Dragon Quest Delocalized Projects

[Chicken Knife]

Just submited a very minor update of DQ1's patch. It includes only a handful of text corrections that came to surface after the last major release.

As far as my activities, I've completed my major revision of DQ2's script. In the end, I'd say about 90 percent of the lines were revised. It's interesting how my philosophy evolved between initially working on the DQ2 script and now. A couple years ago when this all started, I was mostly intent on removing censorship, adding all the cool stuff from the Japanese version, and retaining some of the English version's text embellishments that didn't seem out of place. Ever since working on the DQ3 script, our approach has become more purist, I would say. I simply removed all forms of embellishment this time. And in the course of these revisions, appx 300 characters were actually added to the script. There were many neglected details from the Japanese that warranted further development.

So, now that nejimakipiyo is working on their side of the DQ2 revision process, I've been busy tinkering with DQ3 again. The insert script is up and running, and I've used it to get all the new spell names, item names, and monster names fully inserted. Now, for the time consuming part of getting each line from our translation document plugged into the insert script. I'll be revising all the text along the way, of course. And I have absolutely no clue how long this will take me. I really look forward to skipping this whole porting text process when we work on DQ4.

[JSGoethe]

Hello. I love this patch. I just noticed a few errors in the script and wanted to point them out. I looked in the topic and didn't find them, so sorry if these are redundant. All of these are from the latest version on the site.

1: There's a merchant in Ladatorm, and his dialogue was okay before I applied the newest patch. Now it says 'Rumor has it, entire townshave bbeen destroyed by the monsters.' I'm not good at grammar, but I think I'd remove that comma too.

2: A red soldier in Rimuldar: 'Ismonstera sword in the land that can pierce the Dragon King's body?' Should this be 'Is there a sword' instead?

3: When you use the stairs command with no stairs: 'here are no stairs here..'

Those were the obvious ones. A couple more that just seemed slightly awkward to me...

1: Girl in Rimuldar: 'Chun is already late meeting me.' I have no idea how else to phrase it, but it seems a little weird. Maybe it's just me.

2: Soldier in Ladatorm: 'If you want to take a break, visit the king and record in the Adventure Log.' IMO this would be more natural if he said 'record your journey' or something. It's obvious what he means by context/experience though.

Please keep up the good work.

Edit is the puff puff girl in Rimuldar incomplete? She doesn't give me a choice, just asks the question. I was looking forward to it. XD

[Chicken Knife]

@JSGoethe

Thanks for the feedback! I wasn't under the impression that the garbled text errors you listed here were in the latest version (or any version). Question: did you patch over a clean rom or did you apply the patch to a version of the rom that was already patched by a previous version? We have a pretty thorough multi-person scrubbing process which took place after the last major update, and I'm rather certain we would have caught this. Nevertheless, I will certainly check.

As for the non-garbled text suggestions:

I believe that "Rumor has it" should be set off by a comma, unless it's followed by the word "that", at least according to the grammar resources I've been checking lately.

"Chun is already late meeting me." I agree that this line could be improved. Chun was supposed to meet me, but he's late." could be an improvement.

I'm not particularly bothered by the "record in the Adventure Log" line, but it would also do no harm to take your suggestion. I have to see where I stand with free characters, however. I think i'm relatively at my limit in DQ1, but that doesn't mean I can't fish around for other text to make more efficient.

As far as the puff puff in DQ1, that's how it was in the Japanese. Really simple, and she doesn't clearly follow through. When you find the Rupugana/Lianport puff puff girl in DQ2 Delocalized, she definitely follows through. Just make sure the princess is dead when you go to her.

I'll edit this statement once I confirm what you noted about garbled text.

*EDIT

I patched 1.09 to a clean rom and I didn't get the garbled text that you pointed out. I'm fairly confident, especially by how you phrased updating the rom, that you may have patched over the existing patch--which is generally a no-no with doing any patch updates. I did manage to have space to rework the two lines you pointed out. I'll probably hold off on another tiny update now and include those when I've collected a few more things. FYI, if you move on to DQ2, there is a major update that should be coming in a week or two where the text will be thoroughly updated.

