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The Unofficial Tales of Translation Updates Thread: Fans bring us what Namco can't

B

Brawly Likes to Brawl

Member
Datschge said:
Hard to get complaints about lack of progress this way, so it does its job I guess. =P
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Yeah, the bad thing about working on fan translations is that the people who follow it get super obsessive about updates, I remember the fantrans group that did SaGa 2 DS quit because the leader couldn't stand being harassed anymore.
 
Paracelsus

Paracelsus

Member
I still haven't found any gaffer willing to explain to me why kickstarter can happen for something like making salad but not hiring indie graduate translators for stuff like Tales of.
 
R

R_thanatos

Member
Paracelsus said:
I still haven't found any gaffer willing to explain to me why kickstarter can happen for something like making salad but not hiring indie graduate translators for stuff like Tales of.
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The license for the game is still active ... it get tricky to get money by kickstarter means for project that has no set time limit because in many cases , the tools for working on the game aren't there. ( now they are there for Destiny DC but it sure took a long time to have them ) . How can you ask for money when you don't know how long you'll be on the project ?

Not to mention the countless legal issues that can arise from using kickstarter..

dakkumauji said:
Each time they finish another Tales of Phantasia translation, Bamco will release a new one for them to start on.
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That's the joke ( even adressed in the post ) .. i'll laugh if a vita phantasia happens.
 
J

Jucksalbe

Banned
I'm actually glad they're focusing on ToPX now. It's the one I want to play the most and I guess it's also the one most likely to get finished at all. ;)
 
C

charlequin

Banned
Paracelsus said:
I still haven't found any gaffer willing to explain to me why kickstarter can happen for something like making salad but not hiring indie graduate translators for stuff like Tales of.
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Companies look the other way about fan translations for a variety of reasons (including the fact that they aren't an open-and-shut infringement the way many other things would be) but generally have zero tolerance for others making money on them. It'd be a good way to draw undesirable attention.

If someone with several successful projects under their belt really did want to focus more time on it, they could probably start a Patreon where they promised to deliver regular writing about the process of romhacking and/or translation.
 
A

Aeana

Member
It doesn't feel that long ago that he was talking about focusing fully on ToD DC... didn't last that long. I guess emulating Namco Bandai is the way to go: when in doubt, it's time to work on Phantasia again. I don't begrudge him working what he wants to work on, though. That's definitely the way to go, and burn out is really bad. There definitely seems to be some kind of curse surrounding Tales translations, though. The best games in the series are missing translations, and the worst ones keep getting translated. It's super hilarious to me that Tempest, of all things, got translated before both Rebirth and ToD DC! Ah well. Someday, right?
 
F

FSLink

Banned
At least Vesperia PS3 is coming out soon...

Waiting for the patch to come out, have a compatible PS3 and the Vesperia PS3 disk ready.
 
E

ElectricThunder

Member
Aeana said:
It doesn't feel that long ago that he was talking about focusing fully on ToD DC... didn't last that long. I guess emulating Namco Bandai is the way to go: when in doubt, it's time to work on Phantasia again. I don't begrudge him working what he wants to work on, though. That's definitely the way to go, and burn out is really bad. There definitely seems to be some kind of curse surrounding Tales translations, though. The best games in the series are missing translations, and the worst ones keep getting translated. It's super hilarious to me that Tempest, of all things, got translated before both Rebirth and ToD DC! Ah well. Someday, right?
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So long as things happen eventually, I've just come to accept it.

Though....sometimes it feels like somebody found a Monkey's Paw some years back and wished for all the big Tales games to get fan translated or localized somehow, but then somebody else found another Money's Paw and instead wished the same for all the Narikiri and sideline games. The end result being bit of progress on all fronts---but all roads seemingly inexorably drawn towards Phantasia FOREVER~
 
P

pje122

Member
ToR seems to be chugging along...

http://a0t.co/forum/showthread.php?tid=697&pid=8941#pid8941

To the various people wondering about our progress, all I can say is that we're still working on it frequently. Progress is steady.


