Sir John has posted a couple more updates about his ongoing effort to translate Ultima 7 (both parts) into German. The first gives some information on his progress with the translation itself:

Progress so far is quite vast as this turns out to be the typical 80-20 project. As it turns out, the translation has been sequenced as follows:

1. Translate all items, books and signs
2. Find all already existing dialogues and copy them to their appropriate target files.
2a. Correct the spelling to comply with the rules from 2006
2b. Rework the structure of the existing files to work with the English binaries.
3. Translate all new and modified dialogues
4. Rework all terms used in the game to comply with other translations. Especially Dungeons, Shrines, Ships, Pubs Places and Armour need a closer look
5. Rework the wording, which is – for my liking – not „ultimaesque“ enough every now and then.
6. Proof-reading and beta testing
7. Check if intro and menu screens can be translated
8. Bug fixing Galore

Taking into account the existing translation, I am confident that I will have something useful on my hands pretty soon – I started working on this translation quite a while ago, since DK let me know that he was confident to being able to come up with a working editor.

He has also released some snippets of his work on The Logbook of Astelleron, one of the documents included with Forge of Virtue.

Additionally, Sir John is almost ready to begin a closed beta test of his Ultima 7: The Black Gate translation:

I think, I can soon offer the first beta of the German language patch for Ultima 7 – The Black Gate.
Due to the obfuscated nature of the decoded dialogues, especially in dynamic sentences, I plan to make this a closed beta, as I really NEED feedback to get all this little tidbits straightened out.

At time of release the patch will have everything translated except:
graphics, some tidbits here and there and about 30 of ~650 dialogues, mainly dealing with the add-on content.

If you know of any native German speaker, who might be interested to get involved, please tell him to reply to this posting using a valid email address. I will then get in touch with him oder her.

If you happen to be fluent in the German tongue, might I suggest leaving a comment on Sir John’s site? I’m sure he’d love your help in testing his work.