[JSGoethe]

That explains it...I did it on a patched rom...I suck at computers and learned patching recently. XD Sorry about that.

Thanx for the reply. I guess I'll see about the puff puff.

[AdamDravian]

I believe that "Rumor has it" should be set off by a comma, unless it's followed by the word "that", at least according to the grammar resources I've been checking lately.

You're correct. "Rumor has it" functions as an introductory clause and should be offset by a comma.

Commas are surprisingly tricky bastards. Especially since so many of our US English teachers incorrectly thought us that commas merely go whenever there should be a slight pause in a sentence.

[Chicken Knife]

That explains it...I did it on a patched rom...I suck at computers and learned patching recently. XD Sorry about that.

Don't worry, we were all new to this at one point.

You're correct. "Rumor has it" functions as an introductory clause and should be offset by a comma.

Commas are surprisingly tricky bastards. Especially since so many of our US English teachers incorrectly thought us that commas merely go whenever there should be a slight pause in a sentence.

This is so completely true! I used to use this method of judging them by ear and know some very intelligent people that do the same. I think that the best anyone is going to achieve with this method is 80% accuracy. There is a whole science of sorts behind comma usage, and I've kind of gotten to enjoy it.

Btw, there's going to be a big change with the puff puff character in the major upcoming DQ2 update. Nejimakipiyo stumbled upon Tomato's excellent article on the word "okama" yesterday, which provoked a couple hours of conversation with our native speaking friend, Masafumi, about how we should best handle the referenced DQ2 line. https://legendsoflocalization.com/okama-in-game-translation/. Masafumi completely agrees with Tomato on this and gave us some additional insights that were helpful. Our previous rendering, incidentally aligning fairly closely to the SFC fan translation, was a mix-up based on the Japanese language's lack of words indicating whether a person is referring to themselves or someone else. That always has to be derived contextually. The way the word okama is said in DQ2 reflects self identification and would not give the sense of being vulgar in this usage. Therefore, I think we've managed to work out something that is both reasonably accurate and wouldn't come across as a slur. Coming soon!

[Chicken Knife]

Updates:

1. The very significant revision I've been talking about for DQ2 is out. Lots of new lines of Japanese text have been added. Some embellishment removed. Improved punctuation, etc etc. Nearly everything has been rewritten to some extent.

2. A minor update to DQ1 Delocalized is also out. It fixes the lines talked about above along with a couple others. But it was primarily released because I discovered and fixed a mirroring issue that happened with one of the sprites in the US graphics / Japanese palettes optional graphics patch.

3. We officially named our group "Translation Quest", registered the group here on RHDN, and changed authorship of the Delocalized projects to be under Translation Quest. The upcoming Dragon Warrior Monsters improvement / retranslation project will also be under Translation Quest.

4. We set up a twitter account: https://twitter.com/TranslationQst. Would love everyone interested in our work to follow it.

5. I've completed the insertion phase for the DQ3 retranslation. It actually fit very nicely. It became apparent to me that the original localizers didn't need to make any real effort to be space efficient. I haven't had to make any compromises so far either, thankfully. Now, I'm in the middle of a test play-through where I'm continuing to heavily revise. I'm sure anyone following these projects understands by now that I won't be happy with a piece of writing until I've gone through 5 rounds of revision. That DQ3 script I posted here a year ago is nothing but a primitive rough draft at this stage. I don't expect any major overhauls in the future to the DQ3 text like what was recently done for DQ1 and DQ2. We approached the DQ3 translation process much more rigorously right from the beginning.

6. I'm looking to soon have all the text stuff over and done with, and then I want to focus only on the hacking elements. @abw, I know I've been a bit of a flake with the hacking advice you've given lately, but I'm going to revist all of that shortly. It's like I use two whole different brains between the writing and the hacking. Transitioning between them is always a challenge.