Otherwise, there isn't much else I can tell you. No matter how many times you ask, the answer will be the same: “We're still working on it.” I, personally, find it hard to give you any definite milestones right now. Because if we said, for example, that the main story script was 100% finished (it's not, this is just an example) and then we decide later that it needs re-working and it ends up taking us longer, people might get mad. “But you said that part was finiiiiished!” That's not to say we'll never update you when we believe something is truly done, but don't expect it to happen often.

I wish I could give you an ETA, but I honestly have no idea. I want to say that it's a lot closer to being done now that there's an active translator working on it than it was before when translation was in limbo, but I haven't been part of this project for long so I'm not comfortable making that judgment. They could be having issues with the more technical side of things for all I know. Still, unless one of the few people working on this now suddenly disappears, then it should be done in a reasonable amount of time.

Just be patient and trust me when I say that progress is good. Well, at least on the translation side of things. I can't speak for other aspects that I know nothing about.

Trust me, we want this project to eventually be completed as much as you guys do!
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R

RalchAC

Member
Daaaaaamn! I want to play this so much but I don't have the spare money to buy a PS3 at 3.55 + a Tales of Vesperia PS3 copy...

Nice to know it exists. I think I should download it and save it in my computer just in case Bamco decide to take it down.
 
P

pje122

Member
Here we are again! Another update that I’ve been putting off for way too long! Sorry!

As predicted in the previous post, I’ve been super busy as of late. However, as those of you following our bot on twitter already know, I’ve been steadily making progress on Tales of Destiny and Tales of Phantasia. I’ve set a goal of making at least a little progress each day. Exactly what I’m working on and how much I do varies, but so far it’s been a good motivator to squeeze some progress out of an otherwise busy schedule.

The biggest thing to mention, of course, is that I finally finished the initial translation of the ToDr’s Monster Book. This was one of those perpetual tasks where no amount of effort seemed to get me any closer to the goal. And thanks to the slow and steady strategy, it’s finally done. With that, the initial translation of ToDr’s menu is basically done. The only thing left to do is to translate the summaries, but that will be easier to do as I progress through the story events, so it’s not my primary focus right now. Translation aside, there are a lot of technical and aesthetic things that still need to be dealt with before we officially declare the menu complete, but we’re at least one step closer.

I’ve been working on Tales of Phantasia’s menu as well. There aren’t too many changes from the PSX version of the menu, but I’m giving everything a fresh translation before I look to incorporate elements from the previous AZ and PP ToP translations. The goal is to make sure this is the definitive translation of the game, so I want to make sure I have a more up-to-date base to work from in order to prevent any mistakes from previous versions from slipping into it. Not the most exciting work in the world, but progress is progress.

That’s all I’ve really got for now. We’re still a ways from completion on these projects, but we’ll get there. Thanks for your patience!
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,
 
P

pje122

Member
Current Focus: Janos Events (ToDR), Initial Menu Translation (ToPX)

After a very productive first half of 2015, the rest of the year was a bit more erratic. The last few weeks of December were quite productive, however, so we ended the year on a high note.


Tales of Destiny R

I’ve been making good progress on ToDR recently. I’m working on Janos, the first full town in the game. ToDR has its events organized by maps, so most NPCs in the game have somewhere between 5-10 different lines of dialogue based on when you talk to them. May not sound like a lot, but it adds up pretty quickly in the more populated towns. The subevents from later in the game are also stored in the same files. I’ve been doing whole files, so once a town is complete, that should include all of the game’s events there. We recently ran into some large sections shared dialogue (meaning it appears in multiple files), so we’re working on consolidating that to make future editing easier.

Tales of Phantasia X

I’ve been poking away at ToP’s menu. I’m still trying to get the initial translation done, at which point I’ll reference the older Absolute Zero and Phantasian Productions translations to tweak it. The item descriptions are really the only thing left to do. I’m a little over half done with the item descriptions at this point. One of the issues with ToP compared to the other two projects is that we can’t keep the English and Japanese fonts in the game simultaneously, so until the menu is the top priority to enable progression.

Narikiri Dungeon X

Sooo much left to do here before this game is really playable. I’ve been working on the menu when I get bored, but it’s a hell of a grind. I’ve kind of just been using NDX as a dumping ground for my effort when I don’t feel like working on either of the other projects. At least while the other two projects have substantial work to be done, NDX is going to remain a backburner project.
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.
 
