Fan translation
Encyclopedia
A fan translation, in video gaming, refers to an unofficial translation
of a computer game
or video game.
The fan translation practice grew with the rise of video game console
emulation in the late 1990s. A community of people developed that were interested in replaying and modifying the games they played in their youth. The knowledge and tools that came out of this community allowed them to work with translators to localize titles that had never been available outside of their original country of origin.
Fan translations of video game console games are usually accomplished by modifying a single binary ROM image
of the game. Fan translations of PC
games, on the other hand, can involve translation of many binary files throughout the game's directory
. In dealing with translations of console games, a console emulator is generally utilized to play the final product, although game copiers or similar devices can be used to run the translated ROM image on its native hardware.
for the first time, and sometimes of games recently released in Japan that are import-worthy and are unlikely to be officially localized to English speaking countries. It has since expanded to include other languages as well. Fan translations to English have provided a starting point for translations to many other languages. A fan translation is also started if a certain game released in Japan is not announced for localization within one year from its Japanese release.
Fan translations may also be done to titles that have received official localizations that fans perceive as flawed; for example, if the game had controversial content removed (such as Bionic Commando
), or there were unnecessary changes in plot and character names (such as Phantasy Star).
The fan translation community was at its most popular, and attracted the most media attention, when certain popular game titles were still being worked on. These were usually parts of popular series such as Square Enix
's Final Fantasy
and Dragon Quest
. Some consider the peak was reached with the translation of Seiken Densetsu 3
(sequel to Secret of Mana
), a title that was highly desirable to RPG players and also very difficult to translate on a technical basis.
system. Konami
’s RPG SD Snatcher
was translated in April 1993, and The Legend of Heroes
was translated in 1995. Their other projects include Fray, Rune Master 3, Xak - The Art of Visual Stage, Xak 2, Xak - The Tower of Gazzel, Ys, Ys II: The Final Chapter and Wanderers From Ys.
These were possible before emulation on PCs became popular (or even adequate enough to play games) because the games were on floppy disks, and were therefore easier to distribute to the users, in comparison to ROM
cartridges used by video game consoles (the MSX also used cartridges, but methods were discovered to copy the content onto floppy disks and other media too).
The development of console emulators led to access to foreign video games. A revival began in 1996 when a group calling themselves Kowasu Ku formed under the lead of one "Hazama". The group stated plans to translate Final Fantasy V
, but their efforts were never publicly released. Later that summer, a user called Demi announced work on a Final Fantasy V translation and founded Multiple Demiforce. It was eventually dropped in favor of Final Fantasy II
(NES), a more manageable goal at that time. Demi and Som2Freak used Pasofami to post four screenshots of their work to Archaic Ruins, an emulation website. Shortly after, the translation stalled and the group disbanded.
Derrick Sobodash (Shadow) and David Timko both saw the Archaic Ruins website and contacted Som2Freak expressing interest in translating Final Fantasy V. He provided each with some primitive tools, and for the next few months, Shadow and Timko worked against each other. Both projects generated renewed interest in fan translation.
After months of working against each other, Shadow and Timko began cooperating. RPGe, the first major translation group was established on July 8 in the #ff5e IRC channel, on the EsperNet IRC network by Shadow, Timko, Hooie and Thermopyle. The start of RPGe sparked many other efforts to unify and within months, Translation Corporation, DeJap Translations and Starsoft Translations had formed.
RPGe's translation of Final Fantasy V was completed October 16, 1997 (version 0.96).
Early community news was posted to emulation websites such as EMU News Service, now archived by ClassicGaming. It wasn't until July 8, 1998 that Cataclysm-X, Jason Li and WildBill opened RPG Dimension (also known as RPGd), a site dedicated to reporting fan translation news as well as releases of general ROM hacking
tutorials and utilities.
RPG Dimension met competition on March 31, 2000 when Spinner 8 and (wraith) opened The Whirlpool, a rival news site focusing exclusively on fan translations. The former met a slow death over the next two years as staff lost more and more interest in updates. The Whirlpool eventually closed on October 4, 2005 following from a dispute between the site's founders, though site owner (wraith) assured users he was working on another project to supersede the old site. Updates ceased by December 27.
