Dragon Quest Delocalized Projects

[CoolCatBomberMan]

Chicken Kinfe and team:

I'm a looong-time lurker here (I joined this community just before Demi released the FF2j translation), and just wanted to pop out and say kudos to the masterful job you've done with the Dragon Quest 1 patch I'm playing through, and I'm looking forward to tackling 2 and 3 next. I had a question about DQ1:

The NA release of Dragon Warrior had a bug where the Fighter's Ring/Warrior Ring did nothing at all. Do you know a) if this bug was in the original Japanese release, b) is this bug present in the Delocalized DQ1, c) if so, do you have any thoughts/opinions on fixing it?

Thanks for all of the time/energy you've spent on this project!

I thought the ring was only meant to serve as a joke? In Rimuldar, an NPC berates you for not wearing a ring, like a real man. Talk to him again with the ring equipped, and he berates you for wearing a ring, like some kind of sissy. I just recently beat the switch version, and the ring does absolutely nothing.

[lilpuddy31]

From what I've researched about the ring, deep diving through the code of all the various versions on DW1/DQ1 have revealed the ring does absolutely nothing

[Chicken Knife]

From what I can gather, Holy Water in DQIV not only damages enemies vulnerable to the Expel spell, but rather, any enemy, really.
Fairy Water in DWIV only damages enemies vulnerable to the Expel spell.

Haven't heard that about Torneko's wife selling Holy Water before (although that might be because I haven't ever finished Torneko's chapter whenever I got to it.)

Seems like the Torneko's wife bit was just some random and inaccurate nonsense I read online the other day. As far as the effect of damaging all enemies, looks like it was possibly a bug in the Japanese version. I'd be curious to see how this was handled in the remakes as to get a sense of the intent. The US version of Dragon Warrior IV did have a few other obvious bugs fixed.

I thought the ring was only meant to serve as a joke? In Rimuldar, an NPC berates you for not wearing a ring, like a real man. Talk to him again with the ring equipped, and he berates you for wearing a ring, like some kind of sissy. I just recently beat the switch version, and the ring does absolutely nothing.

I agree with this, and the comment about there being nothing in the code or future versions indicating an intended benefit.

[Maidentree]

Seems like the Torneko's wife bit was just some random and inaccurate nonsense I read online the other day. As far as the effect of damaging all enemies, looks like it was possibly a bug in the Japanese version. I'd be curious to see how this was handled in the remakes as to get a sense of the intent. The US version of Dragon Warrior IV did have a few other obvious bugs fixed.

From playing a bit of the remake, and using Holy Water in battle, I can verify that it does do a bit of damage to enemies (haven't tried all enemies, but I have thrown it at a handful)

[eternalsage]

I really like the majority of what you got going on here with 1, 2, and 3. Haven't played them in-depth (time is short atm) just a few hours of each. My only complaints are minor, in that I like the US names for the places and the modern spells. But hey, that's ok, because I really appreciate the effort, and its something I can't do, so don't consider this a complaint, so much as a thanks from someone with slightly different tastes. If there could be an optional patch to change those things back, that would be cool, but I get it if that is not feasible or wanted, given the stated purpose of the hacks otherwise.

Also, I think it would be neat to have the Japanese title screens. But again. no worries if that is beyond the scope of the project or just generally not desired, that is totally understandable. Thank you for all of your hard work!

[nejimakipiyo]

eternalsage, thank you for your feedback!

the US names for the places and the modern spells

We don't really agree with the translation direction the official guys took with naming things.

As far as location names go, the official translations kept some as their original (Japanese) name, and seemed to arbitrarily change others. Perhaps to fit the medieval theme they were going with.
For spell names, the modern ones have a similar initial approach to the Japanese spells (word + prefixes and suffixes) but theirs results in what we consider a silly sound.

Delocalized wouldn't really be Delocalized if we used official naming schemes, since those are a large part of what we're delocalizing.  Of course, we don't mind using official names in instances where we feel the team really nailed it.

[Chicken Knife]

eternalsage, thank you for your feedback!

We don't really agree with the translation direction the official guys took with naming things.

