical. Not like they ever had to rights to our game anyways.

And thus, SE localized Type-0 without spending any money nor time. The execs of the failing company called SE got to spend one more night drinking their vintage wine on their private cruise.




Assholes...
 

SkyOdin

Member
SE : Hmm... Localizing Type-0 would cost time and money and so won't be worth it.

Fans : Oh! That's a shame! We are your biggest fans so we'll translate it ourselves!

.....
Years later when the fan translation is complete.
......

SE : Alright those sorry fucks did our work for us. Steal their work and make few edits so they aren't identical. Not like they ever had to rights to our game anyways.

And thus, SE localized Type-0 without spending any money nor time. The execs of the failing company called SE got to spend one more night drinking their vintage wine on their private cruise.




Assholes...
Ummm... It is somewhat well-known that Square Enix has had a partially or fully complete translation for the game already done for some time, but it has been presumed that they simply didn't have confidence that a late PSP game would sell much outside Japan. I understand that you might be upset, but you shouldn't go around making up completely baseless scenarios in your head.

Besides, based on what some people have been saying in this thread, the translators may have messed up by including copyrighted game code in their translation patch. They did cross a line themselves.
 

koutoru

Member
After all these years and now the send the C&D letters?
It's almost like they were waiting for the fan translation to be released before sending it.
 
Maybe this is a stupid question, but when something like this is of questionable legality, why announce it ahead of time rather than simply release it? At least that way it gets out there and has a chance to proliferate.
 

Zanlee

Member
I don't understand SE at all ... the translation patch will only help the HD PS4 version to sell more imho. I wouldn't know a lot about this game if it wasn't from the translation project and I think that most of the people that liked the PSP version will end up buying the HD version. I got Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD because I really liked the PS2 version. I don't think I would've bought it if I never played the PS2 version.
 
I don't understand SE at all ... the translation patch will only help the HD PS4 version to sell more imho. I wouldn't know a lot about this game if it wasn't from the translation project and I think that most of the people that liked the PSP version will end up buying the HD version. I got Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD because I really liked the PS2 version. I don't think I would've bought it if I never played the PS2 version.

Most people won't do this though. If they just played the game on the PSP they probably won't want to play it so soon after finishing it. And the FF X and KH games came out over a decade ago so this isn't really comparable.
 

wrowa

Member
Maybe this is a stupid question, but when something like this is of questionable legality, why announce it ahead of time rather than simply release it? At least that way it gets out there and has a chance to proliferate.

It works most of the time and getting constant feedback helps some people. Though, it also is often more annoying than helpful, since a lot of fans can act quite entitled (I don't like the choice for a name! When is the patch finally out, I've been waiting for years!). Most translators aren't hiding from the makers of the game either and will stop working on a project, if a publisher decides to release a localized version officially (and they'll be grateful if the publisher tells them about it :p).

In this specific case, the translation got started within the GBATemp community, I think, so that they didn't really have a choice to work in secret. You need quite a few people to translate and hack all of that stuff, after all.
 
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?
 
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?

No you couldn't. Even if you did speak the two languages involved. Translation is actual work.
 
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages...
This is where your whole post falls apart.
Translating is hard.
Getting access to the correct files and what not is hard.
Adjusting it so the text doesn't look like ass is hard.

Like I said, it's hard. Takes time, dedication, and money.
 

wrowa

Member
No you couldn't. Even if you did speak the two languages involved. Translation is actual work.

Yep. Understanding a sentence? That's easy, you can do that once you've got a certain understanding of a language. However, translating a sentence into another lanuage without the sentence sounding awkward and stilted is a lot more difficult than most people think. Not to mention that there's a lot of stuff you just can't translate literally, because people in another country wouldn't understand the context or because it's some kind of joke that doesn't work when translated.
 

mechphree

Member
Hard to translate text? No. Time consuming? Yes. Just translating the text could be done with a small team be done in a few days work. But some one at square may feel the money to put into translation wouldn't be worth it for sales maybe.
 

