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	<title>Absolute Zero Translations &#187; Search Results  &#187;  translation+patch</title>
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	<link>http://a0t.co</link>
	<description>Your Official Unofficial Tales Translation Source</description>
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		<title>Rise from your grave!</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2011/12/04/rise-from-your-grave/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2011/12/04/rise-from-your-grave/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:50:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tales of Destiny]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://a0t.co/?p=1121</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It feels like I haven&#8217;t updated the blog in ages. I guess six months is a pretty long time in internet years. I&#8217;d be lying if I said that I&#8217;ve made much progress on translation projects during this extended silence, but things are finally starting to move again. The main reason for this post is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It feels like I haven&#8217;t updated the blog in ages. I guess six months is a pretty long time in internet years. I&#8217;d be lying if I said that I&#8217;ve made much progress on translation projects during this extended silence, but things are finally starting to move again.<span id="more-1121"></span></p>
<p>The main reason for this post is to announce that Tales of Destiny R is no longer on hiatus! Of course, the resumption of the project doesn&#8217;t mean that Destiny&#8217;s completion is right around the corner or anything. Tales of Phantasia remains the top priority for Phantasian Productions and I&#8217;m still distracting myself with several other translation projects as well. (For more information on ToP and ToD2, Cless has given <a href="http://tales-cless.org/">a detailed update on his site</a>.) Cless is currently working on whipping the Destiny script into a format that will make life easy on all of us from the translation stage through the final editing. For my part, I really need to <del>replay</del> refamiliarize myself with Tales of Destiny before I dive into translating the main script. The menu translation is at a fairly advanced stage, so most of the brute force translation is finished. For me, the script translation typically requires more finesse than the menu and I&#8217;m sure Destiny will be no exception. Only time will tell exactly how the project will progress, but for now, I&#8217;m thrilled to be able to get it back on its feet.</p>
<p>In other random news:</p>
<ul>
<li>Tales of Innocence R looks&#8230; okay. I&#8217;m interested to see what they do with it. There&#8217;s no doubt that Tales of Innocence left a lot of room for improvement. I&#8217;m not loving the ToIR battle videos. Looking much too Radiant Mythology for my tastes. I won&#8217;t issue final judgement until I actually get to try it for myself, of course. I&#8217;ll almost certainly be picking up a Vita regardless.</li>
<li>Tales of Innocence&#8217;s v1.1 patch is increasingly looking like it may meet the ToP v1.1 patch&#8217;s fate of eternal purgatory. Is anyone still waiting for an updated ToI patch?</li>
<li>Tales of Graces&#8217; English localization is supposedly complete. I&#8217;m very interested in seeing the results. Personally, the first thing I&#8217;m going to do is buy a strategy guide and see what they did with all of the series character names in Carta. Graces is not my favorite game in the series, but with 8-4 on the job, I have high hopes that the localization will allow me to love it in a new way. And, of course, I&#8217;m all about supporting the Tales series in any way I can. Everybody get out there and buy it when it&#8217;s released!</li>
<li>Tales of Xillia keeps tempting me, but the recent announcement that content was cut almost surely signals that Xillia R isn&#8217;t far off. I&#8217;ll probably be holding out for that.</li>
<li>Skyrim is amazing. I can and did spend pretty much all of my free time playing it since it came out. Looking forward to seeing the modding scene explode when the construction set comes out.</li>
<li>One Piece is as great as ever. The Hunter X Hunter remake has been excellent so far.</li>
<li>Friendship is magic.</li>
</ul>
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		<title>Graces, ect.</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2011/02/04/graces-ect/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2011/02/04/graces-ect/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Feb 2011 21:37:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tales of Graces]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/?p=1089</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have to be honest. I&#8217;ve been around the Tales scene for a while, but this week was the first time I really felt ashamed to be a part of it. But first, the news: A Tales of Graces f English localization has been announced! Just when it seemed like the series was down for [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I have to be honest. I&#8217;ve been around the Tales scene for a while, but this week was the first time I really felt ashamed to be a part of it.<span id="more-1089"></span></p>
<p>But first, the news: A <a href="http://ataleoftworichards.com/">Tales of Graces f</a> English localization has been announced! Just when it seemed like the series was down for the count, it bounced back! Thanks to Namdai for making this happen and to all the fans who passionately petitioned them for it. As a result, the <a href="http://www.talesofgraces.com/">Tales of Graces Fan Translation</a> has made the difficult decision of halting work on both the Wii and PS3 Graces translations. It&#8217;s not easy for a team that worked so hard on a game to give it up, but the staff agreed that we wanted to support the official localization as best we could. I was proud to see everyone come together in making that decision as I was to be a part of the project while it lasted. So why was I talking about being ashamed to be a Tales fan?</p>
