Saturn translation [in progress!]

[Shiva Indis]

It's pretty wild to see the logos for all the firms that made SSS followed up by Sonic. I assume video that sharp is too big to use -- kind of a shame.

[DragonmasterDan]

Are you planning on any work outside of LUNAR for the Sega Saturn?

[*] Grandia - I'm not the first person to look at this one, and I've been told it's a total pain technically, so I might not have any luck. The text has a superficial similarity to MSL - it uses the same font as MSL and Lunar: EB for Sega CD, which makes me wonder if there are internal similarities.

It appears a Grandia translation is already in beta for disc 1, so progress is being made!

[Raining51]

One things that brought me to this site... I don't know how this is possible because I know nothing about fan translations but I've often been curious about the Saturn versions of Lunar since we never got to play them in America.

[Alunissage]

The Saturn versions of SSS and EB are functionally identical to the PS ones we played except for fewer bromides and dungeons (in EB). But the music sounds much better. There are lists of differences on the main site, but they're mainly focused on translation differences rather than Saturn/PSX differences since there aren't many.

Magical School Lunar, of course, has never been released outside of Japan.

[kazuya]

@Ms. Tea, I think what you're doing is awesome! If I can play 32 bit Lunar Magic School with translation it will be like finally playing Lunar 3 for me! Just wanted to say you're awesome

[Mr_conan]

Cross posting here, public beta is available for testing for SSS (Non-mpeg edition). https://segaxtreme.net/threads/translat ... ost-177952

[DragonmasterDan]

Cross posting here, public beta is available for testing for SSS (Non-mpeg edition). https://segaxtreme.net/threads/translat ... ost-177952

Thanks, I downloaded it a couple days ago. I'll need to see which version of the disc I have and try the patch.

[Ace_of_DiscaL]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m32DZeoUBk

This is another BETA gameplay video for you guys! I'm so excited to be able to play this on my new favourite console!!!

[ShugoHanasaki]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the point in translating something that has been translated already for so long?

[Sonic#]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the point in translating something that has been translated already for so long?

I don't speak for the people working on this, but I think the purpose here is to adapt one of the other translations to work with the Saturn version of the game.

The question is one I can answer more generally, since I've studied literary translation. The short answer is that there are several reasons why people translate something already translated. The longer answer is that I have a rare free hour and want to think this out, so here you go:

1. Because people have different purposes, goals, or interpretations when translating. Translation is not a one-to-one endeavor. Language is enormously complex, and there can be statements in one language that have no direct correspondent in another language. Also, individual translators may make a decision to translate more literally or to preserve the general sense of a text but adapt items that don't translate directly, like jokes or references unfamiliar to a target audience. In a sense, translation is an act of deep, deep interpretation followed by conveying the nuance of that interpretation to a target audience in another language. Whenever there's interpretation, even two people steeped in the material and attempting to be faithful to the text may reasonably disagree.

2. Because time. You ever read a public domain translation of something like the Iliad from before the 20th century? The diction tends to be archaic not because the original was that way, but because the writers were writing for the literary tastes of their time. Lunar has some of that - in the Working Designs translation, some of the references are firmly from the 1990s. At the very least, those could be either updated or made more generalized to last a longer time, but sooner or later someone would want to update it again to fit the present moment or the linguistic style du jour.

3. Because learning. Many translations start out of an individual desire to learn more about a text. After all, translation is a kind of interpretation. Many learners do their own translations of texts and treatises that they are interpreting, partly in order to better understand them. I have sometimes translated Latin, Middle English, or Old English into Modern English both to keep up my own language skills and to learn more about Lucretius, Chaucer, or the Wife's Lament. Of course I don't have to translate; I could merely read and understand the text. In my case, I like to translate sometimes. (Kizyr drew this distinction when discussing the J-E comparisons he made; he likes reading Japanese but doesn't like translating, IIRC.)

4. Because fun. I mean, if the past three paragraphs didn't convey the fun of translation ...

[Kizyr]

I will say, it can especially be fun to translate poetry that's already been translated before.