The English fan translation community is currently centered at ROM Hacking.net.
explicitly reserves the right of translation to the copyright holder and whoever receives permission of them, saying "Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall enjoy the exclusive right
of making and of authorizing the translation of their works throughout the term of protection of their rights in the original works."), it is unusual for copyright holders to object. This is probably largely because the electronic games in question are generally not considered commercially viable in the target language, so the translation is rarely seen as a source of lost revenue.
However, in 1999, one well-known incident in which copyright holders took action involved the translation of a Windows game maker called RPG Maker 95
. The Japanese company ASCII
had their lawyer
s send a cease and desist e-mail to the translation group KanjiHack Translations. The group shut down immediately but others eventually finished the project. Titles from the RPG Maker series were eventually localized and officially released in the US for the PlayStation
and PlayStation 2
.
A popular belief in the fan translation community is that distributing only a binary patch, which must be applied to the full, original game, is legal. The reasoning is that the patch only contains the new data and directives for where it is to be placed, and does not have the original copyrighted material included in any form, and therefore it is useless unless the user applies it to a (copyrighted) ROM, the acquisition and legality of which they are left completely accountable for. This belief is untested in court. Regardless, the patch must still contain a translated script that is derived from the copyrighted script of the original, but this anti-software piracy
attitude by the fan translation community may have convinced copyright holders to, by and large, turn a blind eye
.
There have never been any legal cases involving fan translation issues, and such projects have been relatively widespread over the Internet for years. In recent years, anime fansub
bers have started to attract the attention of some American anime distributors; and as of 2004 one manga scanlator
has been handed a cease and desist by a Japanese company, but most of this attention has been restricted to polite entreaties asking fan translators to refrain from dealing with licensed material. As with the fansub and scanlation scenes, most sites devoted to translation hacks will not acknowledge projects that compete with commercially available localizations, and respected groups will steer clear of projects that may see localization. These estimations are sometimes wrong, however; a fan-translation of La Pucelle
was terminated after a partially complete release when the game was announced for a North American release years after its Japanese debut.
released an interview they did with Koichiro Sakamoto, a game producer from Square Enix, acknowledging fan translations:
"On a similar note, we told Mr. Sakamoto that a fan translation had been done some years ago for Front Mission 1, and asked how he felt about such efforts. The producer replied that he actually found them very encouraging -- it's something the developers should be doing, but because they're not, the fans are doing it instead. He stated that he'd like to be able to give something back to the fans, and would like to thank personally each of the fans that worked on the translation." In response to the fan translation of Mother 3
, gaming industry professionals sent translator Clyde Mandelin
(himself a professional translator) messages of support.
In 2010, publisher Xseed Games
licensed and paid for the use of a fan translation
of Ys: The Oath in Felghana
(PC) in the PSP port in order to offset the localization costs of such a "niche" game.
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
of a computer game
Personal computer game
A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...
or video game.
The fan translation practice grew with the rise of video game console
Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...
emulation in the late 1990s. A community of people developed that were interested in replaying and modifying the games they played in their youth. The knowledge and tools that came out of this community allowed them to work with translators to localize titles that had never been available outside of their original country of origin.
Fan translations of video game console games are usually accomplished by modifying a single binary ROM image
ROM hacking
ROM hacking is the process of modifying a video game ROM image to alter the game's graphics, dialogue, levels, gameplay, or other elements. This is usually done by technically inclined video game fans to breathe new life into a cherished old game, as a creative outlet, or to make essentially new...
of the game. Fan translations of PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
games, on the other hand, can involve translation of many binary files throughout the game's directory
Directory (file systems)
In computing, a folder, directory, catalog, or drawer, is a virtual container originally derived from an earlier Object-oriented programming concept by the same name within a digital file system, in which groups of computer files and other folders can be kept and organized.A typical file system may...
. In dealing with translations of console games, a console emulator is generally utilized to play the final product, although game copiers or similar devices can be used to run the translated ROM image on its native hardware.