As far as location names go, the official translations kept some as their original (Japanese) name, and seemed to arbitrarily change others. Perhaps to fit the medieval theme they were going with.
For spell names, the modern ones have a similar initial approach to the Japanese spells (word + prefixes and suffixes) but theirs results in what we consider a silly sound.

Delocalized wouldn't really be Delocalized if we used official naming schemes, since those are a large part of what we're delocalizing.  Of course, we don't mind using official names in instances where we feel the team really nailed it.

Yeah, totally made up translation elements just don't jibe with us unfortunately. Not that everything we do is always a 100% direct translation (that would produce all kinds of awkward results in English), but every choice we've been making reflects an attempt to be faithful to the Japanese. There have been some more conservative translations of the Japanese scripts in the past, but this is the only project we are aware of that has dispensed with all the made-up choices from the official localizations. That is kind of our main thing, and we wouldn't be true to our objectives by making compromises there.

Philosophically, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a more adaptive approach to translations. People who love the adaptive approach already have some great options with the DQ series. We'd just rather cater to people who want a purely conservative approach, and we think it ultimately works pretty well for the material.

[eternalsage]

That's cool. I can understand. I just feel like the newer spell names fit the more whimsical nature of the series a little better. But as you mentioned, I already have a lot of options to give me that, I just really like your text otherwise LOL. Regardless, you are doing a great job, and thank you for giving my favorite JRPG series the love it deserves! Final Fantasy is given too much attention, and DQ too little, great to even that out a little LOL.

[Chicken Knife]

That's cool. I can understand. I just feel like the newer spell names fit the more whimsical nature of the series a little better.

I think the official spell names fit the contemporary localizations overall very well, because everything has that whimsical, silly, goofy kind of style. When you increase the pun usage from the japanese by 2000%, use all these over the top accents, have really fluffed up writing even when there isn't accents, I think the light hearted and silly style of those spell names fits perfectly.

I don't really agree they fit with our text, which has some fun or silly elements now and then per the Japanese, but is overall a lot more serious in nature.

The original Japanese spell names rarely sound silly to that audience. They sound exotic, mysterious, cool, powerful. That's what our native Japanese partner has conveyed to us. While we were impressed that the contemporary spell names structurally achieved some equivalency with the Japanese system with expanding prefixes and suffixes, the feeling was just far too different. Furthermore, the meaning in the official English names is generally a little more apparent than how the Japanese names worked. People complain sometimes that they look at ours and don't immediately know what they do, but that was an intended equivalency to the Japanese system. The player was supposed to get a new spell and say: hmmm what does this do? All that was intended was a hint.

PS: we decided to remove the spell name in game pics from the publish pages of these patches. Not that we aren't proud of them and want to bury them (far from the case), but we notice that people tend to look at those, get confronted by all these very different new names all at once, many of which not being immediately clear on their meaning or function, and they tend to make snap judgments. The right way to experience these spell names is in the games, one by one as you receive them or the enemies use them. Will be making those image edits soon.

Regardless, you are doing a great job, and thank you for giving my favorite JRPG series the love it deserves! Final Fantasy is given too much attention, and DQ too little, great to even that out a little LOL.

Strong agree. Even though I use a Final Fantasy handle and have done a couple Final Fantasy related hacks (mostly for the sake of my own OCD), we've focused on DQ because, yes, the franchise needed more love in comparison.

[eternalsage]

Very cool. And your reasoning makes total sense. I definitively hate all the weird accents in the US games (although the puns are fun, lol) and any game in which you fight little slimes wearing knight helmets has got to be a little whimsical, the spell names do not need to be that place. The new place names are just harder for me to remember, not sounding like real places very much. I think the US place names managed to hit that "real place" sounds very well, which is a problem with many JRPGs.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with me about it! Are you planning on tackling PS1 DQ 4 or any of the later games in the series? I would love to have a single consistent style from beginning to end LOL. In the end, I really think that is closer to my REAL issue here. But again, even if its just the NES stuff, nothing but love and support for you guys. I appreciate your hard work and dedication no matter what your plans are for the future.

