Translating a japanese PS game

Hello, this could be considered a request for help, but please hear me out. I am not very computer savvy, but a friend gave me this:

Okay took a quick look and there's good news and bad news.

The good - only one image file in the game and thats the text used for name entry. So that means all the other stuff is in plain text, including character names and menus (I hope, unless they're counted as 3d objects which I'll verify later).

The bad - I can't make heads or tails of the file structure nor their interdependence at first glance. But I'll take my sweet time tomorrow afternoon since I have nothing to do until tuesday. I can't really pick out dialouge text - yet but again I'll look carefully and report patterns ASAP.

It'd be nice to have some people with more hacking experience onboard. I looked at the Tales of Phantasia project page for clues but they seem to keep everything to themselves, so if I can't figure out this stuff the next step would be to beg for assistence.

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And that's why I'm here. If you guys feel like it, please get the game and tinker with it. We could really use some help with this.

Game: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MR6DLFGD

Forum: http://z3.invisionfree.com/Phoenix_Translations/index.php?

By the way, /a/ thread:
http://zip.4chan.org/a/res/7186253.html

In before read SICP.

How much are you paying?

>>3
Heh. Nothing, as well as I am not asking for payment for translating it. :)

It's quite sad to see a forum full of eagerly-named subforums, but that no-one apart from the owner has posted in (and no-one ever will)

what's the fucking point

<--- /games/ is that way






<--- /v/ is that way



  \0_   ------- GTFO ----->
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 ____    ____   |
|    |  | o  |  |
|____|  |____|  |
 ____    ____   |
|    |  |    |  |
|____|  |____|  |
 ____    ____   |
|    |  |  O |  |
|____|  |____|  |
 ____    ____   |
|    |  |    |  |
|____|  |____|  |
 ____    ____   |
|    |  |    |  |
|____|  |____|  |
 ____    ____   |
|    |  |    |  |
|____|  |____|  |
      __        |
     |  |       |
_____|  |_______|v  _..          . .

Can't download it right now but my guess is that all the strings you're looking for are in the data section of the executable.
Just open it with a hex editor or a disassembler.

I translate in my spare time. I have a patch for this game ready and waiting. Tested on 3 machines. I'll willingly give you this patch...but on one condition: You must pass a test.

The test will be at least ten questions long, and will also involve THREE (3) pieces of photographic evidence. (A) You must provide a full-body picture of yourself holding the box in one hand and all three discs plus the manual in the other. (B) You must rip the customer feedback card into four equivalent-sized pieces, place one piece on each of the three discs, place the final piece on top of the box, and take a picture of all that. (C) You must destroy the support disc, then place the remains label-side-up on top of the box. You do not need the support disc for our patch.

>>10
ENTERPRISE-quality troll. Congratulations!

I did some quick research into the game OP wants us to translate, and it appears it's some faggotry dating simulation, confirming my suspicion that the OP is, in fact, a flaming homosexual. Commencing sage.

>>10
Sup, No Name Losers.

Hacking an exe with a hex editor is way beyond my skill.  Hex editors usually have an option to automatically highlight and convert bytes representing text to readable text.  You'd have to figure out how they do this and probably write an equivalent feature to automatically find japanese text.  Hopefully these text finding features are not as sophisticated as comparing strings to an English dictionary -- maybe it is something simple like looking for a long sequence of bytes that are predominately in a certain range (e.g. 99$ of plain ascii text would be between 0x61 and 0x7A).

To figure out the encoding used in the game you could search for one of the character's names (or something else distinctive) in various different encodings.

Trying to translate a game by going through the .exe with a hex editor when you have the source code at your disposal is retarded.
Not to mention that the text is likely pulled from some type of external data file anyway.

I own 4Chan! I AM Anonymous! That's right, suck on that!

I own >>16

You'll need a brain, IDA, and some Fravia.

>>14
Thanks. You are the best help so far.

The SICP lectures on   Google Video and   he said to   have 2 1   Fri Feb 15   22 54 drwxrwxrwx.

Main function to g?