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Sunday, November 4, 2007

nihongo

Since I began the task of decoding the Serial Experiments Lain Playstation movies years ago, I've hoped some friendly multi-lingual folks might someday translate all the audio and movies into English. I've always assumed the translated media would be downloadable, separate from the game itself, until I met a fellow who had the lofty desire to put the translated media back into the game.

I wondered what he was going to do about the 2 hours of audio. Dubbing seems the only option. But while finally playing through the whole game the other night, I found there are many sound-effects and characters in the audio portions. I would hate to lose all that to dubbing (not to mention my preference for sub-titles).

However, I also noticed the pictures shown in the background as you listen to audio, and I started thinking...


Not an actual screen-shot (you can tell by the pixels), but I have the ability to make it so. This isn't a perfect solution, but could be an alternative to dubbing (and it's probably easier too).

6 comments:

  1. Another option is to keep the original soundtrack and add the translation spoken over by a lector. Almost all foreign movies are translated like that in Poland.

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  2. Hey, I've been thinking about translating the audio in the game and just making a script available for people to read along with as they played. Your idea however, kicks that one in the @$$. Let me know if you're interested in working with me on this one. Post a comment and it'll be automatically emailed to me.

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  3. I would be very interested in providing any support that I can! :D
    There may be some over at #lain that would be interested too. If you're comfortable with IRC, come join us (I'm almost always on, just afk a lot).

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  4. id like to further note that #lain is on IRCnet (irc.ircnet.com)

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  5. oh~ sh!t! O_O

    I joined an SELain/abe irc channel maybe 3 years ago (?) and mentioned working on this and that I was hoping to propose it to a fansubing group after I had some proof/progress of adding the text. (I may have mentioned it on wakachan, and also when helping people acquire the game.) Unfortunately, I too did not get very far during the first trials. PSX documentation and sample tools have been scattered, limited, and quirky. :(

    I sincerely apologize for disappearing. My life became quite complicated so I had to buckle down, and have been spinning my wheels for a while now.

    This is exactly what I was attempting. My worries were because it was the same video/images looping it might cause trouble, but could be workable. I realized all this when playing through and it's was what got me really excited.

    I'm not exactly in a position where I can/should devote my all to this, but if I can manage it I'll try to catch up and help wherever I can.

    I found the link to your blog because I decided to take a look at wakachan since I hadn't done so in ages. I've scanned through some of your blog entries, but haven't finished reading them. I will do so as soon as I can.

    I apologize, I'm a bit shaken/excited since I discovered others are currently working on this. ^_^;

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  6. No need to apologize. It seems I wasn't the only one trying to hack the game back when Lain was still popular :]

    If you can't stop yourself from using up all your free time on this project ;) stop by #lain to see what we're up to.

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