[22:25] Just the man I wanted to talk to. ^_^ [22:26] I'm doing a little reflections piece of the important events that shaped the translation community in the past few years, and for New Years eve, I'm planning on doing a write up on the FF translation wars.. [22:26] kay-o :) [22:26] Ooh, that could be interesting. [22:26] I was wondering if you'd be willing to give me a few comments on your experiences during that time, or any other info.. =) [22:27] Sure, I'd love to. Anything in particular you want to know about? [22:27] Well, particularly intergroup relations. [22:28] You mean like how much Demi and SoM2Freak hate each other? :) [22:28] Reading through Demi's little write up in the .nfo file, I found he didn't think highly of Nightcrawler. =) [22:28] That too. [22:29] Which guy was Nightcrawler again? Its been a long time. Was he one of the later FF2 japanese translator workers? [22:29] Translation Corperation. [22:29] Oooh, that guy... [22:29] Yaya. [22:29] Well, there were a lot of groups like Translation Corperation and Spoony Bard, etc, etc, etc. [22:30] Yup. [22:30] Dozens of them. ;) [22:30] Which is what makes it such an interesting point in the history of translations. ;) [22:30] I don't really want to sound rude, but that style of translation was highly unprofessional. [22:31] I agree. But no one knew how they were suposed to act until after the wars. [22:31] Demi and I, and many others in the scene, of course, wanted to see more professional appearances in the translations. [22:31] That type of stuff rarely happens anymore because those who were around back then remember what happens. =) [22:31] Playing Translation Corperation's work was like reading a 1st grade english assignment. [22:32] It was nice to be able to pointed in the right direction, and I commend anyone who is willing to spend their time doing such difficult and tedious work, but I personally found that TC's translation of FF3 (or was it 2?) was just unreadable. [22:33] I think it was 3. [22:34] The storyline is the most important aspect of an RPG in my opinion, and I think that such a hacked up script ruins the experience. [22:34] Yup 3. [22:34] http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/6060/frames.html [22:35] Along the same lines, I've been playing the retranslation of FF4, by J2E I think. I really like what they did in terms of adding all the japanese features and improving the dialog, but I think the pop culture references, like the William Shatner thing, distracts quite a bit. [22:36] When I was supposed to format the FF2j-e script, I took a few liberties in cutting out unimportant information to make the rest fit, and I got a bit of criticism for that, particularly from SoM2Freak. I think that ideally, a translation should be as precise as it can be, but perfection should not be the goal, because thats impossible. [22:37] A friend of mine is working on a few translations that I got to beta test. I thought they were magnificent pieces of work, but he's not sure if he wants to release them because he's not satisfied with the product. [22:38] Well, the fact that even you had to cut something must say something for the Translation Corporation. You guys had ASM help to get everything to a state of near perfection. He was flying more or less solo. [22:38] I think that thats an unfortunate aspect of the scene. Most people will never notice the few flaws that a script has, especially those who aren't fluent in japanese. [22:39] Oh, I'm not saying that TC's work was an abomination. I didn't enjoy it, and I think the work was still impressive. But going that extra mile to find an ASM coder to rework the ROM was necessary. [22:40] The older techniques used by TC were quickly becoming obsolete, so to speak. [22:40] Excuse the bluntness, but "that extra mile" is more like a round the world trip now, and back then it was even harder... finding someone qualified enough to make the necessary changes isn't a very easy thing. [22:43] No, its not easy, and I never said that TC should have just gone away, but as it all turned out, TC eventually gave up the project. What made TCs project inferior to the FF3 translation we know today? [22:43] I think that more 'famous' groups out there simply knew how to organize better. [22:43] That's probably about as good of an explanation as anyone is going to reach. [22:44] In my opinion, the smaller groups are only of historical significance in terms of getting the ball rolling. [22:44] Even today it works that way. Especially with RPG translations. [22:44] SoM2Freak's main inspiration was to improve on projects he never approved of. [22:45] I was more or less only in the scene for the purpose of research. [22:45] And I think Demi was in it for the experience. [22:45] That, and the two of them always wanted to out do each other. [22:46] Classic case of incompatible egos. [22:46] (And by ego I mean personality, not big swelled heads) [22:47] Everyone seems to have a great bias against SoM2. Do you think his "reputation" is deserved, or simply another of the after affects of the entire translation wars? In other words, do you think, in retrospect that the entire experience cast a bad light on him? [22:47] SoM2Freak is a touchy subject. [22:48] I've noticed that. [22:48] I speak of him with a bit of a negative light because he was a very odd person. [22:48] He was a good translator, and without him, I don't think the scene would be where it is today. He got a lot of us moving. [22:49] Was it perfectionism driven too far? [22:49] Or something else? [22:49] A combination of a lot of things. I'll explain as best I can. [22:50] A lot of the problem I had with him was his personality. He was an overly sensitive person, but at the same time, he didn't treat people with the respect that they deserved. [22:50] He disregarded all my work as inconsiquential, yet some of my work served as the basis for later projects by other programmers. [22:52] He was a perfectionist almost to a fault. I changed a line that a guard in FF2 said from "This is the rebel base." to the more space friendly "Yawn." because it was an unneccessary bit of information, and back then, we didn't have a lot of room for the little extras like that. [22:52] He treated me like I had just murdered a bus full of school children. [22:52] No one else would have given it a second thought, and it didn't change the flow of the game. [22:53] I think SoM2Freak's negative image was that he considered himself to be the ultimate authority on what was good work. Yet, his translations seemed very awkward as far as the english went, because he tried to be TOO accurate. [22:54] His usage of japanese quote marks in the original FF5 translation come to mind. [22:54] Maybe that was just betas, I can't remember. Was that the release version with the japanese quotes? [22:55] I think