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SD Snatcher translation help wanted

Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 7:50 am
by MrSeed
Hello everybody,

I was last night playing the english version of SD Snatcher and I found that one text in the game is not translated at all. It's the first time I noticed it. The message is attached as png to this message. The Japanese text start with 'Re' which I found strange, perhaps it's just a bug because even the katakana chars 'ヤツラ' (yatsura) don't make any sense to me. So if somebody here can read Japanese, please help me out with this.

Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 8:26 am
by StreetTrash
It's been quite awhile since I've played SD Snatcher, but I seem to recall coming across more than one untranslated line.

I believe Oasis (the group that did the translation) stated that only 50 to 60 percent of the dialogue was actually completed. Although to be fair, they were quite limited by the compression technology of the day and lack of experience, seeing as SD Snatcher is proclaimed to be the earliest example of a game getting translated by a fan group.

The title of this thread had me thinking someone was taking up the task of doing a new full translation for the game. :sad:

Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 9:10 am
by MrSeed
StreetTrash wrote:It's been quite awhile since I've played SD Snatcher, but I seem to recall coming across more than one untranslated line.
In the early days when I played the game a lot, I only found one line which was not translated at all. That was the line after you got L-Angel from a naked Snatcher. A few years ago I found a version on the internet which had that line translated and also the name (e)nd bug wasn't there anymore. So I though that now all Japanese dialogs were gone but as you see I was wrong. So I really would like to know what it the line says.

Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 11:43 am
by Marc
Yeah, SD Snatcher was the very first fan translation. Hey, if anyone wants to work on the programming side of a new translation, let me know. I'll translate.

As for that picture, the RE followed by the んた could be a character's name (it doesn't make sense any other way, unless it's a bug), but the rest of the sentence says, "Did you hear that? Looks like their [nuclear] submarine is back in port..."

"Yatsura" means "them" or "they". When followed by "no", it means "their".

Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 3:01 pm
by MrSeed
Osiris wrote:Yeah, SD Snatcher was the very first fan translation. Hey, if anyone wants to work on the programming side of a new translation, let me know. I'll translate.
I looked on the internet and found some discussion at msx.org:
http://www.msx.org/forumtopic7527.html
And here is someone saying he could do it, only he needs a translator. So maybe a new project can be born.

Thanks for the translation. About the first word, I took the Japanese version and I got this: あんた
Osiris wrote:"Yatsura" means "them" or "they". When followed by "no", it means "their".


Strange, Japanese do have an original kanji for 'they/them' I think, so why is there a katana word for that and why it's used in this case?

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 10:34 pm
by Marc
MrSeed wrote:
Osiris wrote:Yeah, SD Snatcher was the very first fan translation. Hey, if anyone wants to work on the programming side of a new translation, let me know. I'll translate.
I looked on the internet and found some discussion at msx.org:
http://www.msx.org/forumtopic7527.html
And here is someone saying he could do it, only he needs a translator. So maybe a new project can be born.

Thanks for the translation. About the first word, I took the Japanese version and I got this: あんた
Osiris wrote:"Yatsura" means "them" or "they". When followed by "no", it means "their".


Strange, Japanese do have an original kanji for 'they/them' I think, so why is there a katana word for that and why it's used in this case?
Thanks, I'll get in touch with this guy.

If the first word is あんた, then the translation would be "Hey! Did you hear that? Looks like their [nuclear] submarine is back in port..."

The kanji equivalent is 奴等, though it can also be written as 奴ら. It can be written entirely in hiragana or katakana as well, depending on preference. Words are frequently written in katakana instead of hiragana or kanji to make them stand out, like italic writing in English.

Edit: I posted a thread about a new translation project for SD Snatcher at msx.org (http://www.msx.org/forumtopicl7794.html), so hopefully we can get something together. If anyone here can help or knows someone else who can, then please let me know.

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 10:45 pm
by gatse_becker
Marc somehow the thought of playing SD Snatcher with a new translation done by you, might just be the most exciting thing I have heard in awhile!

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 12:21 am
by Artemio
Maybe we can contact Daniel Caetano...

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:50 am
by snatcher1988
I'm with gatse_becker, Marc. I would also love to see a brand new translated version of SD Snatcher.

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 12:38 pm
by Henry Spencer
Yeah, Kris is right. There is a demand for a better translation; please be the ones to do it. :smile:

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:03 pm
by Marc
It's great to hear people are interested in something like this. Hopefully we can make it happen. I'm all up for it if the technical side can be taken care of.

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 3:03 am
by 87th
You're a workaholic, Marc, but if that means I get to play professionally translated versions of SD Snatcher and Policenauts, then I certainly won't try and stop you. :)

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 1:57 pm
by Synthoid
I've always wanted to play SD Snatcher, it'll be great to see a full translation.

