Fan translation

A fan translation is an unofficial translation of a computer game or video game, into a language that it was never marketed in.

The fan translation practice originated with anime and manga, and expanded to video games more or less concurrently with the rise of console emulation in the late 1990s. Fan translations of manga are known as scanlations, and an unofficial dubbing or subtitling of an anime is referred to as fansub.

Fan translations of computer and video game console games are usually accomplished by modifying the binary ROM image of the game. In dealing with translations of console games, a console emulator is generally utilized to play the final product, although game copiers or similar devices can be used to run the translated ROM image on its native hardware. The most common type of fan translations are those of Japanese computer and video games, which are often marketed exclusively in Japan, into English. The easier part of fan translation hacking is hacking encoded text. Hacking graphic text and title screens is the more difficult part of fan translation hacking. Seiken Densetsu 3 was one of the most difficult fan translation projects in the history of fan translation.

Fan translation allows players to play and understand games that were never localized to their native language, as well as to improve upon a poor quality official localization. Two of the most well known fan-translated games whose official translations are considered subpar are Final Fantasy IV and Phantasy Star II.

Contents

Origins

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RPGe's translation of Final Fantasy V was the first major fan-translated work. Original Japanese is on the left; RPGe's translation is on the right.

Reverse engineering and the rise of console emulation made fan translation possible. The first complete translation patch for a video game was released in 1997. The patch, produced by RPGe, was designed to translate Final Fantasy V for the Super Famicom (also known as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System) into English. While translating games had been around by the time of the patch, it was the first to prove that the in-depth hacking required for such a project was feasible. New groups quickly sprang up in RPGe's wake and began translating other works.

Legal issues

While fan translations are indisputably illegal (Article 8 [Right of Translation] of the Berne Convention explicitly reserves the right of translation to the copyright holder and whoever receives permission of them, saying "Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall enjoy the exclusive right of making and of authorizing the translation of their works throughout the term of protection of their rights in the original works."), it is unusual for copyright holders to object. This is probably largely because the electronic games in question are generally not considered commercially viable in the target language, so the translation is rarely seen as a source of lost revenue. However, in 1999, one well-known incident in which copyrighter holders took action involved the Kanjihack translation of ASCII's RPGMaker 95. As the product was still viable, ASCII sent a member of the team working on it a cease-and-desist letter. Kanjihack complied, but the project was then continued by others. The Berne Convention does not explicitly prohibit parallel importation.

A popular belief in the fan translation community is that distributing only the translation, as a patch to the original game, is legal. The reasoning is that the patch only contains the new data and directives for where it is to be placed, and does not have the original copyrighted material included in any form, and therefore it is useless unless the user applies it to a (copyrighted) ROM, the acquisition and legality of which they are left completely accountable for. This belief, while untested in court, is probably not supported by international copyright law, but this strong anti-software piracy attitude by the fan translation community may have convinced copyright holders to, by and large, turn a blind eye.

There have never been any legal cases involving fan translation issues, and such projects have been relatively widespread over the Internet for years. In recent years, anime fansubbers have started to attract the attention of some American anime distributors; and as of 2004 one manga scanlator has been handed a cease and desist by a Japanese company, but most of this attention has been restricted to polite entreaties asking fan translators to refrain from dealing with licensed material.

List of fan-translated games

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NeoDemiforce's Final Fantasy II
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This is a partial list of Japanese video games which have been translated into English by fan translators.

MSX translations

Nintendo Famicom/NES translations

Super Famicom / SNES translations

Other translations

Unauthorised translations of computer games are also done by Russian software pirates. Interestingly, some games, such as Japanese hentai games are localised using the English version as a source.

See also

External links

Fan translators

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