encubed » Translation

Tidbit: JAST USA talks about Steins;Gate with Siliconera

zalas — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:44:16 +0000

Tidbit: School Days HQ project nearing completion

zalas — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:11:11 +0000

Lost in a Forest

dan88 — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:33:57 +0000

Last night, Amaterasu Translations completed their sixth translation project by releasing a complete fan translation of Liar-Soft’s Forest. This is the third translation of a Liar-Soft title that they have completed, following Sekien no Inganock and Shikkoku no Sharnoth. The release has been hampered by DNS issues for some users after the server suffered an extended period of downtime earlier this week. The translator Ixrec is now looking at Key’s Rewrite for the team’s seventh project after his break. As of now he expects the translation of Rewrite to take six to seven months to complete and the current plan is to release two partial patches before the final release, one for the common route and one containing all of the character routes.

Forest contains nearly a thousand voice only lines, which have no displayed text to go with them and may be heard at the same time as different, unvoiced lines are displayed in the traditional text box. The group handled these lines by including subtitles near the top of the screen to display these translations. The included read me, in addition to staff credits and installation instructions, includes a list of works referenced in the script in “some form”, a few translation notes, and a detailed walkthrough for the game. The translation notes section lists a couple chapter titles which had a pun or reference that could not be preserved in the translation along with the literal translation of a limerick in the script that had to get a modified translation to keep the rhyme and rhythm.

Forest is a visual novel that was originally released by Liar-Soft in 2004. It focuses on a group of characters in the city of Shinjuku, along with their struggles against the Forest. These characters have gifts, or abilities, as they go up against the riddles that the Forest lays out for them.

Tidbit: JAST USA opens Yumina site

zalas — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:30:14 +0000

With the game localization nearing completion, JAST USA has now put up an official website for Yumina the Ethereal. Currently, only the plot intro can be read, but new content such as character info and sample graphics will be added soon. Yumina was a game with gameplay elements announced during Anime Expo 2010. The goal of the game is to win a school election, and to do so, the player must decide on where to campaign, level up their characters in dungeons and then have them fight it out with the other opponents, RPG style.

MangaGamer hints at two new possible properties

zalas — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:19:52 +0000

In addition to giving a progress report about MangaGamer’s manga and H-anime sections getting closer to opening and game animations to be checked arriving from minori, the official MangaGamer Twitter has also announced that they were working on acquiring two new never-before-announced titles. Unfortunately, the popular guesses of Key, TYPE MOON and Shin Koihime Musou failed to win free Internets. There’s now two hints in relation to the titles: “1) Yo dawg, we herd you like traps, so we put a trap in yo eroge so u can trap it up with all dem chicks!” and “2) How much blood would you shed to stay alive?” Lastly, MangaGamer has also released a SHUFFLE! CG viewer bug fix as a 1.12 MiB zip file that needs to be unpacked into the program folder.

JAST USA and MangaGamer deliver year-end updates

zalas — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:26:58 +0000

Both JAST USA and MangaGamer have delivered their year-end updates. From the JAST USA end, it looks like Saya no Uta and Hanachirasu will be sold separately, although there will be a discount for buying them together. The two games along with Sumaga are scheduled to be out before Anime Expo. Meanwhile, MangaGamer states that they’re working on a 4th hard copy game from the J-List distribution deal, which will be a game they have already released that they are trying to fix up. Furthermore, they’re also aiming for a end-of-February or beginning-of-March release for DEARDROPS, while the trial version is currently out for people to try out the game. Dengeki Stryker and Harukoi Otome are still in translation, with the former aimed at a release by the time Anime Expo comes around. As for ef – the first tale, it’s still undergoing review by NNL of the latest build from minori, which if it passes, will allow the release to proceed.

Ohama and Putina hit the road

zalas — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:32:32 +0000

Approximately one year after the license announcement, JAST USA has announced that copies of their latest eroge, My Girlfriend is the President, are now shipping. This bizarre comedy featuring spoofs of various world leaders was originally introduced to many people via a Hollywood-style promotional trailer complete with the “movie-trailer man” voice in English. The release will be based on the TLWiki project, with project members having worked with JAST USA on the release. This is the second game to be released in the JAST Densetsu lineup, a new brand JAST USA created for “higher quality titles” according to their Anime Expo panel.

Tidbit: ToHeart2 partial patch released

zalas — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:30:07 +0000

The translation project team working on ToHeart2 XRated has released a partial patch that translates an estimated 65% of the game. The Sasara and Ruuko routes are still untranslated and the README indicates that some of the routes have not been edited but are playable.

Little Busters! patch slides into home

zalas — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:46:28 +0000

The translation group working on Key’s all-ages game Little Busters! has announced that they have completed a translation patch (denoted version 6.0) for the entirety of the game. Furthermore, translation patches are available for the Ecstasy (18+ conversion with added content and new routes) and Memorial Edition (conversion from Ecstasy back to all-ages) versions of the game, although they are simply to translate the sections in those versions which correspond to the original version of the game; in that regard, some aspects in those versions are somewhat broken. The current major issue with this patch is the lack of word-wrapping, which the team hopes to fix in the future. They are also planning on translating the extra content in the Ecstasy and Memorial Edition versions once the translation team gets a rest.

When they finish crying…

Message — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 23:35:36 +0000

After almost four years of work, today the Witch Hunt release the full translation of the fourth and final episode of Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru, also known as When They Cry 4. As usual, the patch is released as a Windows installer, OS-X installer, and standalone zip archive.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni (literally ‘When the Seagulls Cry‘) is a popular murder mystery sound novel created by the authors of the equally famous Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. The story takes place in the year 1986 at a small, secluded island named Rokkenjima, owned by the head of a wealthy family. After a typhoon traps a number of visiting family members on the island, strange and deadly events start occuring.

The English fan translation of Umineko no Naku Koro ni has become well-known for having received official sanction from the original creator, Ryukishi07 of the doujin circle 07th Expansion. Having even a character in one of the episodes named after the group, the Witch Hunt were able to strike a deal with HOBIBOX to make the Japanese game available in the West through DRM-free download.

Over the course of the project the Witch Hunt have kept a very tight release schedule, releasing the translation of each episode before the following episode was released in Japan. For the last episode it took a year time before the full translation was released, the deadline eventually having been set to December 31, as 07th Expansion had announced it would then release a booklet with solutions to some of the puzzles and mysteries.