As many Tales fans might already know, Absolute Zero Translations recently released their Tales of Innocence translation patch. We recently asked for questions for the people behind the effort, and we've gotten back the answers. We spoke with the project lead, Matt, otherwise more commonly known as throughhim413, about the the translation, what obstacles they had to overcome, and even what their favourite Tales character is.
This is the first part in a multi-part interview. In Part 1 of our interview, we speak to Matt about what went on behind the scenes during the translation effort and what sorts of challenges the team faced.
Tales Union: Were there any difficulties in creating the modifications for the translation patch? If so, which one gave the team the most trouble?
Matt: Gotta defer to Kingcom on this one since I just handle the translation side. He said that while he did have to rewrite the subtitle code several times, he thinks the grammar stuff was the most difficult to implement. People might not notice it, but we went to great lengths to ensure that all of the variables in the game would result in natural English.
Whereas a lot of translations have to settle for "Discard 2 Poison Powder," our translation managed stuff like "Discard 2 measures of Poison Powder." Instead of "Purchase 3 Knife" it was "Purchase 3 Knives." It took a lot of work for both of us to recognize where it was necessary and how to make it work, but it was totally worth it.
Tales Union: What kind of challenges did you face in translating the game? Did you come across any temporary roadblocks along the way?
Matt: Honestly, the only real roadblocks that gave us trouble were the mental ones. When you work on a project like this for as long as we did, it's easy to get burned out. Both Kingcom and I went through several phases of really passionate work on the project followed by really bad burnout. Some days, things just weren't flowing right. So when we needed breaks to recover, we took them, but I wouldn't say there was ever any point where things were just at a dead stop.
Tales Union: What made you want to translate Tales of Innocence? There are many untranslated Tales games out there --- was there something special about Tales of Innocence that caught your attention? Was there ever a time where another Tales game caught your eye mid-way through the translation and you contemplated working on both or switching over to the new game?
Matt: Personally, I just kind of stumbled into Innocence. Or rather, Kingcom brought it to me. I had finished Tales of Phantasia a few months earlier and was just kind of poking the idea of getting into a new project. Kingcom sent me a PM on Romhacking.net and asked if I was interested in Tales of Innocence. We had never spoken before, but when he linked his other projects, it was easy to see that he was really doing some awesome stuff on the DS. I had only briefly played Tales of Innocence, but I was kind of excited to work on a DS title, so we jumped right in.
I ended up really falling in love with Innocence's characters. It ended up being exactly what I wanted post-Phantasia. I wanted to try and push myself as a translator and really learn how to localize. Innocence, with its unique cast and colorful accents, provided me that opportunity.
Anyone who followed the project probably knows that we had a brief stint where we played with Tales of Hearts. We were considering picking it up at one point, though we wanted to finish Innocence first, so it was never a one or the other kind of deal. In the end, we decided that we didn't want to squat on the project, so we declared that we had no intent to work on it. Plus I had just come out of the Luca/Ruca wars and I wasn't looking forward to having to justify every decision I'd have to make in Hearts. But don't get me wrong, I love Hearts. Honestly, I enjoy playing it more than I enjoy Innocence. And its story is so deliciously full of cliches. Xing is like the cliche champion of the universe and I love him for it.
Tales Union: Did you ever think it would take almost two years to complete when you first started it? Was the time and resources invested into it worth it for you?
Matt: We never expected it to take as long as it did. We honestly thought it was going to be done for Christmas in 2008. Then Christmas came and went. Then another Christmas came and went... It was clear that any guess at when the project was going to end was just going to disappoint people, so we decided not to talk about the release date until we were sure we could make it.
Was it worth it? Absolutely. This project is everything that I dreamed it could be. I really can't ask more than that. Because we took our time testing it, we've ended up with a final product that is free of any game-breaking issues and only has a few minor technical and grammatical issues. As a result, we can take our time correcting those issues and deciding if and when we want to release an updated patch.
Tales Union: Was there ever a time during the process where the people demanding a patch or objecting your English name/term translation choices made you contemplate dropping the project, or did their remarks not affect you?
Matt: I wouldn't say that I ever considered dropping the project because of comments like that, but I wasn't completely immune to them either. I try not to let that stuff get to me too much, but I'm only human. At the end of the day, I just had to remind myself that those individuals were not my target audience. There is no way to please everyone, so I didn't want to waste energy trying.
Even now, there are people who accuse me of changing the names or making things up, but I just ignore them. I spent a lot of time researching the terminology in-depth. I'm happy with the conclusions that I came to. Any romanization or translation of a name from Japanese into English is going to be an interpretation, so it's no surprise that people can't agree on them.
Tales Union: Was the inability to include multiplayer in the final release a letdown? Once debuggers are able to properly debug the crashes and other issues in the game's multiplayer, are you planning to try fixing it up and putting in a later version of the patch?
Matt: Both Kingcom and I regret the loss of multiplayer more than anything else in this project. In the end, we had to disable it because there was simply no way to fix it. It wasn't even an issue of delay the project or cut the multiplayer, even if we had invested hundreds of hours in trying to fix it, there would have been no guarantee that it would work. If it becomes possible, we definitely want to try and re-enable the multiplayer, but there's no telling when that will happen.
Be sure to check back tomorrow for Part 2 of our interview, where we discuss what the team's future plans, what key lessons can be learned for aspiring fan translators, and what might have happened if the team hadn't received donations over the progress of the translation effort.
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