Sir John had previously translated the manual for Forge of Virtue into German, and he has now given the original game’s manual the same treatment:

the manual for the Ultima VII Part 1 „The Black Gate“ is now also translated into German. Layout was reworked, as was the original translation from 1992. New spelling rules have been applied and the very pixelated graphics have been exchanged for better (higher resolution) ones. When looking at the Bestiary in the second pair of screenshot you can easily see the difference (you might want to open these in original size ->right click->View Image).

The translation has been reworked to a degree. With a possible translation project for Black Gate in mind I have adapted all expressions from the existing translations for Ultima V Lazarus and Ultima 6 Project in order to prepare grounds for a consistent set of translations.

He has released both manuals as a single download, which you can grab from his site, or from the translation project’s entry here at the Codex.

As to the status of the actual game translation, Sir John recently released this teaser image:

And his most recent blog update goes into detail about his intentions for the Ultima 7 translation, and what progress he has made thus far:

…I will do a re-translation for Ultima VII into German next, because I think there are some good and vital reasons, that the game deserves this effort.

– The existing translation from 1992 follows the old rules of spelling
– It was done for Ultima 7 BG only, but disregards the Addon „Forge of Virtue“
– Available today is only the „Complete Edition“ of Ultima 7 – a version which is incompatible with the German translation
– Together with the Forge of Virtue there must have been a massive code change as well as bug fixing as almost all the internal jump addresses have changed.
– Also, of course all books and dialogues for the Add-on are missing from the existing translation.

The plan so far:
– I will try to make use of the existing translation as far as it makes sense. (Though I have to admit, that after checking the code, that will probably not be too much, to my regret :-/)
– The translation will comply with the new German spelling rules from 2006
– Some (some say many) translation terms have to and will be aligned to get it inline with other existing translations (e.g. Corpsers have been wrongly translated as Ghuls [ghouls] originally)
– The Add-on text will be translated and playable
– It will be fully compatible with the versions sold nowadays („Complete Edition“) on GOG and Origin.

And – if at all possible,

The bonus goal is:
– I would like the patch to be compatible with Exult but without Exult being mandatory. So hopefully it will run with the normal „out-of-the-box“ versions available for purchase as well as running it under Exult.

Sir John doesn’t give a release date estimate, other than saying it’ll be done when it’s done.