Purpose
The central focus of the fan translation community is historically of Japanese-exclusive computer and video games being made playable in EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
for the first time, and sometimes of games recently released in Japan that are import-worthy and are unlikely to be officially localized to English speaking countries. It has since expanded to include other languages as well. Fan translations to English have provided a starting point for translations to many other languages. A fan translation is also started if a certain game released in Japan is not announced for localization within one year from its Japanese release.
Fan translations may also be done to titles that have received official localizations that fans perceive as flawed; for example, if the game had controversial content removed (such as Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando (NES)
Bionic Commando, known as in Japan, is an action-adventure video game released by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. It is loosely based on the 1987 arcade game Bionic Commando. In the game, the player has to explore each stage and obtain the necessary equipment to progress...
), or there were unnecessary changes in plot and character names (such as Phantasy Star).
The fan translation community was at its most popular, and attracted the most media attention, when certain popular game titles were still being worked on. These were usually parts of popular series such as Square Enix
Square Enix
is a Japanese video game and publishing company best known for its console role-playing game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and the action-RPG Kingdom Hearts series...
's Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy
is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and is developed and owned by Square Enix . The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science-fantasy role-playing video games , but includes motion pictures, anime, printed media, and other merchandise...
and Dragon Quest
Dragon Quest
, published as Dragon Warrior in North America until 2005,Due to the inconsistent usage by sources since Square Enix obtained the naming rights to Dragon Quest in North America. Dragon Quest has been used by sources to refer to games released solely under the Dragon Warrior titles...
. Some consider the peak was reached with the translation of Seiken Densetsu 3
Seiken Densetsu 3
is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square for Nintendo's Super Famicom as a part of the Mana series.The game features three lengthy main plotlines, six different characters, each with their own storylines, and a wide range of classes to choose from, which provides each...
(sequel to Secret of Mana
Secret of Mana
Secret of Mana is an action role-playing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System developed and published by Square in 1993. The game was re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in 2008, and was ported to Japanese mobile phones in 2009...
), a title that was highly desirable to RPG players and also very difficult to translate on a technical basis.
Origins
The earliest fan translations were done by Oasis, a group formed by Dennis Lardenoye and Ron Bouwland, two Dutch fans of the MSXMSX
MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
system. Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
’s RPG SD Snatcher
SD Snatcher
SD Snatcher is a role-playing video game by Konami for the MSX2 computer platform in exclusively in Japan. It is a spinoff of the original Snatcher, adapting the same storyline into a different genre...
was translated in April 1993, and The Legend of Heroes
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes is a role-playing game developed by the Nihon Falcom. It is the sixth game in the Dragon Slayer line of games, and the first in the The Legend of Heroes series....
was translated in 1995. Their other projects include Fray, Rune Master 3, Xak - The Art of Visual Stage, Xak 2, Xak - The Tower of Gazzel, Ys, Ys II: The Final Chapter and Wanderers From Ys.
These were possible before emulation on PCs became popular (or even adequate enough to play games) because the games were on floppy disks, and were therefore easier to distribute to the users, in comparison to ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
cartridges used by video game consoles (the MSX also used cartridges, but methods were discovered to copy the content onto floppy disks and other media too).
Revival after emulation
Final Fantasy V
is a medieval-fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by Square in 1992 as a part of the Final Fantasy series. The game first appeared only in Japan on Nintendo's Super Famicom . It has been ported with minor differences to Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's Game Boy Advance...
, but their efforts were never publicly released. Later that summer, a user called Demi announced work on a Final Fantasy V translation and founded Multiple Demiforce. It was eventually dropped in favor of Final Fantasy II
Final Fantasy II
is a fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by Square in 1988 for the Family Computer as the second installment of the Final Fantasy series. The game has received numerous enhanced remakes for the WonderSwan Color, the Sony PlayStation, Japanese mobile phones, the Game Boy...
(NES), a more manageable goal at that time. Demi and Som2Freak used Pasofami to post four screenshots of their work to Archaic Ruins, an emulation website. Shortly after, the translation stalled and the group disbanded.
Derrick Sobodash (Shadow) and David Timko both saw the Archaic Ruins website and contacted Som2Freak expressing interest in translating Final Fantasy V. He provided each with some primitive tools, and for the next few months, Shadow and Timko worked against each other. Both projects generated renewed interest in fan translation.