<p>Following the almost miraculous announcement of Tales of Graces for localization, people immediately started asking about Vesperia PS3. Some of it was just innocent curiosity after the tease on ataleoftworichards, but others were clearly upset that Graces had been announced and not their game of choice. Guys, honestly? There&#8217;s nothing wrong with wanting Vesperia PS3 or any other Tales game. We all have different tastes and preferences when it comes to what we&#8217;d like to see localized. Personally, I&#8217;d love to see all of them localized. But can&#8217;t we at least appreciate and celebrate what we&#8217;ve been given? To do otherwise just seems to horribly ungrateful. We&#8217;re better than that. Let&#8217;s prove that by getting out and supporting Tales of Graces f with our purchases when it&#8217;s released. This decision came about <a href="http://www.siliconera.com/2011/02/04/all-of-those-requests-influenced-namco-bandais-decision-to-localize-tales-of-graces-f/">because of passionate fans</a>, but we can&#8217;t be content with that. This is our chance to help fuel a revival of the Tales series in the West.</p>
<p>Second source of disappointment&#8230; On the forum, there were all of these comments begging the Graces team to continue the fan translation of Graces (mainly the Wii version). Let me be very clear on my opinion on this if I haven&#8217;t been previously: <strong>Fan translations are not here to replace official localizations.</strong> Likewise, I don&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s our place to compete with them. I have always worked on every project with the stance that if an official localization is announced or if a company asks me to halt a project, I would do the right thing and stop the project. That is how the traditional fan translation community has always operated. As an unofficial translator, I am fully aware that all of my work could be for naught at any moment. However, I would nonetheless see an official localization as a blessing and welcome it. I am surprised that fans seemed to have different expectations. A number of people expressed what I can only describe as a sense of entitlement to a Graces fan translation because they had purchased a Japanese copy of the game. While I can sympathize with those now faced with the decision of buying a second copy of the same game, no one ever forced you to buy it. When you made that purchase, you had to weigh the benefits with the risk that the patch would never be completed for one reason or another. Considering the number of projects that are never completed due to lack of interest or dedication, I think that one that ends because we&#8217;re getting something even better is still worth celebrating. The fact that there are two versions of Graces doesn&#8217;t change the math. The Graces team made the right decision in deciding to halt both projects at this time. Our first responsibility is to support the series that we love. If all we do is clamor loudly and then fail to show up at the crucial moment, we&#8217;ll just prove to Namdai that they were right about not localizing all along.</p>
<p>When Namdai steps up and localizes a game, we all win. And when that doesn&#8217;t happen, we have a strong (although young) fan translation community to fall back on. From where I&#8217;m standing, the future of the Tales series in the West looks bright. As for Graces, I&#8217;ll be picking up a copy on day one. (Namdai, if you include all of the DLC costumes and such as extras, I&#8217;ll buy three!)</p>
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		<slash:comments>57</slash:comments>
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		<title>SRWJ released at The Romhacking Aerie!</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2010/12/26/srwj-release/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2010/12/26/srwj-release/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 26 Dec 2010 13:49:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog Updates]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/?p=1085</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Kingcom, Tales of Innocence&#8217;s superstar hacker, and Deets, the graphical wizard and diligent tester, have just released their Super Robot Wars J translation! Congratulations to the whole SRWJ team for a release long in the making! I know that a lot of love and hard work went into this project, so help them to celebrate [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Kingcom, Tales of Innocence&#8217;s superstar hacker, and Deets, the graphical wizard and diligent tester, have just released their Super Robot Wars J translation! <span id="more-1085"></span>Congratulations to the whole SRWJ team for a release long in the making! I know that a lot of love and hard work went into this project, so help them to celebrate this release by giving the game a spin! The patch can be found at <a href="http://aerie.wingdreams.net/?p=154">The Romhacking Aerie</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Alive and, well&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2010/10/31/alive-and-well/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2010/10/31/alive-and-well/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:04:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tales of Destiny]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tales of Graces]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tales of Innocence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/?p=1079</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m alive, anyway. Happy Halloween! I had been meaning to make an update for several weeks now, but couldn&#8217;t seem to find the words. Perhaps it&#8217;s because I don&#8217;t have anything of great importance to announce at this point. I have a few projects in the works, but I didn&#8217;t feel it would be productive [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m alive, anyway. Happy Halloween! <span id="more-1079"></span>I had been meaning to make an update for several weeks now, but couldn&#8217;t seem to find the words. Perhaps it&#8217;s because I don&#8217;t have anything of great importance to announce at this point. I have a few projects in the works, but I didn&#8217;t feel it would be productive to start talking about them way out in the future. So what&#8217;s going on for now&#8230;</p>
