Creating Korean and Japanese translations

[67510b57c99d6Korea Beat]

Hello all,

From a technical point of view, how difficult is it to translate System Shock 2 into other languages? I'm really interested to create at least a Korean and possibly a Japanese translation. From what I remember hearing there are some things like the weapon modification scripts that are very difficult to do, but that the e-mails and audio logs might be easy to get at. Any information you can give me would be great, thanks!

[67510b57c9c66Kolya]

You will find most of the game's text in the strings.crf (which is just a zip-archive). That excludes some interface strings iirc, but anyway this is where you wanna start.
I remember someone did a French translation once but it seems to be lost now. I think it would be cool if the game was accessible in more languages. If you finish the translation we will gladly host it here. *hint*

[67510b57c9d76Lambda 00]

I'll help with the Japanese Translation of the audio 

[67510b57c9e80Korea Beat]

Thanks, I will get started. Can you explain how people would then install a finished translation? Just copy over the strings.crf file?

[67510b57c9f87Kolya]

That's one possibilty yeah. There's also the SS2 modmanager that could load the modification. In any case this won't be a problem.

[67510b57ca08eJavis]

I'm also helping out with the Korean translation.

By the way, I found the French patch after some hunting around.  The creator's website seems to have been down for two years now.  I wonder if he would mind the patch being hosted here...

[67510b57ca188Kolya]

I'm currently writing a mail to the adress of Nel Morane from freylia.net who posted the link.
Please upload the French translation. I think it's passable to assume it can be made available for download here.

[67510b57ca28cJavis]

You can find it here: http://retroremakes.com/forum2/showpost.php?s=29d6e47be66ac03eb625077b43139261&p=56096&postcount=19

[67510b57ca395Kolya]

Good find! 
I'll load it up.

Edit: Link

[67510b57ca49fJavis]

I'm having trouble getting any text replacements to show up in game.  If my installation is modified to be "mod-ready", what determines if the game will call a string from the /res folder or from a modified .str file located in the appropriate folder?

[67510b57ca5d8Kolya]

If you followed the Mod User FAQ your game should be mod ready and the CRFs been merged (with the SS2Tool). That last point is important.
Then it should be fairly easy: You just create a folder named "strings" inside your game folder and put your text file in there, eg. "chargen.str". And that should be it.
I guess you hadn't merged the CRFs.

[67510b57ca6e1Javis]

Ok, I've got simple text replacement down.  Now the trick is getting Korean text to display.  Of course it just shows up in-game as questions marks, because the characters are not in the font. Did you have to replace the font for your German patch?

[67510b57ca7e4Kolya]

It could be that the characters aren't availabe. But first you make sure to use the ANSI code page when saving your file. Upload your file and I'll have a look at it.

[67510b57ca8f4Javis]

I can select the code page in which to save the file with my text editor, but I'm not sure that the ANSI code page includes the Korean character set.  I will have to use the Windows code page for Korean (949), EUC-KR, or Unicode, I believe.  I plan to take a look at the font and see what I can do there...

[67510b57ca9e1Kolya]

You will need this then...

[67510b57caaebJavis]

I noticed that someone made a Japanese kana font.  I will need to do something similar to that, but I'm not sure how to proceed.  Any idea who made that?  Also, we'll be limited to 234 characters, so we'll have to determine the most commonly used ones.

[67510b57cabe1Kolya]

Telliamed made the fon-converter and I guess he made the kana font that comes with it.

[67510b57cacd4Lambda 00]

-Completed 2 of the Once Grunt's in-game vocal lines, working on the rest.
I'll ask some others in my Japanese class if they can help me

[67510b57caddeKolya]

Yeah, you'll need some help if you want to translate more than two or three characters.
I can only imagine how much fun will ensue when you give them their lines...

[67510b57caeb5Javis]

Can you get in touch with us by e-mail regarding those voice lines?

[67510b57caf8fLambda 00]

I'll send you the files once I finish the Once Grunt's Voice Acting...

[67510b57cb0f0Lambda 00]

Due to school issues, I have been unable to do any more, but here are the two files I completed:
http://files.filefront.com/og1to3+2wav/;9413824;/fileinfo.html
http://files.filefront.com/og1hit+1wav/;9413827;/fileinfo.html
There you go!

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[67510b57cb1eaOutsider]

A japanese translation of the game would be awesome! I doubt I can help you except maybe by reading out some of the log files maybe, but if you're completing it I'll be sure to play it.