Casting call to translate Chinese videogame classics into English
While videogame hackers and fans have been translating Japanese games into English for decades, there hasn’t been much attention paid to translating and popularizing games in other languages. Part of the reason is that games that aren’t from the US or Japan are not very well-known, and part of the reason is that a fan-made translation of a game involves some pretty intricate reverse engineering to extract the script, translate it and then dump it back to create a fully-playable English game.
Luckily for us, it seems that other-language games are finally gaining some attention, and Chinese wuxia (武侠) RPGs are top on the list. I recently found out about several streams of fan translations, at least one of whom is looking for some Chinese-to-English translation help:
- A valiant effort to translate Tian Di Jie “Castle”/ 天地劫序傳: 幽城幻劍錄 (video demo of work-in-progress featured above)
- A promising effort to translate the 2001 version of the Legend of Sword and Fairy / 仙剑奇侠传 (the game that was later made into a television series)
Read more about the subject of fan translations & romhacking:
Jason, thanks a ton for the coverage! Yep, we’re still on the lookout for translators and would love to bring more on board. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for a tenth anniversary release of the translation patch, so Western gamers can see some of the gems they’ve missed out on all these years.