<p>An updated Tales of Innocence will be coming at some point. Our intention is to make this the only update to the patch unless it becomes possible to fix the multiplayer somewhere down the line. All of the fixes will be minor grammar issues and bug fixes. There was only one crash discovered and it only occurs in association with a few of the ultimate recipe events. None of the issues were critical, so we didn&#8217;t feel it was worth delaying other projects to work on the v1.1 patch immediately. That being said, if you encountered any spelling, grammar, or technical issues that we haven&#8217;t been informed of, please do let us know about them so that we can fix them for the updated patch. Eventually we&#8217;ll get around to finishing the fixes, though Kingcom wants to get some other projects out the door first and I&#8217;m working on several others anyway.</p>
<p>If you follow the <a href="http://talesofgraces.com/">Tales of Graces</a> project, you may have seen the announcement that I will be helping on their project. I will be checking the translation and hopefully continuing to assist with the localization process through the editing phases. I had started my work, but after doing a portion of the game&#8217;s introduction, decided that my initial belief that I could check the translation without having played the game was misguided. While it&#8217;s easy to ensure that a Japanese translation is correct, I can&#8217;t ensure that the game is being localized without context. So I bought the game and I&#8217;m currently waiting for it to arrive. I am currently taking a break from the translation check for now since anything I do now would need to be rechecked when I had the game anyway. It will take more work and more time, but a real localization is worth the effort it takes to get there. I want to do everything I can to help the project achieve its full potential. Other members of the Tales fan community are also lending a hand to help maintain continuity and quality with the rest of the series and the relevant fan projects.</p>
<p>Tales of Destiny is still on the backburner for now. Well, not completely. I am poking at it from time to time. But as previously announced, work on the project won&#8217;t really get back up to speed until both Absolute Zero&#8217;s Tales of Innocence and Phantasian Productions&#8217; Tales of Phantasia project are complete. I have plenty of work to do on other projects as-is, so I&#8217;m thankful I don&#8217;t have two projects in full swing at the same time. Even if Phantasia were done right now, I wouldn&#8217;t be able to do any more on Destiny than I already am. When I do get back to this project, I want to give it the attention it deserves.</p>
<p>Things are busy, but fun. Regardless, Absolute Zero isn&#8217;t going anywhere any time soon. Hopefully we&#8217;ll have your continued support in the future.</p>
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		<slash:comments>32</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Life After Innocence</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2010/07/09/life-after-innocence/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2010/07/09/life-after-innocence/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:50:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog Updates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tales of Destiny]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tales of Innocence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/?p=1070</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Tales of Innocence is complete. An era has ended&#8230; at least in my mind. And yet both Kingcom and I have still found ourselves compelled to work on Tales of Innocence to some degree&#8230; After you work on something for almost two years, it&#8217;s hard to quit cold turkey. So we&#8217;ve been poking at it, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Tales of Innocence is <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/2010/06/29/tales-of-innocence-patch-released/">complete</a>. An era has ended&#8230; at least in my mind.<span id="more-1070"></span></p>
<p>And yet both Kingcom and I have still found ourselves compelled to work on Tales of Innocence to some degree&#8230; After you work on something for almost two years, it&#8217;s hard to quit cold turkey. So we&#8217;ve been poking at it, correcting little things that we&#8217;ve found, and documenting the typos and small glitches that some people have found as they played. I know this is shocking, but our v1.0 wasn&#8217;t perfect. Honestly, I don&#8217;t think anyone reasonably expected it to be perfect. It&#8217;s never going to be perfect. But people are still having fun with it and that&#8217;s good enough for us. I like reading comments from people. I enjoy seeing people playing the game in their own ways. I liked seeing the game skyrocket in the GameFAQs ranks and I liked all of the threads wondering what the heck was going on. They made me laugh. We really had fun watching people try to figure out how to obtain the Versus style. Honestly, I think both Kingcom and I were blown away by the positive reaction to this release. It really made all of the hard work worth it.</p>
<p>There will be an updated patch eventually, but it&#8217;s not our highest priority. It&#8217;s probably not going to happen right away. We want to take our time and make sure that we give people time to report the errors they find (if they are so inclined). If you want to help us improve the game, please submit <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=846">bug reports</a> and <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=806">typos</a>. And, of course, if you have questions about the game, the <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=812">community here</a> has been very willing to help.</p>
<p>In other news, Shawn over at <a href="http://www.talesunion.com/">Tales Union</a> gathered up some of your questions from various forums around the net for an interview. It comes in three parts, so if you&#8217;re interested in seeing my answers to some of the answers to your questions, check it out here: <a href="http://www.talesunion.com/news/tales-of-innocence-interview-with-absolute-zero-translations-part-1--1009.html">Part 1</a> <a href="http://www.talesunion.com/news/tales-of-innocence-interview-with-absolute-zero-translations-part-2--1014.html">Part 2</a> <a href="http://www.talesunion.com/news/tales-of-innocence-interview-with-absolute-zero-translations-part-3--1016.html">Part 3</a></p>
