Auf Deutsch!

Sir John — or Serendipitous Dragon, as some of you may know him — just can’t stop translating Ultima games, it seems. Having polished off the German translation of the Ultima 6 Project, he has decided to take a step back in time and translate the original game to German as well.

Or, well…to translate as much of it as he can:

After translating Ultima 6 Project to German I delved into the original version of Ultima VI and DreamMasters u6edit tool to see, if I can port the translation with reasonable effort.

Good news is: I shall be able to come up with something that might look like a German version in the end
Bad news is: translation will not and cannot be as thorough as the one done for Ultima 6 Project

Reason for this is, that some of the files that need translation cannot be decompiled, modified and re-compiled, resulting in some strings to remain untranslated.

Using u6edit tool I will be able to translate the following:
– All books
– All signs
– All Conversations

On the downside, the following stuff will be a hassle to translate or may stay untranslated at all:
– Introduction Screens (u6edit is currently not capable of importing new images. Thankfully DreamMaster agreed to have a look if he can fix this if time permits)
– System barks like “you see”, “you say”, “You get no response” as well as the text in animated opening scene: all these strings are stored in the executable file “game.exe”, that cannot be recompiled. I will, however, try to HEX edit the file, where it makes sense. Problem with HEX editing is, that I HAVE TO keep the current length of strings. That may proof ‘difficult’ at best, as German is considerably longer than English.
– For the same reason the commands (“Talk”,”Look”,”Get” etc.) will remain untranslated. I cannot come up with German equivalents with 3 or 4 letter words here. Whatsmore: you can shorten the commands by simply typing “T” for “Talk”, “L” for “Look” etc. – these shortcuts cannot be altered at all, so in the end you would have to press “L” to “Sieh” (Look) at things – sounds pretty much awkward and senseless, right? 😉

Still, all of this sounds as it might be worth a try nonetheless.

I would imagine that Sir John would welcome any suggestions or offers of assistance, so…be sure to strike up a conversation in the comments to the above-quoted post if you feel like lending a hand, some time, or some knowledge.