[Chicken Knife]

Thanks for taking the time to talk with me about it! Are you planning on tackling PS1 DQ 4 or any of the later games in the series? I would love to have a single consistent style from beginning to end LOL. In the end, I really think that is closer to my REAL issue here. But again, even if its just the NES stuff, nothing but love and support for you guys. I appreciate your hard work and dedication no matter what your plans are for the future.

There's been talk of DQ4 PS1, but the people working on the technical end of that seem to have slowed down. I've privately played around with DQ5 SNES a little, nejimakipiyo has dabbled with Dragon Quest Monsters II, and we recently initiated groundwork for DQI&II SNES based on the bug fixes.

I agree that the new naming systems become a lot more appealing when there are a number of games available where you can use them. We will be moving forward slowly through the series, where we will tend to prioritize things that require less extensive technical expertise, or where we have partners handling that end of things, as we can move faster that way and spend more time doing what we love--working on translation.

And with the Japanese style names being a little less memorable, perhaps that's true for DQ1 & DQ2, where towns tended to have some exotic names in Japanese. The localizations bring about clear ideas in comparison like Hauksness vs Domdora or Lianport/Rippleport vs Rupugana. But again, the Japanese names were intended to sound strange / exotic to the audience. We are reproducing that intention.

[Cavery210]

This might help you. It has transcripts for every single line in Dragon Quest IV and VI. https://nayukaaaaa.nomaki.jp/wp/
Here's a Dragon Quest 5 transcript: http://light37.web.fc2.com/dragon/dq5/dq5story.htm

[Willo567]

This is a great project you're working on! Out of curiosity, would it be possible to replace the U.S. title screens with their Japanese equivalent, or is that technically infeasible?

[Chicken Knife]

This might help you. It has transcripts for every single line in Dragon Quest IV and VI. https://nayukaaaaa.nomaki.jp/wp/
Here's a Dragon Quest 5 transcript: http://light37.web.fc2.com/dragon/dq5/dq5story.htm

Thank you! These may be useful.

This is a great project you're working on! Out of curiosity, would it be possible to replace the U.S. title screens with their Japanese equivalent, or is that technically infeasible?

I think I elaborated somewhere above that I'd like to include options for this at some point. Doing these should be feasible, but like most other things with hacking, would be a lot of work. If anyone created stand-alone hacks to restore the original Japanese title screens, I'd be sure to include them as options with credit.

@all

Someone brought a question to my attention with DQ3 Delocalized having to do with a disappearing clone of a female greeter in Baharata. When you first visit, there are two purple haired / pink dressed females saying "Welcome to the town of Baharata.", but after you rescue Tania and Gupta from the kidnappers, there will be only one girl saying that. A few questions come to mind. Is this normal behavior for the original game, or did we somehow introduce this issue? If it was original, would this have been intentional, or should it be treated as a bug, fixed by removing one of the greeters? I'm curious if anyone can attest to whether this was in the original game. Otherwise, I'll have to test it at some point soon.

[Hamikon]

Hello, sorry for my bad English.
I have tried the Dragon Quest 1 Delocalized hack, and I got a few issues that I wanted to submit:



Many of the characters, monsters, and places names are wrong (according to the official Japanese Dragon Quest Guidebook which can be found here: https://archive.org/details/dragon-quest-official-guide-book-famicom-hiresscans/Dragon%20Quest%20-%20Official%20Guide%20Book%20%28Compressed%29/page/n3/mode/2up):
- "Ladatorm" is supposed to be "Radatomu"
- "Laura" is supposed to be "Rola" (I understand if her name can be translated to "Laura" in English, but "Rola" is her what she's supposed to be called in the Japanese version)
- "Orb of Light" is supposed to be "Ball of Light"
- "Slime Bess" is supposed to be "Slimebeth" (and plus, these red colored slimes are female)
etc.

A couple of feedback and suggestions that I have:
- It would be nice if the hack uses the original JP version title screen (I know it might be not easy to do)
- The hero's sprite when he's facing north, west, and east is pretty cursed in my oppinion... I think it would be nice to instead of making new sprites, just make the hero's eyes to be able to facing north, west, and east.
- Unthicken the font to matches the JP version's font
- Add the symbol " *: " for unimportant NPCs, just like the JP version.

