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People hoped for years that Nintendo would deign to release Fire Emblem 6: Fuuin No Tsurugi (FE6) on shores outside of Japan. They didn't. Since a conveniently long amount of time had passed, it was up to us to take matters into our own hands.
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— The "DTN Translation Division"
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A fan translation is, in the context of video games, an unofficially translated version of a video game, usually created by a fan or fans of the game in question. Fan translations of console games are almost universally accomplished by modifying a ROM image of the game in question by way of hacking, then creating a patch for a clean ROM image which applies the fan translation. The end result is then played on an emulator program, like a normal ROM image, or for those with the ability to do so, can be transferred into a game copier cartridge to be used on the game's native hardware.
In the Fire Emblem series, fan translations are particularly important, as only six of the thirteen games have so far been given official international releases; combined with the sheer age of the games in question, using ROM images is often the only option. While there are generally numerous patches of various ages available for each game, they vary drastically in quality, and as such there is one translation for each game which is widely considered to be "the" translation to use. As of November 2012, all seven Japan-only games have functional fan translation patches which provide a near-complete translation of the game's script; in some patches, there remain elements (mainly graphical text) which have yet to be translated.
It should be noted that the possession of ROM images of video games is illegal. While prosecution over possessing them is highly unlikely and has never happened before, you do so at your own risk. For this reason, Fire Emblem Wiki will neither host ROM images, nor point in the direction of them; as it stands, they are easy enough to find without assistance. Fire Emblem Wiki encourages readers to support the official releases of these games, should they ever occur in the future.
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Patch staff
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- Quirino (hacking)
- HHHIII (translation)
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Latest build
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1.0 February 20th, 2011
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Ironically, the original NES Shadow Dragon was the last of the pre-Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade games to be given a serious attempt at a fan translation; this was largely because of the existence of Mystery of the Emblem and later Shadow Dragon rendering the game obsolete and unnecessary in the eyes of many. For a long time, all that existed were a number of scattered and rudimentary efforts, with none approaching a complete product and plagued with errors. As such, it was not until 2010 that a translation attempt was announced by Quirino.[1] The patch was completed comparatively soon after, in February 2011.
Though the patch is claimed by Quirino to be only 99% complete, the translation is entirely complete and operational. The names used in the translation are the same as those used in the Mystery of the Emblem translation, the most common unofficial names for the characters before the release of Shadow Dragon; Quirino has stated, however, that in the next revision of the patch he releases, the names will be changed to be in line with the official names from Shadow Dragon.[2]
style="Template:Roundt; border-left:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-right:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-top:1px solid #b0b0b0; background:#222222; font-size: 13px;"| Talking to a maiden in Chapter 3.
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Patch staff
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- Artemis251 (hacking, minor translations)
- Shimizu Hitomi (most translation work)
- j2e (font)
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Latest build
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V.1.01 November 14th, 2009
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Like the NES Shadow Dragon, Gaiden was one of the more neglected games in terms of fan translation for many years. Though several translation patches existed, none were complete and possessed many other problems. With this in mind, a complete patch was released by Artemis251 in 2009, commenced in September and completed within a month.
style="Template:Roundtl; border:none" width="100%" colspan="2"|Notable names used by the Gaiden fan translation
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style="Template:Roundt; border-left:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-right:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-top:1px solid #b0b0b0; background:#222222; font-size: 13px;"| Cutscene in Chapter 6.
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Patch staff
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- VincentASM (translation)
- RPGuy96 (hacking)
- AceNoctali (supplementary translation)
2014 revision
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A fan translation for Mystery of the Emblem was completed in 2008, translated by VincentASM with hacking by RPGuy96. The patch is far from perfect - the translation is rough, menu text is not translated in numerous places, and there are numerous glitches (for example, attempting to use the Geosphere will crash the game). Though there are numerous problems with the patch, it cannot be updated - VincentASM has stated on several occasions that since RPGuy96 has all but disappeared, so too have the tools to modify the patch, and there's no chance of him being able to update the patch. VincentASM went on to work on the fan translation for this game's remake, New Mystery of the Emblem.
