Translation Fixes & Missing Content & Differences [Discussion]

[Rhyagelle]

First, do yourself a favor and open up this youtube video and play it. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGK3usiX31s

Now....

Most of us probably already know that the game suffers from really weak translation quality in many places, mostly brought on by hardware limitations and awkward font and spacing. Well, if you didn't know...now you do. The subtle nuances in dialogue was erased because of a 5 month deadline to meet and the inability to fit the things they translated onto the dialogue boxes. That's why you always got annoyned looking at the boxes and seeing setences broken up like this:

| Randi: whoa there,*|
| how did you get a**|
| potion like that?****|

Instead of,

| Randi: Whoa there, how did you get a |
| potion like that?**************************|

*excuse my corny dialogue creation and imagine the "*" are spaces please, as Steam apparently doesn't allow multiple spacing...

Some fans have edited roms to reflect a truer representation of the game's actual content, trying to keep it as close as the Japanese version as possible—which, for them [the Japanese audience] and to this day, remains the same. We're the only ones that truly suffered in the worst way possible. There are even reinterpretations that match the Japanese text far more than the English translation Ted Woosely gave us.

One of the best patches I have seen yet is FuSoYa's text and dialogue patch. It doesn't completely re-translate the game, but it fixes so much of the missing text or awkward dialogue that playing without it sometimes can be jarring.

https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/som/patch.html
*And no! You won't get no rom download links from me guys

Comparison: http://imgur.com/G4UIFw2

As you can see, even two guys adjusting the text and dialogue without much knowledge of the original language made a huge improvement to the flow of the text. Most of what they did change was just rewording the official translations to be less akward, too, other parts they tried to completely retranslate. If you have dumped your game, patch it with his .ips patch and play it. You will walk away from it appreciating the game 100000x more than you did before.

There are even projects still alive attempting to not only retranslate the game, but expand upon it, though you can and probably should ignore the later part as that becomes fan-fiction. Some good examples of these projects include:

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=19920.60

Where the people are so dang dedicated they have made special tools to translate the game code and make life easier for their work. It is worth keeping an eye out, especially if you are one of the people who saw SoM's remake graphics and decided old school is best school. Why should you? Because as they update, you never know what you will be given and potentially showing your support could really boost their morale.

And another to point out is if you go to this website, you can really see the differences between each release of the game and figure out the kind of things that got cut per region or just in general.

https://tcrf.net/Secret_of_Mana_(SNES)

These are just some of the things that we, hopefully, will see a remedy to now that hardware limitations are no longer a problem and we don't have crazy soccer moms who can see a robot with a chainsaw and freak out.

I hope as the days go on, especially after PAX in September, we get more confirmations what exactly they are changing, particuarly around the story.

What do you guys think? Would you like to see any of the missing stuff from above, or other missing stuff? Would you like to see cleaner text and slight touch ups on the translation at the very least or would you rather not acknowledge this game at all if the translation isn't approved upon?

I'd like a cohesive place to discuss this stuff, so come on in here you SoM lovers, whether you like the remake or not, and let's talk. Maybe SE will see this thead and seriously consider some of it if they haven't already.

P.S
Please...no flame wars! Discuss it politely or at least respectfully, and no trolling.

[AliceEngine]

Technical issues aside I'll always prefer Woolsey over any stiff tl;dr "correct" translation.

[Seraphita]

Very interesting piece of information and yes, you're being smart not sharing the rom. Sharing it would be breaking the steam rules but other than that, very interesting thread. I knew of FuSoYa. I just didn't know exactly what it meant until I read this thread. Especially bad since I played it.

Fans like that love to do the effort to enhance old games the right way. High respect to them.

[Rhyagelle]

Originally posted by AliceEngine:

Technical issues aside I'll always prefer Woolsey over any stiff tl;dr "correct" translation.

Fair enough! I just thought it was cool that these two guys managed to fix the font and use the translations that Ted wanted but couldn't use. Even slight adjustments had an unreal impact on the story. Like when you meet Flammie...so much better!

Originally posted by Zero:

Very interesting piece of information and yes, you're being smart not sharing the rom. Sharing it would be breaking the steam rules but other than that, very interesting thread. I knew of FuSoYa. I just didn't know exactly what it meant until I read this thread. Especially bad since I played it.

Fans like that love to do the effort to enhance old games the right way. High respect to them.

Yeah, I know better than to feed piracy, especially on Steam. Besides, I don't want to make it easier on the pirates. kek

There are other patches out there too, some that aren't complete but do wonders to the game.

[Bazzy]

Originally posted by Rhyagelle:

Some fans have edited roms to reflect a truer representation of the game's actual content, trying to keep it as close as the Japanese version as possible—which, for them [the Japanese audience] and to this day, remains the same. We're the only ones that truly suffered in the worst way possible. There are even reinterpretations that match the Japanese text far more than the English translation Ted Woosely gave us.

One of the best patches I have seen yet is FuSoYa's text and dialogue patch. It doesn't completely re-translate the game, but it fixes so much of the missing text or awkward dialogue that playing without it sometimes can be jarring.

https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/som/patch.html
*And no! You won't get no rom download links from me guys

Comparison: http://imgur.com/G4UIFw2

The screenshot from the water temple scene reminded me of our german version, in fact what we got is far more in line with the patched version, than your original it looks like.
What?!

I wonder what bases was used for the eu translations back in the day?
And what irony that today here in germany we still get the crap translations and sychronisation of everything after all. Ok, rant over just found it interesting seeing that.

We did get awkward localisation stuff as well like "lindenstrasse" and such for the scene with randi in the eating pot. And corny jokes every now and then. In our version randi has a pickup line for the temple lady inpetto.

But i guess i should be glad that i did play it in german way back after all. o.O