<p>So&#8230; getting back to the matter at hand, Tales of Innocence is, for now, complete. So what&#8217;s in store for our heroes next week? Well, Kingcom and I have been enjoying some Team Fortress 2 for the first time in recent memory. Neither of us had a chance to play much during the beta testing, so we&#8217;re glad to be back in action. The Engineer Update just came out! What isn&#8217;t there to love about that!? Oh, you want to hear about more translations? Well, Kingcom has a few other projects to finish up, Super Robot Wars J and Oriental Blue are the first ones up on the list. I&#8217;m sure many of you are looking forward to seeing more of Kingcom&#8217;s excellent hacking, so those are certainly projects to look out for (if you weren&#8217;t already). As for me, my first priority is the Tales of Destiny: Director&#8217;s Cut translation that I&#8217;m working on with <a href="http://www.tales-cless.org/">Phantasian Productions</a>. I&#8217;m definitely looking forward to working on one of my favorite entries in the series again. Of course, Kingcom and I have been throwing around ideas for our next project for ages now, so that&#8217;s not to say that there aren&#8217;t other possibilities floating around out there. But those will be a story for another day.</p>
<p>Today is officially our project&#8217;s second birthday. I don&#8217;t know if that still counts since we&#8217;re done, but there&#8217;s never a bad time to celebrate. After a long race that we ran with everything we had, it&#8217;s awesome to look back at the finish line. It&#8217;s the best. I really do  that the game was everything that you hoped it would be.</p>
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		<title>Tales of Innocence (v1.0) Patch Released</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2010/06/29/tales-of-innocence-patch-released/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2010/06/29/tales-of-innocence-patch-released/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tales of Innocence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/?p=1046</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Admit it, you didn&#8217;t think we were going to make it, did you? Well, we did! Yay! I enjoyed reading the comments from people who were upset about us not releasing the patch in June without even telling you why. As it turns out, we didn&#8217;t explain why we were delaying the release because we [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Admit it, you didn&#8217;t think we were going to make it, did you?<span id="more-1046"></span></p>
<p>Well, we did! Yay! I enjoyed reading the comments from people who were upset about us not releasing the patch in June without even telling you why. As it turns out, we didn&#8217;t explain why we were delaying the release because we were not delaying the release. As with many things, June ain&#8217;t over &#8217;til it&#8217;s over. So there you have it.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/wp_12801.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1058" title="Innocence_wp" src="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/wp_12801-300x240.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="240" /></a></p>
<p>Please do read the <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/README.txt" target="_blank">README</a> since it includes the patching instructions. This post will be relatively short since I know most people just want   to play the game.</p>
<p>There is always room for improvement when it comes to projects like this. I know that&#8217;s a weird thing to say when I&#8217;m releasing something that I&#8217;m truly proud of, but I genuinely believe that I could spend another year working on this patch and probably make changes constantly. We&#8217;re at the point where we&#8217;re ready to draw the line and call it finished. That was our real purpose in setting the June deadline. We needed to have one. As much as perfectionists like Kingcom and myself hate to admit it, perfection is not a reasonable goal. We put in thousands of man-hours on this project and we are ready to send it out to the world. So with no further ado, Kingcom and I are proud to present the Tales of Innocence English translation patch.</p>
<p><strong>DOWNLOAD THE TALES OF INNOCENCE v1.0 PATCH</strong> <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/translation/toi_1.0.zip">DOWNLOAD HERE!</a></p>
<p><strong>Attention Mac OSX users:</strong> You can use <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=180142" target="_blank">Retro&#8217;s DS patcher</a> to patch your rom!</p>
<p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><strong>ATTENTION EVERYONE:</strong> THE OPENING SUBTITLES IN ALL CAPS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BACKWARDS! THE JAPANESE LYRICS ARE SUNG BACKWARDS DURING THOSE PORTIONS OF THE SONG!</span></p>
<p>This fan translation is provided for free by Absolute Zero   Translations.</p>
<ul>
<li>Please do not attempt to sell this patch in any way, shape, or form.</li>
<li>Please do not post pre-patched roms using this patch.</li>
<li>Please do not attempt to modify this patch in any way.</li>
<li>Please do not use this patch as the basis for a derivative   translation.</li>
</ul>
<p>Any questions pertaining to the usage of this patch can be directed   to the <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/forum/" target="_blank">Absolute Zero forum.</a></p>
<p>There is a <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=790" target="_blank">discussion thread for the release</a> on the forum, but we have also enabled comments on this post. It&#8217;s the release, so we figured we should go big.</p>
<p>Kingcom, congrats on your first released patch!</p>
<p>If you are having trouble patching, check out this video from darkspirit456:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av-tnj9nPDo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av-tnj9nPDo</a></p>
