How to translate japanese games?

[DataSlayer v9.6]

Hello.

I want to translate a japanese PS2 game into english. But when I load the files into my hex editor the japanese characters are not displayed. Please help me out.

Thanks.

[Newbie]

Did you change the font ?

[DataSlayer v9.6]

If you ask if I changed the font in my hex editor then no. It got no option to do it. Do you know one application that got that function?

[Berion]

Read some basics about hacking games (about munge's, 2d file graphic formats (many games on PS2 using his native: tim2/tim3), bitmap fonts, pointers)...

Magic Program which let You do all these things doesn't exist (except dedicated apps write by developers or sceners). ;]

[Newbie]

Try Winhex editor !

[kevstah2004]

Keep in mind that you can't replace words in English that are longer than there Japanese equivalent unless some English words which your replacing with have less letters so you have enough letter space left over to do so.
You could try asking pickyeater on the-horror.com he has knowledge or translating games I think.
http://www.the-horror.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2834

[Luminax]

PS2Dis can help a lot, open the Elf file (SLUS/SLPM/SLES, etc etc) in PS2Dis and set the codepage as EUC or Shift-JIS.
Some software have most of their textual references inside the main ELF, some have it in other files, it all depends on the game, good luck searching around.

[DataSlayer v9.6]

The text was really stored in the ELF file.

Is it possible to edit the ELF file directly with a text editor? I can open it in LibreOffice Write, something like MS Word, which can display the text in Shift-JIS. But when I save it, it seems that the complete file structure gets changed, since the file is saved as a plain text file and not as ELF file. Does this matter and can the PS2 still work with it?

If it really does matter I came up with another solution. While I can display Shift-JIS with LibreOffice and work on the language part, I will use a hex editor to save the changes. But I do not know how to do it exactly. 1. I would find the the string I want to translate in LibreOffice Writer. 2. I would copy it and find out the hex code of it. 3. I would search for this hex code in the hex editor. 4. I would replace the string.

Before I waste half a day on doing so, could you just tell me if this would work or not?


I will also test PS2Dis, but I want to learn more about computers and not just use some GUIs.

Thanks.

Edit: I tried my hex editing method. Now I am really confused. 1. I copied a Shift-JIS string from the ELF file into plain text file. 2. I opened the text file with a hex editor and looked at the hex code. 3. I opened the ELF file with a hex editor and searched for the hex code but it was not there. This is not possible isnt it?

[Berion]

Is it possible to edit the ELF file directly with a text editor?

You cannot edit binary files by text editors... Use hex editor, but better idea is to diassembling ELF and making an app for extracting/inserting txt in proper format (encoding, including pointer system if it's also in this executable file).

1. I copied a Shift-JIS string from the ELF file into plain text file. 2. I opened the text file with a hex editor and looked at the hex code. 3. I opened the ELF file with a hex editor and searched for the hex code but it was not there. This is not possible isnt it?

It depends on character encoding.