After gaining permission from VincentASM in 2012, Quirino eventually started work on revising and updating the Mystery of the Emblem patch in 2014, relying entirely on editing the raw code. Revisions will mostly be text based, as the character names are adjusted to match the official PAL Shadow Dragon names (Quirinio mentioned a possibility of releasing a separate patch with the North American names after the patch is complete) and the fan names used in the New Mystery of the Emblem translation, but will also include a more aesthetically pleasing narrow font. As of August 2014, the script of Book 1 has been near-completely reformatted to accommodate for the new font, and various previously untranslated elements have been implemented.[3]
style="Template:Roundtl; border:none" width="100%" colspan="2"|Notable names used by the Mystery of the Emblem fan translation
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Patch staff
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j2e Renegade (toolset, earlier patch releases)
DarkTwilkitri ("Reparation" patches)
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The earliest prevalent fan translation of Genealogy of the Holy War was started in 2000[4] by the group j2e Renegade, with its last release under this group being in 2002;[5] however, it was left vastly incomplete with many issues, described by the creators as "not to be enjoyed".[6] At some point, the group died and their website (http://fe4trans.freeshell.org/) became defunct; after several years of other efforts to try and fix its problems, DarkTwilkitri picked up the patch and updated it to fix some of its problems, calling his patches "Reparation". The last of these releases was "Reparation 0.87d", in December 2006; afterward he admitted to losing interest in further developing the patch.
On April 6, 2012, years after the release of the previous version, Twilkitri released a new version of the patch, "Reparation 0.87e".[7] In addition to fixing a number of bugs and errors, its main purpose was to bring the patch into consistency with official English releases of the series - for example, changing "Hero's Sword" to "Brave Sword" and "Social Knight" to "Cavalier". It also made a small number of name changes: Ulster (then "Skasaher") became "Scathach" upon examination of the origin of his name, Oifey became "Aoife" for the same reason (though this was reverted soon after), and Seliph was given his then-little-known preliminary English name, Serlis. Two further revisions have since been released, with the current version being "Reparation 0.87g",[8] and there are talks of further improvements being made such as implementing the epilogue and making the fonts more aesthetically pleasing. As Twilkitri is Australian, the translation script uses Australian English spellings, such as "Armour Knight". In addition, it was established that upon the international releases of Awakening, the patch will be updated to use the names used in the Australian (PAL English) version of the game, although this has yet to come to fruition.
In May 2013, as Twilkitri has not yet updated the patch to reflect the Awakening international release, a fork revision of the patch was produced by Serenes Forest user Gharnef, taking the "Reparation 0.87g" release and updating it to use the Awakening name changes and to revert other names to the Nintendo of Japan official romanizations.[9] Independently of this, a new retranslation project arose in 2013 seeking to produce a more polished patch, now known as "Project Naga". Serenes Forest user bookofholsety is currently in the process of completely retranslating and rewriting the game's script, including portions previously not translated or present in the patch, with the assistance of gringe; he regularly posts in-progress snippets of his work on the script and thoughts on the process on his blog, having started work on the game's previously untranslated epilogue as of July 2014.[10] Hacking to implement the script into the game will be handled by GitHub user MP2E, who is presently in the process of developing a text dumper/inserter for both Genealogy and Thracia called "Resire".[11]
style="Template:Roundtl; border:none" width="100%" colspan="2"|Notable names used by the Genealogy of the Holy War fan translation
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style="Template:Roundt; border-left:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-right:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-top:1px solid #b0b0b0; background:#222222; font-size: 13px;"| Midia's translated stat screen.
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A basic menu translation patch of the first episode of Archanea War Chronicles was released by joesteve1914 in late 2014. The patch reuses English font assets from the Mystery of the Emblem patch, and is compatible only with the ZSNES emulator. He has stated he may produce patches for the remaining three episodes as something to do until work on Thracia 776 properly begins.[12]
style="Template:Roundt; border-left:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-right:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-top:1px solid #b0b0b0; background:#222222; font-size: 13px;"| Opening of Chapter 14.
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Latest build
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0006 March 2nd, 2008
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There are two patches of note for Thracia 776, each with a different focus. The first and lesser-known one is a menu patch by Luxifer Angel, last updated in 2003, which translates only the menu text and leaves the dialogue untouched.[13] The other, later and primary patch was the work of Shaya; this patch is something of the opposite to the Luxifer Angel patch, in that it fully translates the game's script, but some of the menus are left untranslated and in a questionable state. It was last updated in 2008, with Shaya claiming no intent to do so again because of the interference of life.
In recent times, the Shaya translation has been criticised for its lacklustre and often erroneous script, gratuitous and out-of-place memetic references (for example, Kempf spontaneously declaring "IN AMERICA!" in Chapter 11), the poor quality of its menu translations (such as a majority of options being displayed as garbled text), and for the bugs of various degrees of severity caused by the above errors. There are tentative plans for the Project Naga team, with the addition of joesteve1914, to create a new version of the patch; presently, the early groundwork for the hacking being done by joesteve1914 and MP2E, and the script is to be retranslated and rewritten by either gringe or bookofholsety once both Genealogy and The Binding Blade are completed.[14][10]
style="Template:Roundtl; border:none" width="100%" colspan="2"|Notable names used by the Thracia 776 fan translation
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style="Template:Roundt; border-left:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-right:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-top:1px solid #b0b0b0; background:#222222; font-size: 13px;"| Opening of Chapter 12 (2013 revision).