After months of working against each other, Shadow and Timko began cooperating. RPGe, the first major translation group was established on July 8 in the #ff5e IRC channel, on the EsperNet IRC network by Shadow, Timko, Hooie and Thermopyle. The start of RPGe sparked many other efforts to unify and within months, Translation Corporation, DeJap Translations and Starsoft Translations had formed.
RPGe's translation of Final Fantasy V was completed October 16, 1997 (version 0.96).
Community hubs
The first hub of the fan translation community was The ROM Hack Board, hosted by Demi on Frognet. The board began in fall of 1996 operating on the Matt's WWWBOARD script. It reappeared later in 1997.Early community news was posted to emulation websites such as EMU News Service, now archived by ClassicGaming. It wasn't until July 8, 1998 that Cataclysm-X, Jason Li and WildBill opened RPG Dimension (also known as RPGd), a site dedicated to reporting fan translation news as well as releases of general ROM hacking
ROM hacking
ROM hacking is the process of modifying a video game ROM image to alter the game's graphics, dialogue, levels, gameplay, or other elements. This is usually done by technically inclined video game fans to breathe new life into a cherished old game, as a creative outlet, or to make essentially new...
tutorials and utilities.
RPG Dimension met competition on March 31, 2000 when Spinner 8 and (wraith) opened The Whirlpool, a rival news site focusing exclusively on fan translations. The former met a slow death over the next two years as staff lost more and more interest in updates. The Whirlpool eventually closed on October 4, 2005 following from a dispute between the site's founders, though site owner (wraith) assured users he was working on another project to supersede the old site. Updates ceased by December 27.
The English fan translation community is currently centered at ROM Hacking.net.
Legal issues
While unauthorized fan translations are indisputably illegal (Article 8 of the Berne ConventionBerne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works
The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement governing copyright, which was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886.- Content :...
explicitly reserves the right of translation to the copyright holder and whoever receives permission of them, saying "Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall enjoy the exclusive right
Exclusive right
In Anglo-Saxon law, an exclusive right is a de facto, non-tangible prerogative existing in law to perform an action or acquire a benefit and to permit or deny others the right to perform the same action or to acquire the same benefit. A "prerogative" is in effect an exclusive right...
of making and of authorizing the translation of their works throughout the term of protection of their rights in the original works."), it is unusual for copyright holders to object. This is probably largely because the electronic games in question are generally not considered commercially viable in the target language, so the translation is rarely seen as a source of lost revenue.
However, in 1999, one well-known incident in which copyright holders took action involved the translation of a Windows game maker called RPG Maker 95
RPG Maker 95
RPG Maker 95, or RM95 for an abbreviation, is the first Windows version of the RPG Maker series developed and published by ASCII, released in Japan March 28th, 1997 as . The game is ASCII's third RPG making application for the PC...
. The Japanese company ASCII
ASCII (company)
was a publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. It became a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works. The company published Monthly ASCII as the main publication...
had their lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
s send a cease and desist e-mail to the translation group KanjiHack Translations. The group shut down immediately but others eventually finished the project. Titles from the RPG Maker series were eventually localized and officially released in the US for the PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
and PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
.
A popular belief in the fan translation community is that distributing only a binary patch, which must be applied to the full, original game, is legal. The reasoning is that the patch only contains the new data and directives for where it is to be placed, and does not have the original copyrighted material included in any form, and therefore it is useless unless the user applies it to a (copyrighted) ROM, the acquisition and legality of which they are left completely accountable for. This belief is untested in court. Regardless, the patch must still contain a translated script that is derived from the copyrighted script of the original, but this anti-software piracy
Copyright infringement of software
Copyright infringement of software=The copyright infringement of software refers to several practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer software. Copyright infringement of this kind varies globally...
attitude by the fan translation community may have convinced copyright holders to, by and large, turn a blind eye
Turn a blind eye
The idiom turning a blind eye is used to describe the process of ignoring unpopular orders or inconvenient facts or activities.The phrase to turn a blind eye is attributed to an incident in the life of Admiral Horatio Nelson....
.