Back when I was taking literary/classical Japanese (roughly, how Japanese was written between the Heian and Meiji periods), our professor showed an example of 20 different translations of one of the most famous Basho haiku (while googling turns out there's a similar page for this here: http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passa ... o-frog.htm), each of which tried to get at a different angle of its meaning.

Prose instead of poetry is going to be straightforward, but it can be interesting to re-translate and simultaneously (a) understand the kinds of decisions the original translators made, and (b) figure out what decisions you might make instead.

In my case, like Sonic# said, I actually really don't like translating, and prefer to just go through and understand the text/dialog in the original language. I can get a lot of (a) out of it, and the only things I've ever spent a lot of time translating have been when I have a specific goal that I really want to achieve: in the case of Lunar it's because I really want more people to be able to understand more of the world, and in the case of things like newspaper articles or book passages it's because I'm translating it for someone else who I really want to be able to understand what's being said.

[ShugoHanasaki]

Thanks for letting me know some of the reasons!

[Alunissage]

So, I'm the one working on the text edits for this (which are not yet incorporated into the beta, FYI). In addition to all the points Sonic# raised, there's the consideration that some text editing is necessary simply because of the conversion from a later version of the game to an earlier one. The original Saturn release had fewer bromides, didn't have the Rememberizer, and so on, as well as other places where there's a bit more text that just doesn't line up for neat copy/paste into the Saturn code. Some pointer addresses were changed, so those need reconciling. And, of course, WD rearranged some things and made some lines longer or shorter and occasionally changed text portraits and all that, so either the WD lines or the Saturn code need to be changed to make it work. So since edits need to happen anyway, why not fix/update a few other things?

Here are some specific things I'm trying to fix:

1) Text inconsistencies (not just typos) with what's onscreen or previous dialogue. A lot of these are probably from the English dialogue being written separately from playing the game, which is very normal for localization -- for example, more than one parent speaks of having one child when there are two in their house, because the Japanese text doesn't indicate the number of children. There's a place where someone refers to Ghaleon as "her" while he's in the party, probably because the writer thought that the dialogue happened later, when Mia was in the party, so "that person" in Japanese became "her" in English. There's also a place where the Lann boatman's dialogue branches (the same time that conditions getting Jessica's Bromide 2 in SSSC) but some of the branching got mixed together in SSSC and could use disentangling.

2) Text that isn't displayed correctly. This is usually because WD needed to change something about the text boxes -- English taking two boxes where the Japanese took one, or vice versa -- and a code got omitted or put in the wrong place. Sometimes the error is from a bigger change, such as giving Alex a line that was originally Nall's in the White Dragon Cave, and the wrong remove-character-portrait code was used so both their portraits stay up.

3) Text that isn't shown at all due to code errors. There is text that is never seen, in both English and Japanese, because the combination of conditions for it never occurs. For example, the guy that Ramus conned in the beginning of the game has a line that he's supposed to say after the 30s is paid and Ramus has left the party, but before going to the White Dragon Cave--but this never happens in the game (Ramus stays in the party until after getting the Diamond), so I found somewhere else to put it. At least, I hope I did.

4) Story-related errors. Sometimes these are simply spoilers, such as referring to Magic Emperor Ghaleon while Ghaleon is still in the party, probably also from writing the English text without seeing where it occurs in the game. But some errors are in the Japanese as well, legacy from starting with the TSS text, such as talking about how the weather has been unseasonably warm in Burg and the river is therefore running high, or references to Quark being killed rather than imprisoned. WD fixed most of these that I've noticed so far but not all. WD also introduced some of their own from reusing TSS dialogue.

Those are the fairly objective ones. More subjective, of course, are where the WD and Japanese text diverge, and I just have to use my best judgment there. I tend to err on the side of keeping the WD text unless leaving it unchanged makes for an inconsistency that needs fixing, perhaps from changing only part of a line or ongoing conversation. The drunk in Meribia says "Ghaleon? No, I think I'm only on my second quart", to which Nall replies "I guess you're never too young to become a lush." In Japanese, the drunk thinks Ghaleon is the name of that well-known liquor he had when he was a kid, so Nall's response makes sense. I like the WD joke, which is very in line with the various Japanese puns throughout the game, but Nall's response will need some fixing.

