bookofholsety | [Project Naga] Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War script index

From:

Now, I haven't played FE4 in a while, but I remember the dragon riders (NOT the knights/masters) had no arms. As such, wouldn't wyvern rider make more sense?

From:

bookofholsety

fe has always been inconsistent as shit about what wyverns are meant to look like arm-ways, and arguably the dragon riders' wyverns still miss out on looking like wyverns because they fail to have a serpentine-looking head (like fe8's wyvern knight)

i'm sticking with dragon rider/dracoknight/dragonmaster because it's easier than trying to fold the dragon rider into the wyvern rider/lord naming scheme (and i personally prefer the dragon-based naming scheme)

From:

sockmonkey05

I played a partially translated version of FE4 when I was young and loved it. I just found out that you're doing this and I think it's awesome! I understand other people are chipping in and that's cool too!

Can't wait to play it!
(EXCLAMATION POINT!)

From:

snowmanticore

Do you know anything at this point in time about whether this patch will be compatible with patches like Shin or Binary?

From:

bookofholsety

i can't say for sure, but i think i can guess fairly safely. as i understand it, fe4's data structure is kind of a pain in the ass for reasons i can't quite comprehend (but which have been wreaking havoc on the development of the actual patch tools for a while), so while stat-tweaking patches for other japan-only games would have few to no problems functioning with both the vanilla japanese rom and translation patches, fe4 is shit out of luck in this regard

as i recall, the shin patch is currently only compatible with the old translation and won't function properly with the vanilla rom, so i'd imagine it'd be even less successful with this translation unless shin decides to port it once this patch is out. i'm not familiar with binary, but i'd imagine it's in a similar situation

Edited Date: 2015-06-20 01:12 am (UTC)

From:

nohahz

probably a dumb question, but i've been following the project for a while back on tumblr. when the finished product does become available for download, where will it be available for download? it seems like the translation/proof-reading is coming along well!

From:

bookofholsety

i'd imagine serenes will be the primary one; it's basically the first place everyone looks for fe translation patches already. i'll probably have a mirror on my mediafire account as well

From:

nohahz

really looking forward to the release! think we'll see a release of the finished patch before the end of the year?

From:

thegreathare21_07

Hey I've been following a long time from tumblr and glad I found this, scared me when I saw you quit tumblr and thought project naga had died! How's the progress going on mp2e's end cause I know your end of the translations are phenomenal! Also wondering since it is private could you accept my friend request on Twitter? Thanks!!

From:

rjwalker

I think the title of the final chapter should be 'The Last Holy War' because that's part of the game's title.

From:

bookofholsety

i've been going back and forth on this one ever since i started, and i certainly don't disagree with you! i'm not exactly a fan of situations where the exact same term is translated differently (i was not at all impressed when roy's ssb4 trophy decided to call his blade "sword of seals" again despite the exact same trophy not calling his game that). on one hand, "crusade" feels tighter and punchier, but on the other hand the lack of title matchup is really annoying

i think i eventually came to the conclusion that i should just pretend it's nodding to the twelve crusaders and not to the game's title (even though i know full well it's nodding to both and it's eating me up inside). alternatively i could remove the reason to do this specifically to nod to them, but like hell i'm renaming them. "twelve holy warriors"? i don't think so :P

From:

rjwalker

They should have just localised the title as Genealogy of the Crusades or something.

From:

bookofholsety

agreed!

From:

voip

Heya, I've been wanting to play through all the FE games if I can. I just finished Gaiden (fantastic game, despite being for the NES) and am itching to move on to Genealogy and Thracia 766. However, it came to my attention that apparently all the currently available translations are sub-par.

Yours is looking up to be something quite special, so I'm looking forward to it. Just curious if this'll be ready anytime soon? Also, if not, do you have any recommendations on the next best translations I can use for both those games?

Edited Date: 2015-07-08 03:26 pm (UTC)

From:

bookofholsety

still a fairly long while away. in the meantime, it's not really a matter of "next best translations" so much as "only translations". :P the old fe4 patch is extremely flawed but at the end of the day i still vaguely like it more than most fan translations, but as far as fe5 goes... well, let's just hope fe4 keeps you busy enough so you won't have to resort to the current fe5 patch

From:

rjwalker

Have you seen this (http://www.fe25thevent.com/event/event1.html)? It's the 25 annivery concert plalist. More relevantly, it has titles for 4 music tracks that share the name of the chapter they appear in.

