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Fire Emblem 1 - Retranslation 2021 (Updated 5/23/2022)


Polinym
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Edit (2/22/2022)

I've just created a major update to this retranslation! This should fix a great number of bugs present in the original. I've also revised some of my previous translations choices for accuracy. You should definitely use this version instead, which is now also being hosted here until the RHDN page is updated. The numerous revisions this version has undergone may have resulted in a few bugs slipping through the cracks. Please let me know as soon as possible if you encounter a game-breaking bug!

Newest release here: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6087/

Hello! I just thought I should get the word out there. I've created a brand new translation of the first Fire Emblem game. The two main goals of this project were:

1. Accuracy: This translation tries to remain as faithful to the original Japanese as possible. To this end, the Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 script was used for reference and as a base. However, I also checked it against the original Japanese text and did some translation of my own in the content that wasn't featured in that remake. I also made a few edits for accuracy, like changing "Big Bro" to "Chief". The official localization terms were used only where accurate and appropriate, and I tried to find a middle ground where I could.

2. Expansion: I did some ASM hacking to allow the game to store a lot more text, so very little remains abridged or cut. Also, I expanded the text windows to fit as much text as possible on the screen.

Here's some screenshots for comparison with the old translation.

fe_new-0.png.2bcc70f928d8cfa0027e7165c82cb2be.pngfe_new-1.png.21a29b81c7ca0a74e4c78a951a205b0f.pngfe_new-2.png.de524bee212b11fbae0d179f3cb1fc88.pngfe_new-3.png.06d1ea224bb0ab69a0086dfd25395ba8.png

623659874_FireEmblemOldTranslation-4.png.8db4317998cd4dab663425d416b4a932.png1281968428_FireEmblemOldTranslation-5.png.1babfebf89a9c46e656baf91e300826f.png977623789_FireEmblemOldTranslation-6.png.9760dde6106320b1f827dccd2021329a.png1766413254_FireEmblemOldTranslation-7.png.f11de3d64e28f2c221e58d84dccddf2c.png

 

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fe_new-9.png.d5536cea06a7b88be8b365b49e899f9a.pngfe_new-10.png.30fac027330d9b2671ae937e02d78eeb.pngfe_new-11.png.63c8b60d217959b64113816cb89fd7dc.pngfe_new-12.png.b65f751431a8a4838a30d14016b64198.png1452842701_FireEmblemOldTranslation-12.png.261072db43dfa49f845be39ece872a02.png1677451400_FireEmblemOldTranslation-13.png.aea2b05d504e4639ab29d5465b01b454.png1110466829_FireEmblemOldTranslation-14.png.a80de8ab979c904262439dd172564efa.png46980541_FireEmblemOldTranslation-15.png.8a935e12a867e8c1a52ce293a0c159ad.png

I also did a trailer as a parody of the Switch "translation, which shows the translation in action here:

Your feedback is appreciated!

 

fe_new-8.png

 

Edited by Polinym
Translation Patch Update #2
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So I don't really mean or want to to dismiss the work this took or anything, but is there really much need for updated translation patches for Shadow Dragon when we now have an actually officially released English version.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

So I don't really mean or want to to dismiss the work this took or anything, but is there really much need for updated translation patches for Shadow Dragon when we now have an actually officially released English version.

The official English translation was a limited release, you can no longer purchase it now. If anyone wants to play it, but didn't, or couldn't purchase it during the roughly 4 months it was available for, than an updated translation like this is necessary. If Nintendo didn't arbitrarily limit the time it was for sale I would agree with you.

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1 minute ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The official English translation was a limited release, you can no longer purchase it now. If anyone wants to play it, but didn't, or couldn't purchase it during the roughly 4 months it was available for, than an updated translation like this is necessary. If Nintendo didn't arbitrarily limit the time it was for sale I would agree with you.

Also, a lot of people don't seem to realize the number of changes that Intelligent System's localization department makes with the Fire Emblem series. Outside of a few surprises that I sprinkled in, this should be a lot more accurate than the Switch release. I admit, the Switch translation IS significantly more accurate than the DS port, but it still keeps a number of the changes made.