There have never been any legal cases involving fan translation issues, and such projects have been relatively widespread over the Internet for years. In recent years, anime fansub
Fansub
A fansub is a version of a foreign film or foreign television program which has been translated by fans and subtitled into a language other than that of the original.-History:...
bers have started to attract the attention of some American anime distributors; and as of 2004 one manga scanlator
Scanlation
Scanlation is the scanning, translation and editing of a graphic novel from a foreign language into a different language. Scanlation is done as an amateur work and is nearly always done without express permission from the copyright holder. The word scanlation is a portmanteau of scan and translation...
has been handed a cease and desist by a Japanese company, but most of this attention has been restricted to polite entreaties asking fan translators to refrain from dealing with licensed material. As with the fansub and scanlation scenes, most sites devoted to translation hacks will not acknowledge projects that compete with commercially available localizations, and respected groups will steer clear of projects that may see localization. These estimations are sometimes wrong, however; a fan-translation of La Pucelle
La Pucelle: Tactics
La Pucelle: Tactics, released in Japan as , is a tactical role-playing game for the PlayStation 2, developed by Nippon Ichi Software. It was released in Japan in January 2002, and in North America by Mastiff in May 2004...
was terminated after a partially complete release when the game was announced for a North American release years after its Japanese debut.
Game company acknowledgments
On July 12, 2007, RPGamerRPGamer
RPGamer is a media and news website dedicated to covering computer and video game RPGs. Its coverage includes North American game news, European game news, Asian game news, gaming industry news, game reviews, game previews, hands-on game impressions, gaming conventions, game merchandise, release...
released an interview they did with Koichiro Sakamoto, a game producer from Square Enix, acknowledging fan translations:
"On a similar note, we told Mr. Sakamoto that a fan translation had been done some years ago for Front Mission 1, and asked how he felt about such efforts. The producer replied that he actually found them very encouraging -- it's something the developers should be doing, but because they're not, the fans are doing it instead. He stated that he'd like to be able to give something back to the fans, and would like to thank personally each of the fans that worked on the translation." In response to the fan translation of Mother 3
Mother 3
Mother 3 is a role-playing video game developed by Nintendo, Brownie Brown and HAL Laboratory, and published for the Game Boy Advance handheld game console. It has only been released in Japan, alongside a limited supply bundle. It is the third video game in the Mother series, following EarthBound...
, gaming industry professionals sent translator Clyde Mandelin
Clyde Mandelin
Clyde D. Mandelin is a professional Japanese-to-English translator. He works for the anime distributor Funimation Entertainment and the video game localization agency Babel Media...
(himself a professional translator) messages of support.
In 2010, publisher Xseed Games
XSEED Games
XSEED redirects here. For the proposed supertall structure see X-Seed 4000.Xseed Games is a video game publisher and distributor founded by former members of Square Enix USA. Their goal is to bring high-quality interactive entertainment to the North American market...
licensed and paid for the use of a fan translation
Fan translation
A fan translation, in video gaming, refers to an unofficial translation of a computer game or video game.The fan translation practice grew with the rise of video game console emulation in the late 1990s. A community of people developed that were interested in replaying and modifying the games they...
of Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Ys: The Oath in Felghana
is a Japanese Action RPG released in 2005 for Microsoft Windows by Nihon Falcom. It is a remake of the third game in the Ys series, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. A PSP version was released on April 22, 2010 in Japan...
(PC) in the PSP port in order to offset the localization costs of such a "niche" game.
See also
- Cavespeak
- Console emulator
- Reverse engineeringReverse engineeringReverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
- ROM hackingROM hackingROM hacking is the process of modifying a video game ROM image to alter the game's graphics, dialogue, levels, gameplay, or other elements. This is usually done by technically inclined video game fans to breathe new life into a cherished old game, as a creative outlet, or to make essentially new...
- Variable width font
- Game localisationGame localisationGame localization or game globalization refers to the preparation of video games for other locales. This adaptation to the standards of other countries covers far more than simply translation of language. There are different areas, such as linguistic, cultural, hardware and software, legal...
- UndubbingUndubbingUndubbing is a type of video game hacking, which involves modifying the contents of an officially localized video game to match the audio and voice acting to its country of origin while retaining the translated text of the country in which it has been localized.A typical candidate for an undub is a...