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		<slash:comments>604</slash:comments>
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		<title>Download (v1.0)</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/innocence/download-v1-0/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/innocence/download-v1-0/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:14:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Tales of Innocence Patch (v1.0)]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong><a href="http://a0t.co/translation/toi_1.0.zip">Download Tales of Innocence Patch (v1.0)</a></strong></p>
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		<title>Why We Can&#8217;t Have Nice Things</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2010/05/31/why-we-cant-have-nice-things/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2010/05/31/why-we-cant-have-nice-things/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:06:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tales of Innocence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/?p=1035</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the last post, the message that I wanted to convey was that the project is almost done. That is a fact.The project IS almost done. We think, based on the information we have, that we will be able to finish it in June. Those of you who read the last post carefully probably noted [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the last post, the message that I wanted to convey was that the project is almost done. That is a fact.<span id="more-1035"></span>The project IS almost done. We think, based on the information we have, that we will be able to finish it in June. Those of you who read the last post carefully probably noted all of the caveats in it. We don&#8217;t have a final release date yet. Until we have a final release date, nothing is set in stone. I can&#8217;t predict the future. If a bunch of problems arise that prevent us from releasing the patch in June, guess what? We won&#8217;t release the patch in June. I can&#8217;t give you a release date right now, but I didn&#8217;t want to leave you in the dark either. Apparently now I am paying for that decision. This project will not be released tomorrow. It will not be released in a week. If we manage to get the patch out in June, it will be late June. That is an estimate, not a promise. Right now, that&#8217;s the best I can do.</p>
<p>You might note that comments are closed on this post. I&#8217;ve been thinking about it and decided that it doesn&#8217;t make sense to use this disorganized blog comment structure when I have <a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/forum/index.php">a perfectly good forum</a>. If you would like to comment and participate, I encourage you to do it there. When I get around to it, I will be closing the comment sections of the older posts on the blog. I simply don&#8217;t have time to micromanage the anarchy that can happen in the comments, so the forum provides a simple solution.</p>
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		<title>After Much Debate&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2010/04/01/after-much-debate/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2010/04/01/after-much-debate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:21:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tales of Innocence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[April Fools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/?p=1012</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We have decided to release a demo patch. I know what you&#8217;re thinking&#8230; All along this guy has been decrying the concept of the open beta and now this&#8230; Well good news, I still am! That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s a demo and not an open beta! What&#8217;s the difference? We&#8217;re intentionally limiting your access to the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>We have decided to release a demo patch.<span id="more-1012"></span></p>
<p>I know what you&#8217;re thinking&#8230; All along this guy has been decrying the concept of the open beta and now this&#8230; Well good news, I still am! That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s a demo and not an open beta! What&#8217;s the difference? We&#8217;re intentionally limiting your access to the game. The game will be set on a timer. We&#8217;ve decided to give you a three hour demo. Appetizers are meant to whet your appetite for the game, not spoil it, after all.</p>
<p>Patching instructions can be found in the included README file.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/translation/toidemo.zip" target="_self">Tales of Innocence Demo Patch</a></p>
<p>And while I understand that people might want to comment and share their impressions of the demo, please don&#8217;t ruin the experience for your fellow gamers.</p>
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		<title>The State of the Scene</title>
		<link>http://a0t.co/2010/02/26/the-state-of-the-scene/</link>
		<comments>http://a0t.co/2010/02/26/the-state-of-the-scene/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:37:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>throughhim413</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blog Updates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[romhacking]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/?p=993</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is surely going to be tl;dr for most people. If you never plan to be involved in and have no interest in the workings of a translation group, skip it. Dear anyone-who-thinks-this-is-picking-on-them, This isn&#8217;t about you. You are a small part of a much greater problem. You are a product of the community, so [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This is surely going to be tl;dr for most people. If you never plan to be involved in and have no interest in the workings of a translation group, skip it.</p>
<p><span id="more-993"></span></p>