I don't speak Japanese, but it seems the translation isn't that accurate to the JP version:
- When I played the JP version, there's a lot of "!" in the king's first dialogue. And the woman in Tantegel/Radatomu castle ended her dialogue with "...." instead of "?".
- When I played Polinym's translation of the JP version, the king did mention the full name of The Ball of Light (Btw, Polinym translated it to "Light Orb") instead of just "that precious orb"

I think the translation on this hack revised the dialogues a little, since the description says that the translation is: "...still conveying fluid, natural language."

But the description also says: "The authors believe that the resulting script is more accurate than any other English translation..." which is not true.



Those are my issues and feedbacks about this hack, I hope it can be helpful to this hack.

[KingMike]

Guidebooks are a pretty low source of credibility for "official" localizations, especially when they are licensed publications.
I wouldn't expect game publishers to really spend too much time going over every detail to make sure it is fact.

I'm assuming the localizations chosen here have been taken from more credible sources, such as more recent localizations.

Also, from what I've been told of translating Japanese punctuation, it's better to go with what sounds proper in English, rather than strictly following the original text.
Japanese writing is not exactly well-known for using western-style punctuation correctly.

I've not played this localization, but I think the Famicom version's single direction sprites are pretty cursed looking.
Just changing the eye direction doesn't sound like an easily noticeable thing.

[Hamikon]

Guidebooks are a pretty low source of credibility for "official" localizations, especially when they are licensed publications.
I wouldn't expect game publishers to really spend too much time going over every detail to make sure it is fact.

I'm assuming the localizations chosen here have been taken from more credible sources, such as more recent localizations.

Also, from what I've been told of translating Japanese punctuation, it's better to go with what sounds proper in English, rather than strictly following the original text.
Japanese writing is not exactly well-known for using western-style punctuation correctly.

I've not played this localization, but I think the Famicom version's single direction sprites are pretty cursed looking.
Just changing the eye direction doesn't sound like an easily noticeable thing.

It seems there's a misunderstanding. I'm talking about translation, not localization.

It's true that informations on guidebooks, even the official ones, cannot always be true or canon. On the guidebook, the "litograph" or the "tablet" was translated to "monolith", which they probably translated it by reading English-to-Japan dictionary.

But some names that I Google Translated (which is "Ball of Light" and "Slimebeth") have the same tranlation names as the guidebook, so the translation names on the guidebook is actually kinda accurate (maybe, I don't know Japaneses).

Btw, the guidebook actually never mentions the English name of Slimebeth, just the katakana name. I actually figured this out by learning some basic katakana letter.
スライムベス -> Suraimubesu -> Slimebeth, there migth be a confusion between Su/S/Th.

But it seems the official translation of the Dragon Warrior 1 & 2 GBC Remake is also having a trouble when translating Gwaelin's JP name. Instead of "Laura" or "Rola", it was translated to "Lora". The translator of that remake admitted that he mistranlated "Roto" the Hero's name into "Loto" due to the L/R confusion. So there are actually possibilities that Gwaelin's JP name could be either "Laura", "Lora", "Rola", or etc.
(I actually think that the name "Lora" might be the right translation, since his father is called King "Lorik" or King "Lars" in the JP version.)

I don't know about "Ladatorm"...
ラダトーム -> Radatoomu -> Radatomu/Radatom/Ladatomu/Ladatom/etc.
It could be anyhting, just like Gwaelin's JP name. (But I'm curious if the JP name came from an actual English or European Kingdom name)



It's true that when translating Japanese into English (or any other language), you need to make it sounds make senses in English. But the problem is, I think the hack's translation is kinda dull. While the JP script has a lot more personality.

Again, I don't know Japanese, but I did mentions a few different about the uses of symbols in the JP version and the hack'stranslation. Like how the king's dialogue in the JP version has more "!", and the worried woman's dialogue in the JP versions is ended with "...." instead of "?".

The king sounds like he's happy and shouting with the arrival of Erdrick/Roto's descendant with the many amount of "!" in the JP version.

The worried woman actually sounds sad and worried in the JP version. "Where could Princess Laura be...."
While this hack's tranlation makes her sounds confused. "Where could Princess Laura be?"



