On translations and technical difficulties … (Part 1)
Remembering the stormy youth and the heyday of my translation activity, I cannot but note that for the most part they were built on one enthusiasm. However, now, at the time of employment and lack of sufficient free time, enthusiasm has gone out, but the love of translations has not cooled down. Now I am preparing for a rather interesting project, and I would like to tell you about "difficulties of translation". I will take two projects as examples: Resident Evil Zero (+HD Remaster) And WinX Club (2006).
Vinx’s fairies are still bending ..
Let’s start with a simpler. Game on the animated series "Vinx club"Published Konami In 2006. Oddly enough, the game was pretty good. This is a good (for playing a girl’s cartoon) an action-platformer where the study is replaced by platforming, platforming in battles (the combat system is built at evasions, target and firing fireballs), and fighting again. Maybe somehow I will write a review later, but in this article we are interested in … the inner world of the game, or rather its files. I will not disassemble the version for PS2 (However, in it I dug in, trying to get the videos better with quality). Our goal is a version for PC. So. What do we need to look for in the game in terms of translation?
-Font. This must be watched and sought in the first place, since it is not enough to get one text. If you want to make a quality translation, you will have to get confused and insert the Russian alphabet into the font. If for some reason this does not work out, then some gifted personalities cost the method that the pirates in the 90s/early zero-replacing the Latin on the Russian font, as a result of which the text turned into "POMOGNTE!". But, fortunately, Winx Club They did not seek and happily swallowed a new font from a friend Thief1987, So the text could be written in pure Russian.
-Text. Here is already more fun. To begin with, the text in the game on 209kb (this is the size of the already packed text). Of these, 130 KB – Subtitles of the screensavers, 13 KB – The Text of the menu, 57 KB – the text of intra -game dialogs and 9 KB – training. And text with the names of the characters that is contained in EXE Games. Here the first difficulties have already begun to emerge. If with formats WXT (System text and dialogs), but with SPS Helped to figure it out JK232431, then with the text of the name they never figured out. In addition, its change led to the disappearance of the models of the heroes in the game itself, so it was decided to remove it. From the reason higher, I had to leave the name Bloom in English for "authenticity" in the texts of the clues. Why specifically in tutorial hints they decided to take the name not from EXE, And from a file with hints – it is incomprehensible. But we sharply jumped off the task set above. As you already understood, the game has two formats of the text – WXT And SPS. That the first, that the second was disassembled and even convenient software was written for their conversion in TXT. What is funny, the developers left a program for creating a video for a video for creating SPS-files, however, bringing it to a working state was not provided possible.
Also, the developers did not take care of at least some tags, providing you with such a text ..
Cool, yes? As a result, it turned out to be a rather path situation. If the video subtitles could still be somehow translated (good video and voice acting have the same names), then the dialogs are translated. It was something with something, because I took up the game without refreshing the events. This factor and the “laziness” of the developers led to the fact that this game was meticulously I and two more of my good friends. However, even now, if you download the game and translation of the version as much as 1.2, most likely you will find a bunch of errors, because … more on that below.
It’s funny, there were no tags https://regalwinscasino.uk/bonus/ for transfer in the text. What is it? This is when the line has approximately the same type: well, Masao, get up, it is too early to die%! As you can see, a special symbol has appeared in the middle of the sentence. He is responsible for the transfer of lines already in the game itself. And when tags appear in the text, you have to calculate the number of characters, which can fit in a line and dance from it. But not in WinX! I am wildly awesome that the game itself makes transfers. And the system was never mistaken. I am amazed how the outfits came up with this and why I have never seen this anywhere else.
-Textures. Usually, for some unknown "savings", Developers like to hang the menu buttons on the textures and other rubbish. However, in this case, it was lucky – the entire text of the menu was in the form of a text file. Therefore, about textures could be safely forgotten. In this case, I limited myself to the addition of the logo "Zone of Games»On the screen with the logo of the companies (to get the texture and packet helped Ttemma).
When they finish dealing with three data points, the translation process begins, however … you understand how not this project was not profitable? If the people take up the "successful" games, then for such renegades as Winx Club – No. Asking a friend Bloody Mery and having achieved any more support, we started the translation. Bloody Mery The text of subtitles for rollers was given to be torn to pieces, everything else was. As you can guess, the system text and tips were the first to translate. Ask why? Yes, because you can do a corny check at the very beginning of the game. In the future, it was for dialogs.
However, problems arose with them. Since I translated them alone, without memories of the game (at the time of the first edition), and often at night in delirium, then the quality was appropriate. Our passage with his comrades and the localization of the series helped to bring to a more or less normal state (as I remembered the Domino), but even now there is not enough solid editorial hand in dialogs. For the editor was not trite. Alas, my capabilities are not enough to master the whole text alone. Therefore, shake on the mustache – Anyone The project needs an intelligent editor. Otherwise it will be … this:
In addition to translating texts, I tried to pack up with the improvement of video locations. Two ideas appeared in my head at once, but not a single development received, but more about them.
1) improve the quality of the rollers.
Let’s start with the fact that the rollers in PC-Not the best quality version. The sound path for them is stored in Mp2 (And no, I was not mistaken), and the videos themselves are encoded in the militizer resolution (640*480). In the version for PS2 The videos, of course, were not 1280*720, And even less – 512*512, however, they were not shaking and looked quite normal. An attempt to postpone the rollers was made. But here I was waiting for a bummer in the form of a codec MPEG-1.
Before that, I at one time picked the PC version of the Resident Evil: Gun Survivor (that “translation” could be seen in the history of the series from Vasily Galperov). There was, in principle, the same situation with the rollers – a wretched compression and indecent view. However, there, suddenly, it was possible to change the format of the video, and make them in full screen, increasing the resolution to 1280*720. There were work to shoot all the videos from the PS1 version and replace them, but did not grow together. The retreat is over. Trying to crank the same trick as in Gun Survivor, I faced such a problem as "Codec built into the game". As one person prompted, the fact is that the player with the MPEG-1 codec is sewn in the exeges. Any change in the format leads to the departure of the game on the moment on which the video begins to play.
Having failed when replacing a codec, I tried to dance as part of the MPEG-1 codec. However, Fale is here. Yes, you can replace the videos and even make 720r in the framework of the codec, but after such a replacement, the game will also fly out. But then the video will show completely. Therefore, the only video that I replaced is the credits of the game where I made our team and translated all posts with names.
2) an attempt to attach Russian voice acting.
Oddly enough, this is quite possible. The sound path lies separately, the cartoon is on torrents in Russian dubbing. However, the problem is in the number of rollers. There are three types of them:
-Speeses from the cartoon.
-Drawn videos.
-3D animation made by development.
And if you can attach a voice acting from the cartoon to the screensaver from the cartoon:
Then to the rest of the screensavers – nothing. In addition, in the game itself there are enough dialogs that will add dissonance when the Russian screensaver is replaced by English voice acting in the game, and therefore this idea has sunk into oblivion. In other things, if there are similar voice actors, you can try to re -call the game. Everything is in the public domain.
As you can see, even a translation of such a game as Winx Club can cause a lot of problems (to a greater extent – technical). However, it was relatively simple here ..
