This is kind of the point I was trying to make, although I mixed it into a healthy portion of my own opinion on the subject.

I know the french translator and I can say the translation is pretty accurate (and I also know Japanese).

If someone wants to do a "japanese to english" translation, why not, but who is ready do to it?

The french translator didn't used any tools but the old available ones (thingy and others), as the text is not compress at all. There are even 24-bits pointers in the rom from what I read so text size shouldn't be a problem.

There is also a possibility to do a graphic DTE is needed (it's the solution he used, rather than use the 24-bits pointers).

The only tool which has been coded for this translation is a graphic decompressor for some menus tiles.

http://www.romhacking.net/abandoned/

He used the script available here as a reference to do the japanese characters table.

So if someone want to work on this game, you need :

- Japanese characters table.
- French characters table (with the graphic DTE included, to be able to dump the whole french script)
- The graphic decompressor (it seems this stuff is directly posted on the forum, they also posted the routines/codes and such).

So the romhack of this game seems very easy, even for beginners (except the few compressed graphics in menus but a tool has already been made to handle this).

Just need to dump the french script with a tool which handle pointers, translate it, then reinsert it (either with the use of the 24-bits pointers or by modifying the graphic DTE which has been created for the french translation).

Here's the french official thread of this project : http://www.bessab.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3290&start=50

Just register and post there (in english), they will answer and help you for sure.

(And I also think, like some peoples here, that it's better to have a french to english translation than nothing, and also that it's better to have a good translator for a french to english translation than a bad translator for a japanese to english translation. Not to mention here that there was only "one translator" for the whole script, which is better, in my opinion than several translators (even english ones) on a same script).

I pm'ed him and it seems he lost the french table (with the GFX DTE) because of a crash of his hard drive, but anyway, if someone is interested to translate the game here, it's rather easy to redo it.

Open the french and japanese rom in a rom graphic editor, and modify the japanese table according to the french DTE (most of the ressources needed are here : http://www.romhacking.net/abandoned/[25]Surging%20Aura.zip).

Then, you just have to dump the french script with a generic dumper (the best would be to use one which can handle 24-bits pointers), translate the french script then reinsert it (with an expansion of the rom or a GFX DTE, depending of the method you want to use).