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:52 pm
by 8bitsonic
I never beat SD Snatcher (don't like RPGs) but the version I played didn't have any Japanese characters that I recall. This version being the one availabe at Home of the Underdogs (http://www.the-underdogs.info, please don't edit this for piracy, I'm trying to find out if perhaps there's one totally translated already). Their servers are slow as fuck now (you'll be lucky to get a file at 3 KB/s) but perhaps someone could grab it and see if I'm right or crazy.

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 2:29 am
by MrSeed
8bitsonic wrote:I never beat SD Snatcher (don't like RPGs) but the version I played didn't have any Japanese characters that I recall.
Tried it and it has the same translation error, it's still the one from Oasis. Anyway it's a bad version because they hacked it by removing Konami from 'Presented by Konami' lines, it also has the ranger flaw (see picture) and it doesn't work with a SCC+ cartridge. I got mine from generation-msx:
http://www.generation-msx.nl/msxdb/softwareinfo/1267

I recommend this one.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:28 am
by Marc
Just an update to let you guys know that the programming work needed for the project has begun. When the entire thing will be finished, though, I have no idea.

Incidentally, some of the text is taken straight from Snatcher, so I'll be sure and use the lines from the Sega CD version for those. :) And I'll also make the dates and names match the Sega CD version.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:32 am
by 8bitsonic
Osiris wrote:And I'll also make the dates and names match the Sega CD version.
Please don't. Can we keep it free of "localization" and just do a straight translation?

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:37 am
by Charlie Johnson
How about two versions of the translations? Like they did with the remade MG1 translation for MSX2. One keeps the engrish weapon names "Belleta" and "Ingrum" the other one changes them to "Beretta" and "Ingram".

You could do the same here.

One version with the original dates from the japanese version and one with the US version dates.

Anyway, I'm looking forwart to it, until now I never came around to play SD Snatcher.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:48 am
by Marc
I was planning on having it so Sega CD Snatcher and SD Snatcher would go together, then the PC Engine Snatcher would be untouched, but we can do two versions of the SD Snatcher text, sure.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:29 pm
by snatcher1988
Charlie Johnson wrote:How about two versions of the translations? Like they did with the remade MG1 translation for MSX2. One keeps the engrish weapon names "Belleta" and "Ingrum" the other one changes them to "Beretta" and "Ingram".

You could do the same here.

One version with the original dates from the japanese version and one with the US version dates.

Anyway, I'm looking forwart to it, until now I never came around to play SD Snatcher.
You should. It's one of the best RPGs ever made. I like to think of it as the Final Fantasy VII of MSX RPGs. It's also one of the few Japanese RPGs that I actually enjoyed (Phantasy Star II and Super Mario RPG being the other two).

I also think that if it wasn't for SD Snatcher, the home console versions (including the PC Engine and Sega CD versions) would have never existed, and would never have added the missing 3rd act.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:45 pm
by Henry Spencer
snatcher1988 wrote:
Charlie Johnson wrote:How about two versions of the translations? Like they did with the remade MG1 translation for MSX2. One keeps the engrish weapon names "Belleta" and "Ingrum" the other one changes them to "Beretta" and "Ingram".

You could do the same here.

One version with the original dates from the japanese version and one with the US version dates.

Anyway, I'm looking forwart to it, until now I never came around to play SD Snatcher.
You should. It's one of the best RPGs ever made. I like to think of it as the Final Fantasy VII of MSX RPGs. It's also one of the few Japanese RPGs that I actually enjoyed (Phantasy Star II and Super Mario RPG being the other two).

I also think that if it wasn't for SD Snatcher, the home console versions (including the PC Engine and Sega CD versions) would have never existed, and would never have added the missing 3rd act.
You've just made me excited about SD Snatcher, now! There's very few RPGs I like on the whole, but like the ones you did mention and a couple of others, I enjoyed thoroughly. So, since our taste in gaming seems to be similar I can safely say I look forward to playing SD Snatcher, now, since I haven't played it yet, like Charlie.

Who was it that worked on SD Snatcher, anyway? Any of the original Snatcher developers?

Really appreciate all the work you guys at Junker and elsewhere, are doing, thank you all. :D

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:58 pm
by snatcher1988
Well, I do know this: Hideo Kojima served as the scenario desginer, and command package designer. Masahiro Ikariko, who did the music for the original PC-88 and MSX versions of Snatcher, did the music here as well, Yoshihiko Ohta, the mechanical designer on the original game, was SD Snatcher's planner, scenario designer, graphic designer, package designer, and manual designer, the character designer of the original game, Tomiharu Kinoshita, did the character designs here, and the demo graphics, The main programmer on the original game, Toshiya Adachi, was the game programmer here, and Kohji Toyohara, the sub programmer on the original game, was the game programmer here.

So yeah, it's mostly the same crew who worked on the original PC-88 and MSX versions of Snatcher that worked on SD Snatcher.