they got rid of those for the public releases. [22:55] I remember all the .9s didn't have them. [22:57] Perhaps. Well, that was something that SoM2 fought until the end. He wanted everything to be 100% as japanese as possible... and the fact is that japanese is a dreadfully boring language when its translated to english. [22:57] I speak only basic japanese, but its just too odd to be translated directly. [22:58] J2E's FF4 translation attempted to take that into account, but they went a little too far with the pop culture references. [22:58] What was Demi's role in all of this? I was under the impression that he served as basicly the project organizer, however he's listed as script editor in the .nfo file. [22:58] And they cut out the "You spoony bard!" line, replacing it with "You asshole!" or smth like that... that irritated me, even if it was more accurate. [23:00] With FF2, Demi was primarily an organizer. I worked with him for the first part of the project before I left to pursue other interests (I'm writing my own RPG, based on the techniques I've learned from rom hacking). After I left, he took over my place. Demi's contribution to that project is vastly underrated. [23:01] I think every project should have a dedicated organizer, someone to make sure that the people who are working don't quit, and those that do get replaced. Most of the good ones out there did have an organizer, and it shows. [23:02] Do you have any regrets about anything that happened during that time? [23:03] Not really. I would have liked to see people work together more... I think that a more 'open source' style approach would have been a much better method. [23:03] There was a time when I even considered just dumping dozens of japanese scripts and publically posting them on my web page for people to download and work on. [23:04] That would have been a bit much, but encouraging more cooperation would have been much better. [23:04] I take it you were basicly alone in that desire. [23:04] Very alone. I might as well have gotten death threats. [23:05] I think the whole 'group' mentality is misguided. [23:05] Most groups lasted for one translation. Seen anything from RPGe lately? [23:06] Aside from MKR? No. [23:06] And that wasn't really an RPGe project. [23:06] RPGe became a banner underwhich to release a project for publicity sake. [23:06] I think that now with more people working as independents and simply collaborating on a project the scene is much better off. [23:06] I'd tend to disagree. [23:07] If you read down the lists of people who worked on those original projects, they all went on to do big things. [23:07] AWJ became translator extrodinaire and has aided me many a time. [23:07] Neill went on to do SD3 and many emulation related projects.. [23:07] Demi became Demi. =) [23:07] I think you read into that wrong... [23:08] No, I think it was the experience of working togeather and exchanging knowledge that led to what we know today. [23:08] And single people groups don't do that. You end up with no mentoring, no real teaching. [23:08] Yeah, you definately read into that wrong :) [23:08] People, as you noted, are protective of their work and hesitant to give it out. [23:09] I think that people working together is the only way to do translations. But I think that the whole isolationist group mentality (i.e. the translation wars, as you call it) slowed down progress. [23:10] Well, competition breeds speed in general. [23:10] I think that held true for the "FF translation wars". [23:11] The competition probably drove for a better end project. [23:11] Thats very a capitalist notion... but now we're moving into politics, and I had very different ideas about politics than the norm back then. [23:11] After all, if you criticize someone else for lack of professionality, you have to produce something twice as professional as you expect from others. [23:11] That's just from looking from the outside in. [23:11] But thats just it, there really was no competition. There were a few groups like TC out there who competed with the 'big boys' we know today. [23:12] I think had RPGe and Neo Demiforce and others cooperated more, instead of guarding their methods, we would have seen a more progress quickly. [23:13] Case in point was DTE. It was a jealously guarded secret for awhile, and its really one of the keys that lead to the professional looking translations we know today. [23:15] What do you think of the translations being put out today? [23:15] I'm a lot happier with the scene today, or at least what I see of it from my outsider's perspective. [23:16] Looking from the outside in, do you think that the professionalism you guys tried to create has taken hold as much as you would have liked? [23:16] The overall level of quality is way up, and the comradery that I see in #romhack leads me to believe that the scene is more or less run as I would have liked to see back then. [23:17] Well, I don't see any more third grade quality translations, so I think that the translations I was involved in served as a basis for comparison for today's newer projects. [23:18] I think we set the standard, and people only want to improve it now. [23:18] Do you have anything else you'd like to add before we conclude this interview? =) [23:21] Yeah. I would like to let everyone out there who works on translations know that I have nothing but the highest respect for them. I criticized TC and groups like it, but I think that any little bit helped the scene, and that while they didn't produce a product I felt was release quality, they took it upon themselves to try their hand at a very difficult task. Also, I wanna remind the people out there to keep on sending me betas :) I love seeing you [23:24] Oh, and I also want to reiterate that perfection isn't necessary. Look at what Ted Woolsey did with the official FF translations... he screwed 'em up a bit, but in the end everyone out there still loved FF2 when it came out in the US. [23:24] Well then, I guess that's it. =) [23:24] Thanks a lot for your time! [23:24] Alrighty. [23:24] No problem. Let me know when you've got the article done. [23:25] Welp, I'm planning on posting all my research and everything on New Years eve, done or not. [23:25] cool. [23:25] This might turn into some huge historical archive by the time I'm done. ;) [23:31] Oh, one other thing while I have you here. [23:31] k [23:31] Akilla and his group.. did you ever have contact with him? [23:32] Oh yeah. I had more respect for them than most of the smaller groups out there, but I think I was fairly unique in that. [23:33] How about Dislexic Japancheese? [23:33] Most people seemed sorta disgusted when they started making up stuff. [23:33] Never had any direct dealings with them. [23:34] I disregarded Dislexic as an 'amateur' group. [23:50] Thanks again. [23:50] =) [23:50] NP :)