<p>Dear anyone-who-thinks-this-is-picking-on-them,</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t  about you. You are a small part of a much greater problem. You are a  product of the community, so while I may not respect that, I really  don&#8217;t put the blame on any individual. But if you think a particular comment is directed  at you, it probably is. If you recognize that you&#8217;re part of the problem, you can join me in searching for the solution. I&#8217;m not posting this to tear you down. I wouldn&#8217;t waste my time like that. I want all of us to strive for a higher standard. I want all of us to be better. So before anyone jumps on me for what I&#8217;ve said here, I hope you&#8217;ll bear in mind that we all should be after the same thing.</p>
<p>&lt;3 throughhim413</p>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>People are probably wondering why I think I have any right to write this. I don&#8217;t, really. I&#8217;m still very new to the scene with only about five years under my belt. I started out at ROMhacking.net before creating my own blog. I certainly don&#8217;t consider myself to be some kind of source of emulation (no pun intended). Still, I&#8217;m not sure any translator has been as blessed as I have when it comes to partners. I&#8217;ve been spoiled rotten having worked with Gemini and now Kingcom. Both of them made life so easy on me as a translator. My only limit was my imagination. They really let me dream big with the projects I&#8217;ve worked on and I&#8217;m truly thankful for that. With such a high standard set by the hacking, I couldn&#8217;t help but feel that I had to provide a translation that could do it justice. I don&#8217;t know if I accomplished that goal, but I learned a lot from my experiences up until now to be sure. I just want to share some of that perspective today.</p>
<p>I really love romhacking and I really love the people I&#8217;ve met doing it. But lately, I&#8217;ve been a bit frustrated by what has become of the community. We live in a world where translators can&#8217;t translate, editors don&#8217;t know  what real English sounds like, and programmers don&#8217;t know their hex  from their Tales. And you know what? We&#8217;re all to blame for it.  Translators, editors, programmers, and even fans have made this  community what it is today. That&#8217;s why we&#8217;re the only ones who can fix  it.</p>
<p>The same thing has happened in other communities. New technology has paved the way for more people than ever before to participate in subtitling anime, scanning manga, and patching games. What was once a closed community of elites who possessed the skill and knowledge to get things done has become a public effort. But we have to ask ourselves what we sacrificed in getting here.</p>
<p>The answer, I&#8217;m sorry to say, is excellence. Modern fans don&#8217;t just tolerate mediocrity, they demand it and laud it. It used to be that when we released a 1.0, it meant everything in the game was complete. Now when we release a 1.0, it means that we&#8217;ve released a 1.0. This feels more like the Tautology Club than the ROMhacking community. In this world, speed is king and quality often has to take a back seat. &#8220;I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s good as long as I have it now!&#8221; is the battle cry. Anime has speedsubs, manga has speedscans, and now games have these ridiculous patches thrown together with DSlazy and Google Translate. I&#8217;m not talking about people who work quickly and do good work, I&#8217;m talking about people who are willing to sacrifice quality for speed. Is that really the kind of legacy we want to leave behind?</p>
<p>As long as we hold ourselves to a lower standard, the community will never improve. To quote the great king Mufasa, we are more than what we have become. I always believed that more accessibility would open up the door for us to do more in the fan translation community. I refuse to believe that there&#8217;s less talent out there today than there once was, but by lowering the barrier to entry, we&#8217;ve effectively removed the test that ensured quality. Years ago, there weren&#8217;t many people who had the skills to hack the games, so it made sense that they wanted to pair up with proven translators. These days, there are exponentially more &#8220;hackers&#8221; who believe that premade programs and tools are the ultimate solution and possess little programming knowledge themselves. With easy access to so many games (particularly NDS games), they&#8217;ll take most any &#8220;translator&#8221; they can find. The quality of patches has significantly dropped. Often, patches are released long before they should be with many destined to die before reaching completion. And unfortunately, without discerning fans, there&#8217;s no separating the wheat from the chaff. What is the incentive for a team to go to great lengths to provide a quality translation when an average one will get them equal recognition? I&#8217;m reminded of the rather apt commercial:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31ZevWuxrNE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31ZevWuxrNE</a></p>
<p>You shouldn&#8217;t announce a translation project with the motivation of learning   how to translate, hack, or program. Before I ever started translating for a real project, I worked on a text translation of Tales of Phantasia. It was awful! Thank goodness that text never made it into a game, but still, the things I learned from it were to my benefit when I started my first project. My point is that it&#8217;s very easy to gain   experience without getting people&#8217;s hopes up with a formal announcement.   By prematurely announcing a project, you&#8217;re only setting the stage for   potential disappointment and frustration if you fail to see it through. It&#8217;s   important to have the experience <em>before</em> you begin. You have to be sure   that you&#8217;re capable of handling everything the game will require.   Hacking is much more than just dumping and inserting text and graphics.   If you rely too heavily on programs made by others, you have an uphill   battle to fight. Most translations incorporate hundreds if not  thousands  of changes, most of which will go unnoticed by all but the most observant. Still, each and every one is an important  part of  making the final product feel as natural in the target language  as it  did in the original one. If you want a great translation, you  have to  make the game work your way, not the other way around. You can only  accomplish so  much if you restrict yourself to the limitations of the  original game.  That&#8217;s true in terms of both the text and the code. You have to have patience. Some things might take hours,  days, or even  weeks of work. You have to properly plan and execute  them. It&#8217;s  essential that you are able to organize and plan ahead if  you want to  succeed.</p>