[Kizyr]

The drunk in Meribia says "Ghaleon? No, I think I'm only on my second quart", to which Nall replies "I guess you're never too young to become a lush." In Japanese, the drunk thinks Ghaleon is the name of that well-known liquor he had when he was a kid, so Nall's response makes sense. I like the WD joke, which is very in line with the various Japanese puns throughout the game, but Nall's response will need some fixing.

Oh I totally missed this when I played through. But that is an amazing joke translation. KF

[Alunissage]

The best pun translation I've noticed is something the befuddled priest in Althena's Shrine says, after talking about putting armor on (and doing it badly). In Japanese, he then says, approximately, "Isn't a shield [tate] what you plant in the spring?" and Nall replies "No, those are seeds [tane]!" In SSSC, it's this:

Priest:
So this is a shield? How do you grow
plants in it?

Nall [shocked]:
Wait...do you mean ""field""?

Alex, I'm beginning to think
this guy's affected by much
more than a confusion spell.


Priest:
え～っと　タテというと
毎年　春に畑にまく　あれかのゥ？

Nall [shocked]:
そりゃ　タネだろ！
なんで　そうなるんだよッ

[Veritas Volpe]

Hey guys,

thanks for translating this awesome game for Saturn. Hope we can see a translation for Saturns Eternal Blue and Magic School soon too = )

Anyway, I started to play the translation patch. I intend to finish the game, so I will continue testing. If a bug or another error happens I will inform here.

just a quick observation: I know Saturn can have, as other video games of its time, painful loading times. After every battle or screen transition (in a town, for example) the loading appears to be taking more time then normal. It's because of the translation or Lunar Silver Star Story was always like that on Sega Saturn? Sorry, long time that I don't play this game.

I played on my channel too, but just for testing. Don't intend to make a series of it as I'm doing with Symphony of the Night: https://fb.watch/1CkmuOJnMT/

[Veritas Volpe]

I don't know if this is a bug, but when I delivered he Sea Chart to the captain in Saith, the information on the top of the screen was: "ISea Chart..." with an "I" in front. Sorry, didn't manage to take a picture at the time.

[Alunissage]

Thanks, I'll check the spreadsheet of item names that I sent to the programmer long ago. I might've typoed it myself.

[Mr_conan]

That was a bug in an older version of the patch. Make sure you patched with 1.1.2f (yeah i should work on the version numbering...) https://segaxtreme.net/threads/translat ... 64/page-10
If its still in that version i may have accidentally let it slip back in.

As for the load times, for some reason they all got substantially worse when rebuilding the disc with mkisofs. I havent figured out whats going on yet, other than if you painstakingly use cdmage to insert all the changed files instead, then there is no cd load issue. Im in the middle of getting mpeg edition video working (the game is finnicky with the format), so it might be a while before i get back around to examine the load issue.

[Veritas Volpe]

That was a bug in an older version of the patch. Make sure you patched with 1.1.2f (yeah i should work on the version numbering...) https://segaxtreme.net/threads/translat ... 64/page-10
If its still in that version i may have accidentally let it slip back in.

As for the load times, for some reason they all got substantially worse when rebuilding the disc with mkisofs. I havent figured out whats going on yet, other than if you painstakingly use cdmage to insert all the changed files instead, then there is no cd load issue. Im in the middle of getting mpeg edition video working (the game is finnicky with the format), so it might be a while before i get back around to examine the load issue.

Sorry, I didn't know. I'm using this version: Lunar_sss_beta1.1.1.

I will burn the 1.1.2 version today. Is the save compatible? Don't want to have to start again from the beginning xD

I see, the loading times are really something, Saturn had that already painsome loading times, specially in 3D games (playing Deep Fear is a loading horror party).

I was wondering, are being made translations of Lunar School and Eternal Blue 2 for the Saturn?