levious

That throwing stick stunt of yours has boomeranged on us.
Although it would be difficult to prove, I believe that the PSP suffered from piracy far worse than any system before it for a couple of reasons. First, the PSP was pretty easy to jailbreak relatively early on, and it required no purchase of additional hardware to do so. Over time it became so easy to load CFW on a PSP that all you have to do is copy a couple files on your memory stick and run one of them. No other console has ever had such a low barrier to piracy. Also, the hardware continued to sell fairly well in the West after three or four years but the game sales were pretty much abysmal. MGS Peacewalker sold something like 60,000 copies the first few weeks after release in North America, but when I checked Pirate Bay three or four weeks after it came out, the English version ROM torrent had more than 2,000,000 downloads... Anecdotal, admittedly, but I would argue that it is telling as well.


It's not evil, it's stupid. In a connected world where corporate reputation is so dependant on optics, kicking your hardcore fans in the teeth with no possible benefit to your company is a really myopic decision.

the dreamcast had no barrier to piracy.
 

Spiegel

Member
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?

Wow, I hope this is sarcasm.
 

Kagoshima_Luke

Gold Member
Can the FF Type 0 translation group send a cease and desist to Square Enix about their cease and desist order?

Or is that like triple stamping a double stamp?
 

fates

Member
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?

dude what
 

MechaX

Member
As sad as that is for people who worked on it, SQEX not only should have done this, but they should have done this way sooner and been more aggressive about it.

The whole thread for Type-0 HD's reveal was basically full of people talking about already playing it specifically because of the fan translation. Any company would have to try to stop stuff like that.

I'm just curious here; is this a stance more due to Type-0's situation specifically, or is this a stance on fan-translations in general?

Because even in the world of SE games, I'm thinking of how Type-0's fantranslation release went, and how Front Mission 5's fantranslation went in terms of how SE treated things.
 

Mandoric

Banned
Hard to translate text? No. Time consuming? Yes. Just translating the text could be done with a small team be done in a few days work. But some one at square may feel the money to put into translation wouldn't be worth it for sales maybe.

Everything in this post is very wrong, from either a fan or pro perspective.

A decent translator can be expected to, in an average work day, turn out a four-digit number of Japanese characters assuming they're already familiar with the subject. This is perhaps ten to thirty print pages, so five to fifteen sheets. This still needs to be edited, checked side by side to find any blatant errors or mistakes introduced in the edit, and then checked again in-game for context and for QA.

(If you work them to the bone, you can triple this or so. You will pay for it in edit, or in "This guy are sick"-tier errors and typos in minor places like character names.)

Meanwhile, the photographs out of Falcom or S-E of -entire bookshelves full of binders- captioned "this is one of the Trails games" or "this is DQ7" are only slightly misreading re: how full and how duplicated each binder is.

On the flipside, even though you've got a half-year or year of work for five people, the costs of this are significantly lower than the costs of QAing, certing, printing, and marketing a finished release that you expect to have significant sales. In small companies, this means tiny print runs and no mass marketing. In large companies, this means shelving the project (even if it's complete like FF5 or apparently Type-0!) and focusing on something you expect better results from.
 

Mariolee

Member
Why bother now? It's out in the open. Those that want to find it will be able to.

Perhaps they wanted it to be finished, but legal obligations forced them to protect their IP by shutting it down so they stalled until it was finish to send the C&D letter.

/optomist
 

RocBase

Member
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?

Absolutely not! Trust me you couldn't translate a book in a day.
Even if you don't speak two languages do you really think English expressions, idioms, puns, humor and culture are exactly the same amongst other languages? A lot more creative processing goes into translating than just mechanically translating every line. It's the art of not just translating the lines, but translating the overall message/meaning to the intended public which has its own culture that the translation needs to conform to.

Fortunately, S-E is slow even to be a piece of shit.
literally made me laugh out loud
 

magnifico

Member
I wonder why anyone actually listens to cease and desist letters. I'd just ignore it if I were them and keep working on it anonymously.
 