I know if the JP version's sprite looked like a stick figure, but it's weird to see that only the main hero has 4 different sprite and the others don't. But I supposed making some new sprite for the hero is the only option to go

[nejimakipiyo]

Hello, sorry for my bad English.
I have tried the Dragon Quest 1 Delocalized hack, and I got a few issues that I wanted to submit:



Many of the characters, monsters, and places names are wrong (according to the official Japanese Dragon Quest Guidebook which can be found here: https://archive.org/details/dragon-quest-official-guide-book-famicom-hiresscans/Dragon%20Quest%20-%20Official%20Guide%20Book%20%28Compressed%29/page/n3/mode/2up):
- "Ladatorm" is supposed to be "Radatomu"
- "Laura" is supposed to be "Rola" (I understand if her name can be translated to "Laura" in English, but "Rola" is her what she's supposed to be called in the Japanese version)
- "Orb of Light" is supposed to be "Ball of Light"
- "Slime Bess" is supposed to be "Slimebeth" (and plus, these red colored slimes are female)
etc.

A couple of feedback and suggestions that I have:
- It would be nice if the hack uses the original JP version title screen (I know it might be not easy to do)
- The hero's sprite when he's facing north, west, and east is pretty cursed in my oppinion... I think it would be nice to instead of making new sprites, just make the hero's eyes to be able to facing north, west, and east.
- Unthicken the font to matches the JP version's font
- Add the symbol " *: " for unimportant NPCs, just like the JP version.

I don't speak Japanese, but it seems the translation isn't that accurate to the JP version:
- When I played the JP version, there's a lot of "!" in the king's first dialogue. And the woman in Tantegel/Radatomu castle ended her dialogue with "...." instead of "?".
- When I played Polinym's translation of the JP version, the king did mention the full name of The Ball of Light (Btw, Polinym translated it to "Light Orb") instead of just "that precious orb"

I think the translation on this hack revised the dialogues a little, since the description says that the translation is: "...still conveying fluid, natural language."

But the description also says: "The authors believe that the resulting script is more accurate than any other English translation..." which is not true.



Those are my issues and feedbacks about this hack, I hope it can be helpful to this hack.

Thank you for your feedback, Hamikon.

Chicken Knife and I have previously purchased these Japanese guides to see official art, which helps us clarify concepts for how we decided to name things. As such, we have previously discussed the naming schemes as reflected in these guides, and we see a lot of blatant transliterations that we believe don't reflect the actual thought process behind the Japanese names. Things like Radatomu, Rimurudaru, and Merukido, do not sound like natural ways to translate those town names for English speakers. When an English speaker reads these words out loud, the pronunciation will be much farther off from the original than by reading the names we came up with. We are more interested in the sound and feeling of the name, rather than the specific spelling that the katakana produces in romanized letters.

To give you an official localization example, though not from Dragon Quest, let's consider the Miyazaki movie Laputa (Castle in the Sky). Japanese romanize the title as Rapyuta even though it is inspired by an English story with a floating castle named Laputa. I believe we would all agree that Laputa is the correct and preferred way to localize the name of the movie, even though it differs from the spelling of the katakana in a marginal way. We use a similar mindset when translating the town, character, and item names in Dragon Quest. What are the possibilities presented by the Japanese text, that still sound natural for English speakers to read/say? That's the kind of thing we care about and the reasoning behind our translation choices. We aren't aiming for a 1:1 equivalency with spelling and we don't believe that the guide's romanizations portray an accurate vision of Horii's thought process and intent.

Red-coloured slimes are not necessarily female. That was an idea introduced by localizers. In Japanese, the term 'besu' does superficially sound like the gendered term 'mesu' for female animals (contrasted with osu, for male animals), but is not that term. "Bess" was our way of coming up with a gendered-sounding term that can be used for the slime species, which sounds female-like while not deliberately evoking a strict female interpretation of the monster.

When it comes to things like punctuation and wording of the dialogue, we don't believe that using the Japanese method is the best way to write in English. KingMike was correct in saying that Japanese people use punctuation differently than we do. While their punctuation may look equivalent, it's really not, and they have their own set of stylistic traditions that would come across awkwardly in English. When this is converted 1:1 in English, it often results in stilted, confusing, awkward, and/or overly dramatic dialogue. What we aim to do while translating dialogue is convey the same thoughts and intentions of the original writing in a way that sounds natural in English. Of course, this will not result in a 1:1 equivalency. If a strict 1:1 equivalency is your preference over other considerations, then by all means Polynim's translation seems to come closer to providing that.

