Felt sour after all the discourse about AI translation, and wanted to go and do something positive as a mostly retired human translator. So I've decided to resume my dropped Wild ARMs 2 retranslation. Just familiarising myself with the workflow.

(No, I'm not actually putting Yu-Gi-Oh references in)

February 28, 2026 - 16:04 UTC

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Sorry to ask, any particular plans for Liz/Ard?
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They're extremely weird little guys in Japanese as well, but while their dialogue is silly, a lot of it isn't really as untranslatable as you'd think based on how incomprehensible they are in English. I think the original translator just got lost in how flowery Liz's dialogue can be.
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Wild Arms 2 one of the worst (translated?) games of all time so you’re doing the lord‘s work
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breath of fire 2 got you beat
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!!!!!!!!!!! I love this!! I'm very excited to see Wild ARMs 2: Journey to the Shadow Realm
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Is the translation that bad?
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It's BAD bad. "Plot- and character-critical stuff just doesn't make sense because they translated key words wrong" bad.
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basically the japanese writing itself is extremely weird and the translation itself is about the same quality as like, ff7. but while ff7 had (mostly) fairly brusque and straightforward writing in japanese and a lot of the comedy relied on animations or ingame context,
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It's one of the rougher translations of a major RPG. Further compounded by the fact that the original game is quite ambitious in its ideas and quite flowery in terms of its writing. It's pretty obvious looking at them side by side that the translator was out of their depth Japanese proficiency-wise.
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I had finished most of the first disc, though I needed to proofread a lot of it and test. I wasn't in a good headspace at the time and I think a lot of it is a bit shit. But going to start chipping away at it again alongside a replay of the game in Japanese, I think. It seems worth finishing.
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Holy shit thank you so much

I remember awkwardly asking you about it a bit ago and I was worried I'd be putting pressure on you for it, so seeing you gung-ho about returning to it definitely warms my heart. Obviously take as much time as you need
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To me this is the holy grail of (basically) untranslated games, because it seems like it has some genuinely interesting things to say and is virtually incomprehensible. You're a hero for doing this!
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i pondered doing it myself for a bit but decided my level of japanese was just not there for it. 🫡
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you're a hero
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As someone who was.... disappointed with Wild Arms 2... if you... wanted to... make it harder in any way... you would possibly completely fix all my problems with it along with the text lol
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Probably beyond the scope of this, to be honest! I'm not experienced on the technical side, and while I've figured out where the text is stored and how to modify it, I'm not sure about modifying the game beyond that. But people are welcome to build on my work with things like that if they want!
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one of my favorite ps1 jrpgs, gl
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Good luck barleybap! I'm excited to see how this turns out!
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...Couldn't you change the nearly-unreadable font too?
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No, to be blunt. I'm a translator, not a romhacker. I figured out how to edit the text, but I have no idea how to get at the font. If someone else wants to figure that out they can. But an ugly font is a pretty minor issue compared to an often unreadable script. And I don't really care myself.
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You are doing heroic work. I've been hoping for a reloc of this game for literal decades. Take however much time you need!!
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fuckin awesome ✨
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Doing the lords work ova heah
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Really glad to hear this is picked back up, I was really looking forward to this coming out back when I saw the initial youtube video. Best of luck
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this is one of my favorite RPGs, especially on that console. I discovered it completely by accident and immediately fell in love.
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Ooo, good pick. I still need to finish that game.
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thank u for the effort, whatever happens
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Thank you for your passion.
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this would be awesome!! would love to play that game with a sensible translation!
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I'm really glad this is still going. Wild Arms 2 is one of my favorite games, so it'll be great to have a version of it I can actually recommend to people.
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Wild Arms 2 with a better translation is the ultimate step forward
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thank you so much, i've been hoping to hear this for so long
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YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!
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good luck
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I'm begging you to keep in the YuGiOh joke, Lilka would 100% would make a shitpost like this.
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thank you I owe you my life

I would so love to be able to recommend this game to people, it's my favorite of all time😭
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I LOVE GOOD NEWS!!!!!!!
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I would love to play it with a decent script, best of luck and all the strength to you!
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You are literally working miracles, Thank you
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I ended up missing two, I've only played the original and 3. Sounds like 2 would have been a hell of a trip.
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