JoJoSono

Banned
Hard to translate text? No. Time consuming? Yes. Just translating the text could be done with a small team be done in a few days work. But some one at square may feel the money to put into translation wouldn't be worth it for sales maybe.
Um yes it is actually hard to translate text. Were not talking about simple "hello my name is" text. We're talking about words, phrases, and whatnot that may not have any actual other language equivalent. Or they are terms that are written with no regard for another language. If I write out a super intensive scientific paper, I'm going to use terms I know in my language. I don't care what the terms would be in Japanese and I may use terms that are so obscure that it's even hard for an English person to know what they are. So then you have to figure out what they could possibly mean in another language. Then comes the fact that you have to translate the meaning. A literal translation can easily sound like nonsense. So not only do you need translation skills, you need actual writing skills.

But the fact is Japanese has three writing systems with one have many characters, and some that change at the drop of a hat thanks to something like context.

Getting that all into an English script, one that actually makes sense in English is not easy. It requires good English skills and actual research on top of just knowing Japanese. It's not even as simple as knowing Japanese. Knowing Japanese culture also hopes, because hell in English we say things that may not even be grammatically correct or make culture references that someone outside may not even know.

So no it's not easy.

That's just one part of the localization. Actual programming is an entire other thing. Japanese dosen't need word wrapping like English does, so simply putting English characters into a game is work in itself. Changing sign displays is work. Putting actual audio is work.

Localization is'nt a simple thing.
 
Maybe this is a stupid question, but when something like this is of questionable legality, why announce it ahead of time rather than simply release it? At least that way it gets out there and has a chance to proliferate.

Two main reasons:

1 - Most fan translations are collaborative efforts between several people. By announcing the project ahead of time, you're more likely to find other people interested in working on the project with you, thus making the project possible (translating a game is a lot of work, especially when you're not getting paid for it and so have to do it in your free time).

2 - Fan translators are often only human and want recognition for their hard work.

I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?

Real languages aren't like Al Bhed where you can just subsitute letters and be done.

I can only speak for myself but I assume this is the case for others as well - once you get past the beginner stage of a second language, you stop mentally translating everything back into your native language and instead just switch over to thinking in the second language when you're using it since it's much faster that way. This is especially the case when your native language & second language are very different in structure from one another.

Anyway, for a typical quality game localization project, you have 3 main job categories.

1 - The translator. This is generally someone who is a native speaker in the original language. They translate the original text with an emphasis on clarity & meaning. Very literal translation.

2 - The editor. This is generally someone who is a native speaker of the target language. They take the text that the translator provides & rewrite it so that it flows & entertains readers. If there's a section of the translated text that is ambiguous, they'll talk to the translator and ask for more details. They also make sure that the new text has internal consistency (so for example, all names & terms are consistent within this game and with any other games in the series that have already been translated).

Speaking of ambiguities, ambiguities in one language often don't match up with another language. For example, in English, the phrase "Have you eaten?" would be taken quite literally, whereas in Mandarin, that same phrase is also used as a very common greeting along the lines of "How are you?"

3 - The programmer. This is the person who actually takes the translated text and gets it working in the game.

And of course, if you have voice acting, that's a whole other list of things that needs to be done (finding voice actors, directing them, inserting the voices into the game, etc.). And if there's any text in any of your visuals, you'll generally want an artist or graphic designer to go ahead and remake those assets with translated text.

And thus, SE localized Type-0 without spending any money nor time.

No major company is going to steal a fan translation. For starters, they're going to assume that any fan translation is going to be of lower quality than what they themselves can produce.

If I write out a super intensive scientific paper, I'm going to use terms I know in my language.

This is especially problematic with video game translations given that they often take place in fictional settings. At times, it can be a real pain to try to figure out if a word is...

1 - A made-up term only used in the game's world.
2 - A proper name
3 - An obscure high-level word
4 - Slang
 

Jomjom

Banned
I feel bad for the fansubbers. I hope this doesn't discourage guys from fansubbing other games, because the majority of the stuff they do fansub generally never sees a release here in the US. This is one of those rare examples.
 

J_Ark

Member
I finished my part of the Spanish translation this Monday. Thank you, Square, good timing.