Chapter 2 - Strife of Agustria
Chapter 3 - Eldigan the Lionheart
Chapter 6 - He who succeeds the Light (Although this is a title for the Jugdral segment of the concert like 'Manaketes and Sacred Stones' is for the GBA games segment.)
Final Chapter - The Final Holy War

Edited Date: 2015-07-11 06:46 pm (UTC)

From:

bookofholsety

seen it, flipped my shit over it (ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCE OF THE ENDGAME FUCK YES). so far as its relevance to this translation goes, i'm not too convinced; "he who succeeds the light" is way too long, and "strife of agustria" feels engrishy and the word "strife" feels like it has less urgency than "crisis". of course, it's still better than "disturbance" :P

(this did however probably tip me over to going with "the final holy war" so there's that)

From:

mikario

First of all, I want to thank you for all the effort you are putting into this project. Now, onto some suggestions:

- You don't have to purposefully avoid the old translation just for the sake of it. Some of your translations are very awkward and it's clear that you're trying to come up with something different, but that's not necessary. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- Some of the wording sounds too modern-y. The game's setting and characters are in an old, medieval time period, and their speech/mannerisms as well as the narration should reflect that.
- Some of the name changes are definitely weird.

Overall though, great job. I have read through most of your script and it holds a good deal of faithfulness to the original story. I don't have time to go through and proofread every chapter with suggestions, which is why I'm listing some general points here. Anyways, I look forward to seeing this released!

From:

bookofholsety

- You don't have to purposefully avoid the old translation just for the sake of it. Some of your translations are very awkward and it's clear that you're trying to come up with something different, but that's not necessary. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

i agree that some parts are awkward, but 99% of the time it's nothing to do with avoiding the old translation (which i did indeed do, because if it wasn't broke i wouldn't be doing this) and more to do with me just being shit

- Some of the wording sounds too modern-y. The game's setting and characters are in an old, medieval time period, and their speech/mannerisms as well as the narration should reflect that.

i certainly don't disagree and it's something i'm trying to stomp out in revision, but at the same time, that's always been a thing in official fe localisations. the only localised fe game which i feel avoids that particular trapping completely is fe11. so at the very least, if i can't get rid of it entirely, it's not out of place compared to other games

- Some of the name changes are definitely weird.

once upon a time, people said the exact same thing about things like "celice" and "leen". considering name changes "weird" is a song and dance as old as time, and i'd have to be an idiot to not expect it even when i'm correcting references

From:

hwrdjacob

I would like to point out you have the Levin Sword named "Bolt Sword" in this patch without acknoledging the official NoA name

From:

bookofholsety

two reasons

1) japanese name is different. the fe1/3/11/12/13/14 levin sword is called サンダーソード, but this thunder-shooting sword is called いかずちの剣. as far as i'm concerned, that's reason enough to consider it a different thing, in the same way that fe4/5's earth sword is not the gba runesword. additionally, since this sword is part of a set with the flame sword and wind sword, it wouldn't make sense for only one of them to have an out-there name like levin

2) there's only one rightful levin in jugdral, thank you very much :P

From:

dds

This seems to be very impressive work re-translating the whole game's scripts. I've only been looking around for a while and it seems like the SNES Fire Emblem games are in various states of translation completion. I was wondering if you needed any help with the programming side of things, putting this work into the game itself. I worked on a few other projects and would love to help out in any way if possible or necessary.

But in any case, very nice work. 2 years is a long time to put in, and shows how devoted you are to seeing it through. :)

From:

bookofholsety

currently, the hacking/patching side of things is this good fellow's responsibility. he might appreciate some help, though, especially given how busy he's been of late, so perhaps you could get in contact with him (either through github or serenes) and see if there's anything you can contribute or help out with

Edited Date: 2015-09-08 02:42 am (UTC)

From:

dds

Hi, sorry to bother you again, but someone said that you're looking for a programmer. I had contacted MP2E earlier and we had begun to talk about what needed to be done, but I haven't heard from them in a while now. Is there anything I can do to help?

From:

bookofholsety

if you're interested, take a look over here

Edited Date: 2015-09-27 03:01 am (UTC)

From:

readdxd

Any info on a release window?

From:

bookofholsety

nope, nobody has any real idea at this point. i don't want to commit to anything at the moment, so that nobody has to be disappointed by the inevitable missing of an overconfident deadline

Edited Date: 2015-11-13 03:21 am (UTC)

From:

darklink1996

I'm not sure about the current title screen for FE4, I feel a modified version of FE5's "Fire Emblem" logo would work better than the modern one.