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Patch staff
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"DTN Translation Division"
- Eaichu (script editor)
- PrinceLeaf (script/graphics editor)
- Jet Enduro (script editor)
- Otosareta Tenshi (graphics editor)
- Twilkitri (technical)
- FireLizard (main translator)
- kyuusei (translator)
- Darkslime (translator)
2013 revision
- gringe (retranslator, script editor, hacking)
- tabachanker (hacking)
- bartre (hacking)
- bookofholsety (graphics editor)
- shadowofchaos (hacking support)
- Onmi (editing program compatibility)
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Latest build
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DTN Translation Division Version 2.1 July 17th, 2006 2013 revision v0.99c November 30th, 2014
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At the time, coming off the heels of the attention garnered by Roy's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee and the international release of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, it was assumed and hoped by some that an official translation of The Binding Blade would soon follow. When such a release failed to eventuate, a fan translation project began, developed by DarkTwilkitri's "DTN Translation Division". The patch was first released in 2005 under the title Sword of Seals, with development continuing until 2007 and the last stable release being distributed in 2006; progress ended in 2007 when the members of the team found less and less time to work on the project.
The translation was largely complete in its last release, albeit in a relatively primitive state. This led to a revision project in 2013 by gringe of the Serenes Forest forums, an experienced manga translator. The project, now calling the game by its modern name The Binding Blade, retranslated and rewrote the script, cleaned up the graphics and other facets of the patch's presentation, and implemented official name changes from Fire Emblem Awakening, intending to result in a more polished patch. As of October 2014, the patch is complete for all practical purposes and features a bevy of newly-translated features, including the game's class roll and the opening narration; work is still ongoing on a number of remaining bugs and presentation issues in need of fixing in preparation for a finalized v1.0 release.[15]
style="Template:Roundtl; border:none" width="100%" colspan="2"|Notable names used by the The Binding Blade fan translation
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style="Template:Roundt; border-left:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-right:1px solid #b0b0b0; border-top:1px solid #b0b0b0; background:#222222; font-size: 13px;"| In-progress screenshot of an Athena/Kris support
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Patch staff
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"Heroes of Shadow"[16]
- VincentASM (project leader, editor)
- Blazer (hacker, former project leader)
- Agro (translator, prologue and main story)
- TheEnd (translator, sidequests and other)
- Nintenlord (hacker and programmer)
- NomadicTrooperGirl (hacker, graphics editor)
- Ryan (localizer)
- Pandorakun (localizer)
- Illumio (localizer)
- Martze (localizer)
- Arch (hacking support, proofreader)
- DarkTwilkitri (font hacking support)
- Nagato (hacker)
- Pleonex (hacker/translator)
- Prof.9 (hacking support)
- Sirius (tester)
- Snow (translator)
- Vi (proofreader)
- Zaishi (logo designer)
- Zak (graphics editor)
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New Mystery of the Emblem is the first game since international releases of the series began to not be released internationally. While it was initially expected that it would be, this expectation was not met, and so one year following the Japanese release, prominent Fire Emblem hacker Blazer convened a team of translators, editors and hackers to do a fan translation, calling themselves the "Heroes of Shadow"; the team was later led by VincentASM as Blazer had to leave to contend with real-life issues. The team's goal with the patch was to create a complete and highly polished translation and localization on par with the official Shadow Dragon release. A preliminary menu patch was released on July 15th, 2011, near-completely translating menus and names, while leaving dialogue untouched, and no further releases were issued until the translation was 100% complete, bug-tested and polished,[17] with the first "complete" release occurring on November 21st, 2012.[18]
From even before it became evident that a fan translation would be necessary, the patch's development progress was profiled on the Heroes of Shadow blog. For a time, in addition to the blog, the patch's progress was also maintained in a thread on Serenes Forest, allowing for ease of discussion on the matter; however, eventually the thread was closed as it was dominated by an endless argument about name changes, mainly "Belf" to "Vergil" and "Malliesia" to "Malicia".[19] The controversy surrounding the "Vergil" name has been extensively mocked and parodied by members of the Serenes Forest community, and the act of satirically suggesting changing a name to "Vergil" in fan translation has evolved memetically and regularly appears in the efforts to clean up the Genealogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776 and The Binding Blade translations.
Even though some names in the patch have been officially localized in Awakening (for example, Roro->Legion), the Heroes of Shadow have said that they have no plans currently to release an updated patch due to other commitments.
style="Template:Roundtl; border:none" width="100%" colspan="2"|Notable names used by the New Mystery of the Emblem fan translation
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References