Having Translated the Ultima 6 Project to German, Sir John Is Now Working On Translating the Original Game
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 ProjectReason 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 ConversationsOn 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.
Thanks for your kind words, Ken!
I’m delighted to being able to add, that the first part of the introduction, the opening sequence, is done already. I have put up the translation text as well as a video on the website http://ungesundes-halbwissen.de/wp/?p=928
Whatsmore: if all goes according to plan I should get the whole introduction including the gypsy setting translated by sunday 🙂
John
Привет из России, дорогие друзья! 🙂
Я бы тоже был рад помощи в переводе этой замечательной игры!