[Chicken Knife]

Submitted version 1.11 of DQ1 Delocalized and version 1.12 of DQ2 Delocalized.

Somewhat meaningful updates, I'd say.

DQ1 had a very broken white menu border during the fight with the final form of the Dragon King. It was pretty bad, all kinds of holes in the border for every window. I checked back to earlier versions, and this problem has existed in every version of the patch. It ended up simply being a horizontal border tile that got overwritten with a blank tile at some point. Kind of amazing that no one noticed this after all this time.

DQ2 now includes abw's text sound off patch. This allowed me to make the formatting of speaker notation, particularly during the prologue in DQII, look a heck of a lot nicer.

After running our DQ3 script through a spell check, I realized I'd never done that for DQ1 & DQ2... and I found some things. A small handful of things in DQ1, but a fair number in DQ2. One interesting one was learning that Jailor is mostly considered a medieval, non-contemporary spelling. So now we will have the Jailer's Key.

In addition to spelling issues, there were a few other lines that were touched up, as well as the epilogue text in DQ1. There was a translation issue there that was addressed.

For DQ3, script is done, inserted, tested, etc. Title screen is mostly done. Those following the other technical thread have been witnessing me fumble through the process of fixing  technical issues / making improvements. I hope to succeed with a couple more before we release.

[Chicken Knife]

Took a brief pause from the really technical stuff on DQ3 Delocalized to finish up the title screen. Here we are:

[jim35]

which of the dragon quest games are available uncut dialog wise and edit wise in English officially?

[Chicken Knife]

They all have their share of problems from my point of view. The more recent localizations tend to have less censorship, but they still have some. And since the release of Dragon Quest VIII, the localized scripts have been full of exaggerated text-based accents for various cultures that were not part of Horii's original games, and that many find either annoying or offensive. There are also distinct elements of unnecessary westernization. For instance, we got the Hawaii themed Lonalulu location in DQXI, when the original Japanese location reflected the Japanese culture of what is probably the Ryukyu islands. The overall tone of the modern localizations has been made significantly more lighthearted and comical in how they turn all the namings into silly puns. The Japanese originals do have puns and silly moments, but not nearly to the same extent.

Of the official localizations, I'd say that the Game Boy versions of 1, 2 and 3 reflect the style and the tone fairly well, but there are a number of curious inconsistencies and translation errors to be found.

[jim35]

i wish i could play the whole series excluding x because of the mmo nature of the game with a pure translation of the games without it being nonsensical in a English translation

[Chicken Knife]

Let's see how the future plays out. If I'm the one doing most of the hacking, our team will almost certainly not end up doing retranslations of VII and onward. From what I've gathered, the technical requirements change completely when dealing with more modern systems. But if our body of work develops enough of a following that skilled and dedicated hackers want to partner up and handle the technical side of future releases, our team is probably capable of providing translations for the entire main series excluding X.

[jim35]

i hope so i really wanted to play this series but i really hate censorship in almost all forms

[Chicken Knife]

Look, considering how I've been spending much of my free time in the last couple years, it should be clear that I hate censorship and needless alterations as much as anyone. But I will say this: regardless of the flaws in the versions we got, it's still an incredible RPG series, probably the grandest of them all. I wouldn't have embarked on these projects if I wasn't so deeply in love with the series based on the localized versions, in spite of all the flaws.

[CoolCatBomberMan]

Personally, I really like the lighthearted tone of the modern localisations. It gives DQ a more unique writing style you don't often see, IMO. RPGs don't always have to be down-to-earth globetrotters. Still, I greatly appreciate the existence of your translations, if only to sate my curiosity of how the games are seen from a more "JP-accurate" perspective. Best of luck towards future releases! 