As for your more specific suggestions on the technical side of things, I'll let Chicken Knife address those points as he's always been the one working directly on the hacking.

[Chicken Knife]

To add just a bit about the official guides released in Japan, they randomly use some of the names from the English localizations like "Half Plate Armor" and "Full Plate Armor" over the Japanese names of Iron and Steel Armor. So, should they really be trusted as definitive reflections of the Japanese names? We don't think so, and there are many examples why.

A couple of feedback and suggestions that I have:
- It would be nice if the hack uses the original JP version title screen (I know it might be not easy to do)
- The hero's sprite when he's facing north, west, and east is pretty cursed in my oppinion... I think it would be nice to instead of making new sprites, just make the hero's eyes to be able to facing north, west, and east.
- Unthicken the font to matches the JP version's font
- Add the symbol " *: " for unimportant NPCs, just like the JP version.

Going point by point: if you read my last post, I talk about the title screen. I'd personally not use the Japanese versions, because I like 2's English version a lot better, and 3 doesn't even have a real title screen in Japanese, but yes, I'd like to provide the options in the form of optional patches. It would just take a ton of time and effort that I don't have at the moment, mostly because we are working on new translations, which is really our strength over the technical stuff. If you or anyone else wanted to take on creating an optional patch for the Japanese title screens, by all means.

With your eyes idea, like King Mike says, the resolution on NES is too low to really make this feasible. And those eyes would have to indicate not only left and right but also up and down positioning, since there is no directional prompt when you talk to NPCs like in the Japanese version. If you as a player really want to experience the ultra primitive feel of the original, Polynim provides the best option. We wanted to capture the aesthetic of the Famicom version, while retaining the playability of the localization. Even our native Japanese collaborator who grew up with the original Famicom version can no longer enjoy playing it due to the front facing hero movement.

As for unthickening the font, if you or someone else wanted to draw a new font option for the patches and it looked decent, I'd be happy to include it as an optional patch. I personally am fine with the localization's font, and prefer it over the alternatives.

For the *: thing in front of dialogue from non-named speakers, I've always found that to be a major oddity in the DQ series. Is it a unique thing that should be preserved in English? The modern localizers think so. I generally prefer a more standard type of text formatting, but I'd be potentially ok with reformatting the text to include it. However, that would require ASM work to essentially undo the text management system introduced in the English versions that utilizes the single quote byte to designate and format speech in a consistent way. I think it's a very minor issue personally, and I don't particularly feel motivated to push off what we are working on now in favor of spending endless hours changing this.

But the description also says: "The authors believe that the resulting script is more accurate than any other English translation..." which is not true.

It was when we wrote it because Polynim's version didn't exist. But seriously, capturing the essence of the Japanese version, for us, isn't about creating this exact formal equivalency in every kind of detail that you are looking for. We are about crafting something that is very faithful, but also very natural and stylish in English. And honestly, I do stand by that statement in the sense that I think we've gotten the essence of translating ideas the most correctly, when other translators tend to either invent changes, follow localization traditions, or translate in an excessively formal way that sometimes loses the essence of the ideas.

[Hamikon]

I see... Thank you for the responses!

When I played Polinym's translation, the translated dialogues were pretty weird, possibly due to the small text window and due to lack of spaces. Because of that, I wanted to try this translation instead.

The translation is really good, compared to the official translation from the 90s.
It bugs me that some of the "!", "?", and "...." from the JP version were not presented in this translation. But I get with what you said. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate, as long as it faitful to the JP version, sounded natural to English speakers, and evokes the feeling of the JP version!

But about the Red Slime, I still think that it should be "Beth" instead of "Bess", since "Beth" is a female name in English. And I think that's how the newer DQ localizations came up with the name "She-slime".

....But anyway, I think you guys should focus on other project instead. I really wanted to see a Delocalized version of Dragon Warrior IV!