<p>I want to help this community grow. Even now, I still believe in its potential. So I&#8217;m going to offer some unsolicited advice.</p>
<h2>Translation</h2>
<p>Let&#8217;s go through translation one step at a time. We&#8217;ve got some Japanese text. What should we be asking ourselves? I&#8217;ve boiled it down to four fundamental questions.</p>
<ol>
<li>What does it say?</li>
<li>What is it trying to say?</li>
<li>What would I say?</li>
<li>What am I trying to say?</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>1) What does it say?</strong></p>
<p>Do you understand what it says? Yes? Great! Go on to step 2. No? Okay, stop right there. Don&#8217;t put it into Google Translate. Don&#8217;t slap one word after another into a dictionary. Don&#8217;t guess. Don&#8217;t say you&#8217;re just using the project to &#8220;practice&#8221; or that &#8220;it doesn&#8217;t matter that I&#8217;m not fluent in Japanese&#8221; or &#8220;it&#8217;s better than nothing.&#8221; If you don&#8217;t know Japanese, it&#8217;s not time to translate yet. Go study up and come back when you&#8217;re confident in your skills. A good translator will always be able to find work online.</p>
<p><strong>2) What is it trying to say?</strong></p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t the same question as the first. We have to look at multiple things here &#8211; nuance, tone, and character personality just to name a few. Most translators won&#8217;t be surprised when I say that this question is far more important than the first. We&#8217;re not only trying to pick up on the subtle details of the text, we&#8217;re trying to understand their implications. Context, my friends, is king. If translation were a simple equation of X Japanese = Y English, we wouldn&#8217;t spend so much time laughing at Google Translate.</p>
<p><strong>3) What would I say?</strong></p>
<p>A great man once posed the question, &#8220;ENGLISH, MOTHERF*CKER: DO YOU SPEAK IT!?&#8221; My point is that too often, translators, even good ones, get stuck in Japanese mode and forget what real English sounds like. Don&#8217;t let it happen. Re-read your translation and ask yourself if you can imagine a real human being saying it out loud. If you can&#8217;t, it&#8217;s time to rethink that translation. This is where we separate the men from the boys, the would-be translations from the localizations. Have you ever seen a translation note slapped in an official localization? Games don&#8217;t get the privilege of writing off certain phrases or jokes as impossible to translate. We are here to entertain and we only get one shot at it. Don&#8217;t just translate jokes literally, make them work. If you can&#8217;t make them work, you&#8217;re probably not cut out for translation. I don&#8217;t mean you need to make with the funny in the exact same spot as the original text, but if you&#8217;re not capturing the feel of it, you&#8217;re not localizing. Also, remember that you&#8217;re writing in English, not Japanese. If your translation mirrors the sentence order and punctuation of the Japanese text, you&#8217;re probably doing it wrong.</p>
<p><strong>4) What am I trying to say?</strong></p>
<p>This is the last question I ask and it&#8217;s probably the most important. Read <em>your</em> dialogue. Don&#8217;t look at the Japanese. At this point, it no longer matters what the Japanese said. It doesn&#8217;t matter if your translation was right, not that it shouldn&#8217;t be. We, as translators, have to release our death-grip on the Japanese text and learn to walk on our own. As of this moment, your translation is the gospel truth when it comes to this game. Does it read like a real conversation? Does it read like the conversation that you want it to? Say what you will about DeJap or Ted Woolsey, but there is a reason that they&#8217;re remembered. Their scripts might not have been the most accurate translations ever produced, but they were vibrant, living creations. We should all be so lucky to produce such memorable translations. But while we&#8217;re at it, why don&#8217;t we make them memorable for quality rather than quirks?</p>
<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
<p>No doubt I am perfect and always produce a translation that would make even the original author weep at its beauty, right? Of course I don&#8217;t. I do the best I can, but there are times when I fall short. That&#8217;s the proof that I&#8217;m still learning. We can never stop learning as translators. I won&#8217;t lie to you &#8211; localization is not easy. But honestly, what do we have to lose by striving for excellence in everything we do?</p>
<p>Few things frustrate me more than seeing the term localization used by people who clearly aren&#8217;t localizing. It is an insult, quite frankly, to those of us who are striving for true localizations. I understand that new groups have a need to promote themselves, but I beg you not to do it at the expense of the community. I&#8217;m not trying to claim I have any rights to the phrase (certainly Cless of Phantasian Productions has been using it far longer than I have), I just ask that you respect it. Find a localization that inspires you. I&#8217;m talking about something that really makes you step back and appreciate what it did. I was talking to Tom (of Persona 2: Innocent Sin fame) about localization at one point. When it came to the topic of favorite localization, we both named the same game &#8211; Odin Sphere. That localization left me in awe and  changed the way that I looked at my job as a translator. It made me want to strive for more. At the same time, I suggest you find a translation that you want to surpass. It might be a game off the shelf or it might be an old translation of yours. Either way, set goals. Reach for the stars.</p>