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4 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The official English translation was a limited release, you can no longer purchase it now. If anyone wants to play it, but didn't, or couldn't purchase it during the roughly 4 months it was available for, than an updated translation like this is necessary. If Nintendo didn't arbitrarily limit the time it was for sale I would agree with you.

Yeah, but, shitty business practices aside, the point still remains that the translation exists.

1 minute ago, Polinym said:

Also, a lot of people don't seem to realize the number of changes that Intelligent System's localization department makes with the Fire Emblem series. Outside of a few surprises that I sprinkled in, this should be a lot more accurate than the Switch release. I admit, the Switch translation IS significantly more accurate than the DS port, but it still keeps a number of the changes made.

Listing those changes is something I would be interested in seeing.

Edited by Jotari
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Great to see! These wide text boxes are quite the improvement. I bet a theoretical new Gaiden translation could benefit from them as well. Personally I'm not the biggest fan of the FE3 translation but it's still much better than the old patch.

I saw in the readme you kept 黒騎士団 as 'Sable Order', so I'm guessing 白騎士団 was likewise kept as 'Whitewings', but since most other things are translated literally why not these as well? I.e. "Black Order of Knights", "Black Knight Order", "Black Knights" or something to that effect. The readme also transliterates it as 'ankokukishidan' but it should be 'kurokishidan'

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1 hour ago, cluesagi said:

Great to see! These wide text boxes are quite the improvement. I bet a theoretical new Gaiden translation could benefit from them as well. Personally I'm not the biggest fan of the FE3 translation but it's still much better than the old patch.

I saw in the readme you kept 黒騎士団 as 'Sable Order', so I'm guessing 白騎士団 was likewise kept as 'Whitewings', but since most other things are translated literally why not these as well? I.e. "Black Order of Knights", "Black Knight Order", "Black Knights" or something to that effect. The readme also transliterates it as 'ankokukishidan' but it should be 'kurokishidan'

I'm considering looking into doing Gaiden. Of course, it'll be more difficult since I'm not familiar with Gaiden's story in the slightest. I'll have to see what sort of unused space it has, too, as that was a big factor that allowed me to make this patch.

 

Yes, oops, it should be kurokishidan! I wrote that comparison off of memory,  so my mistake. My associate Mareeta informed me that "Sable" is just an archaic word that means the same thing as black. Thus, "Sable Order" is just "Black Order", which is close enough. I even refer to them as "Grunia's order of black knights, the Sable Order" in the bridge chapter. Ultimately, there are so many instances of "Black Knights" in games, TV shows, and movies, so I settled on "Sable Order" so that the name could be unique. Whitewings, I left is White Knights, as I don't recall any reference to wings being made in Japanese.

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Hmm, seems like the script needs some proofreading on your end:

"Swordfighter Navarre, why is someone of your calibur a bodyguard for thieves?" (What? Is Soul Calibur in this game? 😮)

Admittedly I like it better than

"Navarre, why's someone your strength fighting with"

Anyway, decent first attempt, good job, and that WVF is much easier on the eyes. 🙂

Edited by wertigon
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  • 2 months later...

Hey, I was going to download your translation but the download link doesn't work.

I found a download for your patch on romhacking, but based on what you said the last update was here, the one on that site seems to be out-of-date.

Edited by CrypticMantisTX55
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On 4/30/2022 at 9:38 PM, CrypticMantisTX55 said:

Hey, I was going to download your translation but the download link doesn't work.

I found a download for your patch on romhacking, but based on what you said the last update was here, the one on that site seems to be out-of-date.

Good news! The link should now work and the patch should be up-to-date with a whole bunch of bugfixes!

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  • 3 months later...

Hey, thanks for this translation patch!

 

Currently playing through the game and it's great so far. However, I noticed a few issues:

  • In Chapter 11, when being attacked by a Ballista (i think it's the named one), the screens is all garbled and then the game soft-locks. Does not happen with ballistas in other chapters.
  • In Chapter 16, when talking to Samson, he can't be recruited. His dialogue appears, but he won't spawn. Interestingly, the left village stays open though and Alan can be still recruited afterwards. Going to the left village first works as intended.
  • When talking to (certain?) characters, the text boxes produce some palette discoloring which is applied to certain tiles. Can be easily rectified by scrolling out and back in to "refresh" the tiles

Been playing via Mesen v0.9.9 if that matters.

