The message, translated into English, reads:

It has been a long while, so I guess everyone has already given up on me, right? I can finally say that people have been correct to have done so. I am truly sorry for having caused various problems for everyone.

I regret to see these very delightful several years come to an end like this, but
it seems that even if I were to try to fulfill all these promises at this late hour, there wouldn’t be any point. After all, I’m too embarrassed to even show my face, so there’s nothing much more that I can do.

There’s no real way for me to truly apologize, but I sincerely hope you all understand.

Haeleth
Autumn, 2010

The original message is as follows:

　　　　ずいぶん経ったので、皆はずっと
　　　　前から私の亊を見限ってくれたの
　　　　でしょう。それは正しいと、よう
　　　　やく認めます。いろいろご迷惑を
　　　　掛けて本当に申し訳ありません。

　　　　とても楽しかった数年間がこの様
　　　　に終わったのは実に遺憾とするが、
　　　　今さら約束を守ろうとしても意味
　　　　がないと思われます。どうせ合わ
　　　　せる顔もないから、これ以上は出
　　　　来ません。

　　　　お詫びのしようもないが、どうか、
　　　　ご理解だけは是非ともお願します。

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　ハレス
　　　　　　　　　　　　２０１０年、秋

Haeleth, originally with the ROM hacking community, is most well known for having started a translation project for Key’s popular game, Kanon, in 2002 or shortly before. This was one of the first attempts at translating such a game (the project for Radical Dreamers started probably around a year or so earlier), at a point when the visual novel translation community hadn’t yet split off from the ROM hacking community proper. The translation had a few releases from Haeleth until it was postponed indefinitely in 2006, or at least until he could secure the permission of the original copyright holder. This translation was eventually finished and released by Non-directional Translations, with several leaks involved along the way. Haeleth also ran a set of forums called the “gemot”, in which people could discuss about his projects and related interests and where registration was not needed for posting (The reason he gave for allowing guest posting was that registration doesn’t prevent a determined individual from posting and that he had liked the way 2ch worked).

Haeleth contributed to several other translation projects, including narcissu and its sequel. He was also behind various pieces of software needed for translations of games, including tools needed to disassemble and recompile games running under Visual Art’s’ game engines AVG32 and RealLive, as well as PONScripter, a fork of the open source engine for running NScripter games, ONScripter. PONScripter added better internationalization and font support and was used originally in the translation for narcissu -SIDE 2nd-. He eventually started gradually disappearing from public view of the visual novel community, contributing less and less to PONscripter and the slow narcissu -SIDE 2nd- project before finally posting the current message on the website after a long period of silence.

Kanon is a romantic visual novel wherein the reader takes the role of Yuuichi Aizawa, a Japanese high-school student, as he moves north to live with the aunt he used to spend the winter holidays with. From this low-key beginning, the plot branches into a number of alternative paths, each of which uses the school romance framework to explore the work’s themes – memories, miracles, and the everyday supernatural – from the perspective of a different character.

Kanon was the first game created by Key and was released in June 1999, ranking second in Japan’s national eroge sales charts at the time. It has since been ported, remade and reprinted a total of nine times, selling over 300,000 copies of the game in total. The game’s legacy however is much larger than an impressive number of reprints, as Kanon has officially spawned five printed novels, both in adult and all-ages editions, fifteen drama CD’s, two manga series, two TV anime series, an OVA animation, ten music CD’s and singles and large amounts of merchandise. It has also inspired a huge amount of doujin manga, computer games and musical arrangements.

The translation of the Kanon visual novel was started somewhere in 2001 or 2002 by Haeleth with intermittent partial patches released in September 2002 (10%), May 2003 (25%) and June 2004 (57%), at which point most of the game was translated and half of it was edited. At this point progress became rather invisible to the public, until in September 2006 Haeleth announced that due to moral issues he had decided to stop working on the project until such time as he could get official permission from Key to translate their game.

While many people were disappointed by this, it did not take a long time for other people to step up and continue where Haeleth left off. Non-Directional Translations restarted the project based on an internal build released by Haeleth to his beta testers, and finished translation a year after Haeleth had announced his closing of the project.

In April 2008 another beta version was leaked, this time by some member(s) of Non-Directional Translations and to the general public. NDT finally released their first teaser patch in December 2008, which was quickly followed by translation patches for each of the five story routes in the game as they were finished.

The final translation patch now released by NDT is designed to be used with the adult DVD-ROM reprint of the game: Kanon Standard Edition. Unfortunately it will not work with the original CD version of the game, which used the AVG32 engine as opposed to the modern RealLive. The patch is reported to be compatible with Kanon Standard Edition for All Ages, but no support will be provided for this version. The patch does however have the ability to turn the adult Standard Edition into an all-ages version.