[Chicken Knife]

Thank you! And I think that's a pretty fair point of view. In spite of my list of criticisms and my difference in philosophy over what a translation should aspire to be, I can see the uniqueness behind the official localization approach, and I can also see that there are some very talented writers involved. Someone commented on another thread recently that the video game community is still trying to get their head wrapped around the concept of valuing the existence of multiple translations. I hope we get there!

[blipform]

The official revised scripts match the tone of the newer games, some fantasy fun that doesn't rub off that death, apocalypse feeling of your typical serious, gloomy "horror" story.

But I don't think 1 or even 2 localizations will ever cover the whole entire picture. There's many "valid" interpretations of the content and context that it's worth checking them all, if you're interested in what others bring to the (DQ) scene.

It may not "match" what the original creator intended but there is value in making it your own; go see the lots of fan fiction out there.


tl;dr. Yes! I'm happy there's more "multi-verse" interpretations of these games. I don't consider there to be 1 ultimate definitive forever translation.

[Chicken Knife]

I don't consider there to be 1 ultimate definitive forever translation.

This part, I'll agree with because there will never be a single translation philosophy that everyone will consider ideal.

The official revised scripts match the tone of the newer games, some fantasy fun that doesn't rub off that death, apocalypse feeling of your typical serious, gloomy "horror" story.

But I don't think 1 or even 2 localizations will ever cover the whole entire picture. There's many "valid" interpretations of the content and context that it's worth checking them all, if you're interested in what others bring to the (DQ) scene.

I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that the contemporary official scripts of the newer games match the tone. When DQXI first came out here, I played it in English at the same time as my native Japanese friend & future collaborator, dattebayo, played it in Japanese. We were in constant discussion as we played, making all kinds of textual comparisons. It was eye opening for me, and for dattebayo, the extent of the liberties felt like a betrayal of the essence of Dragon Quest. I'm not going to get into all the particulars. That would be easier for me to do with the early games since I've been directly involved in translating them. But I do think that a comparative study of the spell, ability, equipment & monster names alone will sufficiently demonstrate that the contemporary English releases aim to be consistently comical where the Japanese style aims to be epic and serious. People get mislead by the fact that there *are* puns and silly humor in Japanese Dragon Quest. That does not mean that the extent of them comes anywhere near matching. When we do our translation work, we always try to stay 1:1 with the humor. That doesn't mean we literally translate the instances; we are perfectly willing to adapt the text in a way that conforms to English humor. But we work hard to not not add to or subtract from the amount of humor.

And if you haven't read through this very helpful Legends of Localization article on Dragon Quest IV, I recommend it.
https://legendsoflocalization.com/lets-talk-aboot-those-dragon-quest-iv-accents/

[line2666]

I heard that DQ4 NES Japan was playful but most of it got lost in the translation.


I also read a bit about the DQ7 translation and it surprised me some bit. Loved that game for each mini-story, and that it's so impossibly filled with never-ending text. Never tried any of the modern remakes though.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/688276-dragon-quest-vii-fragments-of-the-forgotten-past/77164275


Are the MSX versions of DQ1+2 worth dissecting? And I know that the SNES series was translated (DQ1+2 remix, DQ3 remix, DQ5, most of DQ6, Torneko) but any chance of a revisit? Hearsay told me that #3 could use a better rewrite.

It's nice that someone did them already and I appreciate having gone through some of them but .. I like the deeper scripts your versions bring (finished DQ1, partly played DQ2 but on break). I've only played DQ3 GBC and DQ4 for some reason I still never got around to.


I really should replay the NES (and maybe GBC) vanilla versions once more so I can submit a fair on-site review with judgment in your favor.


One last question in this confusing post. I've heard that sometimes Japanese text needs to be read out loud to get the fuller context. How would that compare or be expressed in the English localizations?


Okay. One extra question. I'm assuming nothing got cut out from your work so far (1,2) in terms of space or visual limitations and it's basically done and dusted, ready to archive for posterity? Otherwise I'd like to hold off on finishing DQ2; don't want to miss anything extra.