I would Kickstart their ass with a God tier lawyer, if there's a minimum legal basis. Frustrating.
 

Nairume

Banned
I feel bad for the fansubbers. I hope this doesn't discourage guys from fansubbing other games, because the majority of the stuff they do fansub generally never sees a release here in the US. This is one of those rare examples.

That likely won't happen. There's a reason that publishers (including SquareEnix) have been turning a blindeye to these projects and this translation is likely being singled out because they fucked up and went against the thing that was keeping them in the clear.
 

360pages

Member
Speaking of Type 0 how is it anyway? I guess I could look up gameplay, but that can only get me so far in terms of feel and what not.
 
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?

Translation is harder than you think, especially since Japanese and English are very different and don't translate 1:1 on a lot of things. And even when they do translate 1:1, a lot of things that are natural in Japanese don't sound natural in English "ie: The man who did this to me was... that person"

You're going to get a shit translation if you don't also put in some effort.
 
There is literally nothing to suggest that the Crimson Echoes C&D was real. The whole thing perfectly matched the pattern of someone who invents a C&D to get out of a fan project without having to answer questions or get hounded by people afterwards, just like the dude who invented one for 7th Dragon.
I had had no idea that there was anything fishy about the C&D for Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes. So that was fabricated?

There was nothing fishy about the C&D for Crimson Echoes. Zeality has had an Internet presence for over a decade on many gaming forums, and he is sometimes quite vocal about his opinions on various topics (including politics), so the fact is, he has a lot of haters who dismiss everything he does or who judge him based on only hearsays (most notably on such "mature" communities as OverClocked Remixes and GameFAQs). When you have that kind of reputation, you sometimes don't bother replying to every one question and attack that people throw at you. This, coupled with the fact that we (Zeality, Agent 12 and I) were fucking disgusted that our game was killed like that after 5 years of effort, means that we often ignored haters and doubters instead of keeping explaining everything everytime on multiple sites. Hell, even we had difficulties communicating with SE. They were simply dead set on getting the project terminated and wouldn't discuss any possible alternative or anything else. Crimson Echoes was pretty much the last thing that was keeping Agent 12 and I active in the Chrono community, so after the C&D, we pretty much drifted away from the community completely exhausted like floating balloons and didn't look back.
 

Mandoric

Banned
(copyright has a 'use it or lose it' aspect to it, for lack of a better term)

It doesn't, that's trademark. Copyright is the complete opposite: there's legal debate over whether you can even voluntarily abandon it rather than just licensing all comers.

In terms of fan translation, copyright is pretty much rock-solid on the side of the original copyright holder, especially in an international context. While unofficial translations have flourished, they've always been tacitly accepted on a too expensive/bad PR to fight basis rather than being in any way, shape, or form legal.
There's a lot of room to argue that they're useful and should be allowed on some basis, I wouldn't have done so damn many if I didn't believe that, but it's simply not the case: no legal cantrips to chant at a judge, no 24-hour exemptions, no "but they only released in Japan so they only have copyright in Japan", and not even any fair use exemption that may exist in one's own country the second you distribute across a border. It's the same calculated risk people take when they do 85 on the Interstate or take a leak in an alley.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Because they decided to release the game in the West.

Too late. They had their chance. C&D all they want, but people that want to play the PSP version will find the translation files and do it themselves.
 

LowParry

Member
Too late. They had their chance. C&D all they want, but people that want to play the PSP version will find the translation files and do it themselves.

I find this type of attitude to be rather poor. What people? The hardcore? For this game, there's very few and most likely all of them have played this game. I'm sure there's more of those who don't care or don't even know about this translation and will be buying the HD version.
 

linkboy

Member
Too late. They had their chance. C&D all they want, but people that want to play the PSP version will find the translation files and do it themselves.

And the vast majority of people are just going to see the game on the PS4\XB1 and just buy it on that instead of hacking their PSP, import (or download the iso's), find the translation to download and patch said iso's, install a cfw on their PSP (if they still even play it).

It'll much easier to just get the console versions and play that on your TV.
 
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