Thanks again!

Edited by ryz
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20 hours ago, ryz said:

Hey, thanks for this translation patch!

 

Currently playing through the game and it's great so far. However, I noticed a few issues:

  • In Chapter 11, when being attacked by a Ballista (i think it's the named one), the screens is all garbled and then the game soft-locks. Does not happen with ballistas in other chapters.
  • In Chapter 16, when talking to Samson, he can't be recruited. His dialogue appears, but he won't spawn. Interestingly, the left village stays open though and Alan can be still recruited afterwards. Going to the left village first works as intended.
  • When talking to (certain?) characters, the text boxes produce some palette discoloring which is applied to certain tiles. Can be easily rectified by scrolling out and back in to "refresh" the tiles

Been playing via Mesen v0.9.9 if that matters.

Thanks again!

Hi! Glad you enjoy my translation! 🙂

I figured out the Samson bug and added in some dialogue for Jake's attack among other things a few weeks ago, thought I uploaded that version to ROMHacking.net but maybe I didn't. Thanks for pointing it out anyway!

No idea what causes the tiles to appear when talking to certain houses. It doesn't seem to happen in FCEUX for whatever reason.

Regardless, I've actually been taking a big break from working on the Fire Emblem at the moment, as I've got a big other unrelated project that needs a lot of my attention.  Hope you get through without any more bugs! 😄

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8 hours ago, Polinym said:

Hi! Glad you enjoy my translation! 🙂

I figured out the Samson bug and added in some dialogue for Jake's attack among other things a few weeks ago, thought I uploaded that version to ROMHacking.net but maybe I didn't. Thanks for pointing it out anyway!

No idea what causes the tiles to appear when talking to certain houses. It doesn't seem to happen in FCEUX for whatever reason.

Regardless, I've actually been taking a big break from working on the Fire Emblem at the moment, as I've got a big other unrelated project that needs a lot of my attention.  Hope you get through without any more bugs! 😄

Thanks for the reply! No worries and good luck on your project!

In any case, I've just finished the game, so thanks for the translation again!

Just some more notes because things are fresh in my memory:

  • Epilogue has some garbled text and artifacts (Screenshot)
  • You did add some "easter eggs", did you? See screenshots 😀

Was a blast! Cheers!

Fire_Emblem_1_Ankoku_Ryuu_to_Hikari_no_Tsurugi_(NES)_(J)-220924-125953.png

Fire_Emblem_1_Ankoku_Ryuu_to_Hikari_no_Tsurugi_(NES)_(J)-220924-125955.png

Fire_Emblem_1_Ankoku_Ryuu_to_Hikari_no_Tsurugi_(NES)_(J)-220924-130000.png

Fire_Emblem_1_Ankoku_Ryuu_to_Hikari_no_Tsurugi_(NES)_(J)-220924-130006.png

Fire_Emblem_1_Ankoku_Ryuu_to_Hikari_no_Tsurugi_(NES)_(J)-220924-130008.png

Fire_Emblem_1_Ankoku_Ryuu_to_Hikari_no_Tsurugi_(NES)_(J)-220924-130010.png

Fire_Emblem_1_Ankoku_Ryuu_to_Hikari_no_Tsurugi_(NES)_(J)-220924-164031.png

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  • 8 months later...

I'm actually really glad I could find this when I was looking for it. I was thinking it would be good if people in the community were able to retranslate the games we have translated already, trying to keep things consistent with the Japanese script. From what I understand that was the goal of the Lil' Manster project. But looking at Gaiden, the English script is not likely faithful to the original. An iconic line like

Quote

Don't worry Celica, I'll crush these bastards!

Would probably be in a remake (or at least referenced like Kliff references his end in the manga) if it was there in the original, considering how much Echoes tried to stay faithful to the mechanics of the game (and no, its definitely not the same feel as Gaiden, but after FE5 Intelligent Systems became more and more concerned with Accessibility, from what I can tell in their interviews.)
 

I was thinking about how the most recent large translation projects all somewhat lost steam at the end. While the main goal was accomplished in these translation, they lack a final polish to the project. Naga in particular could use a script rework. I've heard it characterizes units but adds in things they don't say at all in the original game and utilizes dialogue that is less fitting for characters backgrounds (i.e. nobility use more metaphors and slang less suited to them) from what I understand.