From:

bookofholsety

i don't disagree, and if i had a fe5 one that looked remotely decent, i'd ditch the current one in a heartbeat. problem is, i spent a while trying to make the fe5 one work but i couldn't get it looking decent. the main advantage with the fe13 one is that i had a huge-ass high-res press kit image to work with, and unsurprisingly i just don't have that with fe5

if somebody else produced a well-done fe5-based one that matched for the fe4 style and was willing to donate it, i'd happily use it, but i don't have the time, the knowledge or the shits to give to do it myself anymore. as it stands i'm not expecting anyone to want to do that, so i'm content to keep using this one because at least it looks reasonably polished

Edited Date: 2016-01-13 01:25 am (UTC)

From:

darklink1996

Well, It's far from perfect. But I have a mock-up that might work. That being said, I'm incapable of actually converting this into game sprites/BGs, so it's likely that you can't use this, but what the hell, no reason for you not to at least see it. http://imgur.com/YyqUs6R

Everything in it, except the shadow for the FE Logo, follows the original palette. And the lengthened subtitle is a personal preference of mine. No idea if that's feasible.

From:

bookofholsety

that more or less resembles where i left my attempt, albeit with a thinner outline. i think my main issue is the outlining; if i'm going to go with something thicker like the fe5 face, then my preference is absolutely for an outline as thick as what the japanese logo has. i think that was where my old attempts fell apart, actually

as far as the subtitle plate goes, it's definitely something i'm still playing around with, mostly because it's a hell of a lot easier to get looking okay than the logo. i originally just stuck to the original dimensions because i wanted to play it safe, but if there's one thing i learned working on fe6's subtitle scroll, it's how to cheat a bit to stretch out the text area. the guy i've got working with me for graphics, azimuthfe, said that there's some room to extend the plate and that it'd be worth looking into, so rest assured, it's on the table

Edited Date: 2016-01-13 08:04 am (UTC)

From:

fionordequester

the only localised fe game which i feel avoids that particular trapping completely is fe11. so at the very least, if i can't get rid of it entirely, it's not out of place compared to other games

Actually, even FE11 failed to completely escape it! Jake is literally talking to Marth in pig latin in one of their conversations. Even discounting that though, I feel like the only reason that particular translation worked so well is because the story itself was outdated to start with. The narrative was so cliched and minimalistic, that the heavy Elizabethan dialogue worked to it's advantage. It made it feel as though it was one of those long lost stories from 1000 B.C. or something, rather than just...well, a cliched story.

But had they used that style for say, FE13? It would have completely fell on it's face, IMO. So I disagree with Mikario as far as this goes.

Edited Date: 2016-01-15 07:58 am (UTC)

From:

bookofholsety

see, i would actually argue that fe13 is the next-most floofily written localised script, even though that arguably says more about how non-floofy the rest of the series is. imo fe13 doesn't use it everywhere (it's mostly absent from supports, and for good reason in that you're right about how much face-flat-falling it would've caused there) and it's certainly not as thick as fe11, but i feel that the main chapter text mostly maintains a pretentious air in its phrasings, especially after lucina becomes part of the main cast. more consistently, it also embraced a floofier style in the relatively superficial areas of terminology; i vividly recall a friend once commenting how she doesn't play fire emblem to deal with stuff like "the Exalt of the halidom", and i would also argue that you get a solid whiff of pretension just by reading, say, the names of map locations

even taking fan translations into account, i'd still place fe13 as second-most floofy, though gringe's fe6 is up there somewhere. fe12 tried, but not very hard

Edited Date: 2016-01-15 08:19 am (UTC)

From:

fionordequester

Hmm...well, now that I think about it, FE13 is a pretty weird case in general.

There are a lot of phrases like "I know you want to sheathe your sword in my stomach"...but, it's also balanced out by a lot of very modern-English dialogue, like Henry referencing American Pie. Whereas with FE7, yeah, it's floofiest moments are not as floofy as FE13's, but it's "anachronistic" moments aren't as anachronistic as FE7's.

Most of the FE translations seem to swing either one way or the other, but FE13 seems to go on a pendulum. Also, the support conversation scripts take up a larger portion of the script than in most FE games, so I'd still say that translation was pretty "modern" in comparison to the other officially localized games...

So I guess my point is that I wouldn't go for that particular approach with FE4, unless we're specifically writing for someone pretentious. Levin, for example, would be all "I say that to LOTS of girls! It don't mean nothin'!", while Alvis would be saying stuff like "(sigh) His Majesty bids me to observe your battle, and here you are, struggling to blot out flies."

I'm guessing that you already agree with me, but I'm more responding to Mikario here ;).