<p>Most players will never understand everything that goes into a patch.  And that&#8217;s fine. It&#8217;s really easy to make most people happy with a  translation, but I encourage you not to settle for less than your very best. Create a great  translation, not a good one.  As impossible as it is, try to give  players an experience that everyone can enjoy. Remember that at the end  of the day, our job is to make a game fun in English (assuming you&#8217;re  translating into English). A stupid line in Japanese doesn&#8217;t have to be  stupid in English. A game-breaking bug in the Japanese version doesn&#8217;t  have to stay game-breaking. There is no reason that we can&#8217;t improve  upon the raw materials we&#8217;re working with. I&#8217;m not advocating making  things up or altering the fundamental elements of the game, but don&#8217;t be afraid to bring the game to life. The truth is that we have the advantage over localization companies. We don&#8217;t have to worry about time or budget constraints. We don&#8217;t have to worry about any kind of censorship. Don&#8217;t just live up to the original text, surpass it! We truly have the freedom to produce anything that we dream of if we&#8217;re just willing to make the effort.</p>
<h2>Programming</h2>
<p>Anyone who has ever asked me about hacking knows that I don&#8217;t know the first thing about it. I&#8217;m certainly not any kind of authority, so I asked Kingcom to share his thoughts on the state of the community from his point of view. He laid out the following process when it comes to hacking:</p>
<p>1. Be able to program both in a high level language and assembly of the specific system. It is often a necessity and always to your benefit. The complexity varies from game to game, but there&#8217;s nothing as big a waste of time as inserting or dumping text manually, and formatting it on the fly can save a lot of time as well.</p>
<p>2. Take a look at the game. Do you like it? Well, be prepared to be sick of it before the project&#8217;s over. Analyze all of the data. Are there compressions? Reverse engineer the format. Text embedded into scripts? Reverse engineer the format. Any other obstacles, weird protection schemes, encryption, whatever? Reverse engineer. Create any programs that you need to handle the basics. There will certainly be more obstacles down the line, but you have to start somewhere. Are there any issues in the code? Is each text box limited to 3 lines of 16 characters? Reprogram it. Does it lack a VWF? Add one. Don&#8217;t rely on other people to do the work for you. It doesn&#8217;t help you learn and it leaves you at their mercy if any problems arise down the line and they aren&#8217;t there to help.</p>
<p>3. Once you have cleared any major hurdles, have dumped the text, and are really certain that you can pull it off, start thinking about getting other people involved. Take quality over quantity. A single qualified individual will produce a much better translation than a group of weeaboos. Multiple hackers are almost always a bigger burden than gain. As with translators, it is unlikely that multiple hackers would have the same level of skill and have the same vision of how things should be done. Coordinating a group becomes exponentially more difficult the more people are involved and creating a piecemeal patch can often be more work than creating one from scratch. One person should take the lead, preferably the main hacker. It&#8217;s very difficult to run a project when you aren&#8217;t contributing an equal share of the work. Unless you can play a role in directly shaping how the game will come together, it&#8217;s unlikely to turn out. In the end, someone barking orders will only slow a project down and make it more complicated and difficult than necessary.</p>
<p>4. When the translator is willing and able to translate the game (and, preferably, you are convinced that he is capable of the job), it&#8217;s time to start planning out the rest of the project. What does the translator need? Will the game need new control codes because the Japanese language often doesn&#8217;t differentiate genders or plurals? What are his preferences? Does he want to worship the holy Japanese script without changing a thing? Then better return to step 3. You have to trust each other and you have to work towards the same goal. You have to push each other as you both strive for excellence. The translator shouldn&#8217;t have to work around artificial borders just because the hacker doesn&#8217;t feel like redesigning the menus or rewriting part of the game.</p>
<p>5. Now&#8230; and only now might be a good point to start thinking about  announcing it. Don&#8217;t announce it too early, unless you know what you are  doing. Clear any major problems and have something to impress people.  Be prepared that not everyone will like it. A big part of the job at  this point is public relations. Don&#8217;t lose your temper. If every little  comment online is going to bother you, you might want to rethink  announcing the project. You could always release it when it&#8217;s complete  to avoid having to deal with ongoing commentary.</p>
<p>6. Start the finer parts of hacking. Change menus when needed, fix any  problems that the translated text will cause, and if the text doesn&#8217;t  fit in the space provided, compress it. This step will likely go on  until long after the translation is finished. You never know when  problems might arise and you have to be ready to deal with them.</p>
<p>7. Stay in close contact to your translator and continue fixing problems. When everything is done, test it. Test, test, and test again. If you think everything is ready, test it again. A game can&#8217;t ever have enough testing.</p>
<h2>Playing</h2>
<p>Fans, the only thing I ask of you is that you demand more of fan translations. If the fan translations that you&#8217;re playing aren&#8217;t as good as what you&#8217;d find in a store, we have failed you. As long as you accept and praise mediocrity, we will never get any  better. We are capable of producing work that is on par with official localizations and we have no excuse not to. The world isn&#8217;t going to change overnight, but it&#8217;s time for you to expect more.</p>
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