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Author Topic: Idea: Make a ROMHacking Language  (Read 531 times)
Spikeman
Guest
« on: November 24, 2006, 11:28:17 pm »
I have this crazy idea, but I'm not sure if it would be useful at all. We could create a sort of intermediate language (actual language, not a programming language). This way people could hack games into this intermediate language (and create the tools, etc.) so translators could just translate the script from this language to whatever language and easily translate the game.

I'm not sure how feasible this is but the language should be designed so it's easy to translate into English and Japanese mainly (as these seem to be the main languages on the translation scene) as well as other languages.

Any linguists here? Wink
RedComet
Guest
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2006, 11:50:02 pm »
What's the point though? If the goal is English -> Japanese, why bother with an intermediate language? Any translator (or anyone who speaks a language that doesn't have their head up their ass) will tell you there's a LOT of cultural specific puns, idioms, and other idiosyncratic things to consider. Having a language in between the source and the target only further muddles the translation.

If you know two languages, say French and English, translate about a paragraph of French into English. Then find someone equally competent (or more so) in the languages and have them translate your English translation back into French without seeing the French source you started with. Then compare the two French versions.
Spikeman
Guest
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2006, 01:01:45 am »
Well I guess the point is so us ROM hackers who aren't any good at other languages (well I sort of am.. I'm in the process of learning Japanese, taking some college classes, but that's beside the point) can get games into a translatable state, one that any translator can work from.

Actually.. I guess you're right. One would have to learn the language to translate it into an intermediate language.

Hmm.. it would be nice to figure out a way for ROM hackers who don't know any language other than their own (mostly English in this case) to get a foreign ROM into a workable state for a translator. Namely, dump the text and graphics that need to be translated.

But how would that be possible, say in Japanese or Chinese, with things like Kanji?
RedComet
Guest
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2006, 01:07:58 am »
The same way we've been doing it up until now. With kanji you find the graphics in the rom and take snapshot and get your translate to identify them in text for you to add to your table. Same with any other ideographic languages. For anything like banners or graphics that aren't text, you do the same thing pretty much.
Spikeman
Guest
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2006, 01:16:12 am »
The thing with that is some translators like to see that you're a competent enough ROM hacker.. so you have to get it all ready for the script to be inserted. I guess all wannabe translators need to learn at least the basics of the language, example: for Japanese, Hiragana, Katakana, and how to search for Kanji.
RedComet
Guest
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2006, 01:27:03 am »
Being a competent hacker doesn't mean you can identify the nearly 1900 kanji the Japanese governments mandates students to learn by the time the graduate high school. Drop an english font in the game and throw together some "fake" screen (english sentences to show you can hack the game). If someone takes interest they can probably assume you can't identify kanji if you don't know the language and should be expecting to do a little id'ing to help you out.
Suzaku
Guest
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2006, 01:33:00 am »
1945 kanji. Now that's rather an ironic number. There are another 350 or so that see some use, but they're not part of the government-mandated list. Needless to say, I don't even know them all at a glance.
Ryusui
Guest
« Reply #7 on: November 25, 2006, 02:31:51 am »
Besides the obvious problem that it's an unnecessary extra step, there aren't enough similarities between English and Japanese to create an "intermediary language". Closest you're going to get is romaji, and that's easy to get: before I graduated to programs such as WindHex that could display Japanese text on their own, I developed my own kludgy system for unambiguously producing romaji from kana. The end result is so ugly that it actually impedes translation. ^_^
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