E

eefara

Member
It'd be pretty nifty if (at least semi-)monthly updates became a thing. It's a shame their Twitter bot broke- I thought it was a cool idea.
 
F

FSLink

Banned
Yep, we'll see. I do think ToDR is the best in the franchise and one of the best JRPGs period so I look forward to it being finished...eventually.
 
P

pje122

Member
Current Focus: Tales of Destiny R

This month was pretty good. Had some hiccups at the end, but more months like this one would be okay.


September’s focus was of course still on Tales of Destiny. Like a lot of games, ToDR divides it files up by maps, so each city or area has its own set of files that will include all of the events that occur in that map throughout the game. Before I was translating a whole set at a time, which meant some of the late game stuff would be translated along with the introductory events. The problem is that it’s hard to get a lot of tangible progress out of translating that way. Because I actually wanted to see my work in game, I decided to play the game and translate the events that I encountered as I did. So effectively I’m going to start by doing a bare-bones story translation and then go back and fill in the gaps along the way. I’ve worked my way up to the party’s first visit to Calvalese so far. Although I think I may be missing like Straylize Temple’s initial events and some other earlier stuff still. I just used the save I already had. Of course, I should say that while it was a decently productive month, it could have been better. I’ll try to do better!

There are some less transparent moving pieces on the backend of the project as well, but we’ll talk about those another day.
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http://a0t.co/2016/10/02/october-2016/
 
Link1110

Link1110

Member
Shocked no one's doing Hearts DS still. The remake basically takes out ToDr's battle system and replaces it with Abyss's, and since Dr had the better one is a shame all chance of translating the definitive version is out the window at this point
 
S

Sandfox

Member
Link1110 said:
Shocked no one's doing Hearts DS still. The remake basically takes out ToDr's battle system and replaces it with Abyss's, and since Dr had the better one is a shame all chance of translating the definitive version is out the window at this point
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IIRC it was getting translated, but got dropped when Hearts R got announced for the west.
 
B

Barrylocke

Member
Sandfox said:
IIRC it was getting translated, but got dropped when Hearts R got announced for the west.
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I was REALLY hoping that Kajitani was translating the game in the background and would reveal a resume update a couple years after the game did its thing, but we're approaching the 2 year anniversary of Hearts R in the West and his last update was for April Fools. It's his hobby so I'm not obligated anything, but I'm gonna assume that he dropped it and feel pleasantly surprised if anything does resurface in the future.


Absolute Zero focusing on Tales of Destiny R is amazing news. It and Tales of Rebirth are the Tales games I most want to play that are JP only. I'd like to play Tales of Destiny 2 as well, but it seems to not be the most amazing game in some ways.
 
P

preta

Member
Foffy said:
Yep.

I imagine it may get picked up again many years down the road, as Hearts R apparently has a very, very bad translation as is.
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The actual script is mostly well-written and free from errors, but it's definitely not very faithful to the original.

This covers some of the legitimate issues in the early parts of the game (which are, admittedly, the worst-localized).
 
V

Valkyri von Thanatos

Member
preta said:
The actual script is mostly well-written and free from errors, but it's definitely not very faithful to the original.

This covers some of the legitimate issues in the early parts of the game (which are, admittedly, the worst-localized).
Click to expand...

WHAAAAAAAAT!? I has no idea they screwed things up so badly! Hisui did come off way too aggressive, I guess this is why. I can't even imagine what was going through the localizers heads to make this decision, it just baffles me. Damn, now returning to the game will be weird, I'm always gonna be second guessing if a character actually said what they said, or whether some smartass thought it'd be better to just screw up the dialogue for fun. What the hell man..
 
E

ElectricThunder

Member
You've gotta live the dream----that one day, bit by bit, every single main and side Tales game will be out and about with a quality effort upon their best made platforms to finally square it all away true.
 
H

Haganeren

Member
Link1110 said:
Maybe as a translation, but as a game the Ds version is a million times better than the remake.
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Why ?

I can't really say i'm enjoying Tales of Hearts too much on PS Vita that being said. The characters and story are just... Kinda blend. The graphics can be quite ridiculous when i'm supposed to not question the fact that a very tiny city is actually a capital.... J RPG at least TRY to make the city bigger than what it really is generally.
 
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