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Thread: Reading Japanese on the games

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    Default Reading Japanese on the games

    Hello, whats the best way to convert Japanese text on some of my imports to English. I would really like to know what they are, I';ve had them for a while and people ask all the time.
    I like Nintendo's, They are Super.

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    Bell (Level 8) GaijinPunch's Avatar
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    You've got a few very limiting options.

    1) Find a group that has a patch for XXX game and apply the patch. If it's a cartridge, you'll need a rom dump. If it's a CD game, you'll need to make an ISO of it.

    2) Get a dictionary

    3) Dump the game yourself, rip out the text, and run it through babblefish and understand like 2 words per sentence.

    Other than that, a community college is a great place to start.

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    Ya, that is way to much work. I think i'm gunna have to find myself a Japanese friend and read em for me.
    I like Nintendo's, They are Super.

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    Alex (Level 15) maxlords's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GaijinPunch
    You've got a few very limiting options.

    1) Find a group that has a patch for XXX game and apply the patch. If it's a cartridge, you'll need a rom dump. If it's a CD game, you'll need to make an ISO of it.

    2) Get a dictionary

    3) Dump the game yourself, rip out the text, and run it through babblefish and understand like 2 words per sentence.

    Other than that, a community college is a great place to start.
    And you mihgt as well throw out #3 altogether, and #1 for 99% of imports. I'm with GaijinPunch here....learn Japanese if you really want to read most of em! Or pull the wuss factor like me (who has NO facility for languages) and only import English friendly games.

    By the way...a community college IS a great place to start! That's one of the best quotes I've heard in a while!
    scooterb: "I once shot a man in Catan, just to watch him die."

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    Many Japanese games are written in hiragana/katakana which is pretty easy to decipher once you learn the symbols. It's a phonetic alphabet, so all the words are made up of syllables and most words are based on English equivalents anyhow. Been brushing up by going through F-Zero GX and WE6FE as most of those games use those alphabets...

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    you can find web sites such as http://members.aol.com/writejapan/ and
    http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_katakana.htm for the japanese katakana and hiragana which are their system for translating foreign words into japanese. These are the simpler looking symbols. The more more complicated symbols would take a lot more knowledge and a good dictionary.

    I have tried to decipher some of my game gear carts names. My attempts kind of give the following results:
    The pu ro __ __ '91 (baseball) (japan) (cart # 670-1191)(sega) (probably professional baseball '91)
    __ ___ ! pu ro __ __ tsu i n ri - gu (japan) (cart # 670-6834)(sega)(probably Fight! Pro Baseball twin league)
    Since there is no word like pro in Japanese they translate it into symbols pu ro.

    You also have the obtion of scanning the game and posting the pics.There is a good chance someone else knows what it is.

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    Ya, I thought about scanning them em. I have a scanner but I went to hook it up the other day and found that it had mysteriously dropped from the closet shelf and smashed the glass, I could try and hold the cart over the reader part.
    I like Nintendo's, They are Super.

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    Hello, I have made a scan of the games. They can be viewed at:
    http://www3.telus.net/jmethera

    If anybody can read these and translate them that would be great.

    Thanks
    I like Nintendo's, They are Super.

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    ServBot (Level 11) davidbrit2's Avatar
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    The nice thing about the Famicom and Gameboy are their relatively small character space. You'll only have to deal with one character set usually - just Hiragana or Katakana. And you can bet there won't be any significant amount of Kanji.

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    The two on Cracker Jack's jpg are:

    Left: Magical Taruruto-kun. This was an anime in the late 80's, and is not bad even though it's kind of kiddie. There's a Megadrive game as well which is a decent platformer.

    Right: Hyokkori Hyoutantou. Never heard of it

    Bottom: Kuni-chan no Game Tengoku (Kuni-chan's Game Paradise).

    Edit to davidbrit2:
    Those old 8-bit systems are often all hiragana, or even worse, all katakana. I tried to play a game like that one time and just couldn't take it. All katakana is extremely akward. Even all hiragana at times gets difficult if you're used to reading the kanji.

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    ServBot (Level 11) davidbrit2's Avatar
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    Yeah, I can imagine it's quite weird, but at least you don't have to know a lot of characters.

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    Quote Originally Posted by davidbrit2
    The nice thing about the Famicom and Gameboy are their relatively small character space. You'll only have to deal with one character set usually - just Hiragana or Katakana. And you can bet there won't be any significant amount of Kanji.
    That's good to know since Famicom imports are the only ones I'm interested in playing.

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    Quote Originally Posted by davidbrit2
    Yeah, I can imagine it's quite weird, but at least you don't have to know a lot of characters.
    Yeah, but of course, they don't use spaces so it all kind of runs together. You can't just glance and read. You have to sound everything out in your head.

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    Great Puma (Level 12) slapdash's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by RichD
    I have tried to decipher some of my game gear carts names. My attempts kind of give the following results:
    The pu ro __ __ '91 (baseball) (japan) (cart # 670-1191)(sega) (probably professional baseball '91)
    I'm pretty sure the missing characters spell "yakyuu" which is what the Japanese call baseball.


    __ ___ ! pu ro __ __ tsu i n ri - gu (japan) (cart # 670-6834)(sega)(probably Fight! Pro Baseball twin league)
    Yeah, the second set of blanks are almost certainly "yakyuu", and "tsuin" is "twin" and "rigu" is "league", so I'm sure you've got the right idea here. Dunno what the first set of blanks would be offhand though.
    Russ Perry Jr, 2175 S Tonne Dr #114, Arlington Hts IL 60005
    Got any obscure game stuff?

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