Anyways, I kind of lost myself in my rambling, but the point is I hope you see your project through and make it to the point where you feel you have accomplished something you can look back on with great satisfaction.

Godspeed:Cyas:

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6 hours ago, Argo Sleuf said:

I'm actually really glad I could find this when I was looking for it. I was thinking it would be good if people in the community were able to retranslate the games we have translated already, trying to keep things consistent with the Japanese script. From what I understand that was the goal of the Lil' Manster project. But looking at Gaiden, the English script is not likely faithful to the original. An iconic line like

Would probably be in a remake (or at least referenced like Kliff references his end in the manga) if it was there in the original, considering how much Echoes tried to stay faithful to the mechanics of the game (and no, its definitely not the same feel as Gaiden, but after FE5 Intelligent Systems became more and more concerned with Accessibility, from what I can tell in their interviews.)
 

I was thinking about how the most recent large translation projects all somewhat lost steam at the end. While the main goal was accomplished in these translation, they lack a final polish to the project. Naga in particular could use a script rework. I've heard it characterizes units but adds in things they don't say at all in the original game and utilizes dialogue that is less fitting for characters backgrounds (i.e. nobility use more metaphors and slang less suited to them) from what I understand.

Anyways, I kind of lost myself in my rambling, but the point is I hope you see your project through and make it to the point where you feel you have accomplished something you can look back on with great satisfaction.

Godspeed:Cyas:

I'll crush these bastards isn't a terrible translation. It's not literal, of course, in the original Alm is not saying "I will flatten these people who are illegitimate children," but he is saying "I will destroy these unsavory types." The line in question is

こんなやつら ぼくが
ひねりつぶしてやる

Kon'na yatsu-ra boku ga hineri tsubu shite yaru

Yatsu-ra is the word in question for bastards and tsubushi is the word in question for crush. Tsubushi in its connotations does actually seem to be very close to the English word crush. Yatsu-ra is a bit less precise, if you stick it into GoogleTranslate you'll get back something like "those guys". But that doesn't quite capture it as the word itself is informal.

https://www.wordsense.eu/やつら/

How could we translate Kon'na yatsu-ra boku ga hineri tsubu shite yaru without saying "I"ll crush these bastards?" Because "I'll crush these guys" or "I'll crush them" really doesn't convey what Alm is actually trying to say. He's trying to be uncouth. Maybe "I'll crush these freaks" or "I'll crush these monsters", but anything like that isn't really going to be any more accurate than "bastards". There really is no accurate way of translating it without substituting a word because English simply doesn't have much formality when it comes to pronouns. Maybe just "I'll crush 'em" would be technically most accurate, but even that will still feel a bit weak and convey something more like The Thing from Marvel than what Alm is going for.

It should be noted that Alm's language is a lot rougher in Gaiden overall. They made him more polite in Shadows of Valentia and the official localization stayed true to that in the remake. The most immediately obvious manifestation of that is how he refers to Mycen. In Gaiden Mycen is "jichan", translated as "gramps" by fans, but in Shadows of Valentia he's "jisan", translated as "grandfather" in Shadows of Valentia. So it's less inaccuracy that the line doesn't appear in Shadows of Valentia and more that Alm's manner of speaking changed entirely to the extent that saying something so crass wouldn't be in character. The scene is also restructured between the remake and the original too. In the original Alm is using that line to reassure Celica as he's just shown up to save her. Meanwhile, in Shadows of Valentia you have the whole thing with Mila reviving Celica and then they go to the final battle together, so Alm reassuring Celica at that stage would be a bit redundant and instead we get a final verbal clash with Jeddah instead, so it's double the reason why the line didn't show up.

EDIT: I just asked my Japanese fluent girlfriend to translate the line and her default translation was "motherfuckers", so bastard might be too weak a translation if anything. Though we did watch a Samuel Jackson movie last night which might bias things. She also says that there is a slight bit of context missing in that Alm is talking more about how he's feeling in the Japanese. Her overall translation was "These mother fuckers are making me want to crush them." Or more succinctly "I want to crush these mother fuckers". Though putting that extra want in there does make it feel less like he's trying to put Celica at ease.

Edited by Jotari
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