Edited Date: 2016-01-15 09:29 am (UTC)

From:

bookofholsety

my first instinct was to disagree with you on fe13's "modern" elements being more dominant than its floofy ones; i figured that no matter how enormous the supports are compared to the main story, the plot was still the plot and was still the core of the game, and that even if said plot is complete garbage, the supports are ultimately built to, well, support it. by that logic, i felt that fe13's floofy nature was its more dominant one

but then i realised something. i can bang on all i like about how the main story is the centre of the universe, but that's not the draw of fe13. let's face it, when was the last time that even die-hard fe13 fans gave half a shit about its main story, save for the occasional daddy joke about validar? when people talk fe13, they talk pairings and supports. that's what stood out to people. for all intents and purposes, that modern side is what defined fe13, so in a way you're right

even so, from a purely clinical perspective, fe13 has floof which outfloofs the rest of the series, so i haven't really changed my mind on that. that said, i still feel it's more of a testament to how un-floofy the other localisations are rather than how floofy fe13 is. 7 and 8, as the most faithful and straightforward localisations, didn't go out of their way to dress up the language (though early lyn mode leans that way a bit); and 9 and 10 were all the more straightforward for the simple natures of their protagonists, so all of their floof was contained into elincia and pelleas's final addresses to their respective armies where it belonged

in conclusion, this was mostly one long excuse to say "floofy" a lot of times. i don't care what anyone says; it's a fantastic way to describe purple prose

Edited Date: 2016-01-15 03:20 pm (UTC)

From:

fionordequester

(snigger) Glad I could help :D! What do you think of using parenthesis like that in the main script btw? It's something I'm seeing in some other really good translations like "Zone of the Enders: Fist of Mars" and "Dragon Quest Monsters Joker". It seems like something they do in place of onomatopoeia like "Ha ha!" or "Hmmhmmhmmhmm!" or Uweeeheehee or things like that. So we'd have stuff like...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(shrug)

(snigger)

(snort)

(cackle)

(titter) - That describes a kind of laughing

(gasp)

(tsk)

(pant)

(wheeze)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And so on and so forth. Basically, we wouldn't be trying to avoid onomatopoeia completely (I really like "Kehehehe" and "GRRRRRAAAAUUUUGGGGGHHHH" for example), we'd just be trying to find creative ways of adding even more feeling to the dialogue. What do you think?

Edited Date: 2016-01-15 07:09 pm (UTC)

From:

bookofholsety

hard pass. i've given the matter some thought before, albeit with *asterisks* instead of parentheses, and it doesn't feel right to me. i'm sure it's a valid style; it's just not my style

From:

fionordequester

When I post my feedback on the Prologue, where would you be more likely to notice it? Here, in the "Script Index Comments", or in the "Prologue: Birth of a Crusader" comments?

From:

bookofholsety

leave them in the respective entry for whatever you're criticising, just so everything's together in a logical fashion

From:

fionordequester

Okey doke! I already got some stuff there then, for whenever you wish to view it!

From:

fionordequester

Personally, one idea I've been kicking around ever since I heard it from someone else. When Arvis kills Sigurd in the old translation, and that big block of text comes up afterwards, the very last sentence is...

And the light...

It trails off...but what if that thought was meant to be completed by the Chapter 6 title itself? As in, the last line of dialogue is...

http://lpix.org/2340698/Fire

...but then the Chapter 6 title itself would be....

http://lpix.org/2340699/Fire

If that's true, I think "The Light Lives On" would be a fabulous title for Chapter 6. What do you think Holsety?

Edited Date: 2016-01-20 02:38 am (UTC)

From:

hwrdjacob

Well rest assured I will be waiting patiently for whenever it is finally released, as will many others. This is in many ways the first REAL translation of FE5 and I've been dying to have the missing parts of FE4's script finished. You good sir are a godsend

From:

azek

Just finished a full play through of FE4 thanks to your translation efforts! Your patch has none of the odd issues that plagued previous efforts. I could trust the translation like that of an official release. Bravo!

From:

mrnuage

Hello there, I played the whole game with your patch and I liked all the work that was done for it. Thanks for your hard work but i'll go straight to the point.

You see, being able to play such a game in english is already a very good thing, but I think things could be even better. You seems to posess the technical skills to create such a patch. Personally I can only translate and that's what I would like to do actually. I'd like to translate this game in French, my mother tongue. But to do that, I would need the technical part.

My question is simple. Would you agree to share the tools you used to realise that? I know I may sound rude right now but I can't do this alone.

From:

bookofholsety

(apologies for the delay in getting back to you; i've been very busy lately and didn't even think to open dreamwidth until today)

honestly, that's something i'd always dreamed might someday come from our work. as far as our tools go, our plan all along has been to release them once the patch is finished and out of beta - needless to say, despite nearly three dang years passing, that hasn't happened yet, and that's squarely my fault. i'm hoping to get this thing finalised as soon as possible, after which the tools (which pretty much just consist of the text editor) should be made available

Soon™

[Project Naga] Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War script index

stuff and things what i've done