Higurashi Game Translation Project

[Ahasuerus]

@DaCyclops:

Looks like they just chucked them in to an apparent Higurashi fan, if you ask me. Nice bonus there!

Thanks A friend who I turned onto Higurashi is ordering all three games from Himeya as well, so we'll see if he gets one, too. Hope so!

Hi Mion

Ahasuerus, you lucky bastard! We didn't get any cool swag like that *sniff* Please take some more photos!

Yep, I felt so lucky I almost forgot how to act Being that I had at least four other orders delayed or out-of-stock in the last week or so, maybe it's some kind of balancing-out. Or Karma: I bought both Schoolmate and Artificial Girl 3 through them (each cost over $100 total) so maybe they looked at my record and tossed in the calendar as a treat?

Perhaps when you guys ordered yours the calandars weren't out yet? At any rate, it's almost an injustice due to your dilligent work on the Higurashi project. It would be cool if you could get in touch with R07 and see if he'd grant permission for a U.S. translated version of the games I'd pay (again) for that Or maybe even just a patch FOR the games, for a reasonable fee?

Oh well, just thinkin' out loud

In the meantime, here's two more pics that I'd taken of the calendar; there are two more left to shoot that I'll save for last I'll put them up tomorrow. Afterwards I'll try to refine my shooting "technique" *ahem* so that I can put up better quality photos in the appropriate thread, assuming no-one has yet. I only went through the last 6 or 7 pages to check.

Allso, apologies for the angled shots; I don't want to hang it to display the inner pages for shooting because doing so will damage them. Laying it down is the only way, and the damn glare is bothersome. I would've posted them in the "Higurashi pics" thread but compared to what's there my photographic "skillz" suck LOL




...and...

[Christen]

Gwah! Lucky lucky!

[Ahasuerus]

Here are the last two to share

Poor Rena-chan!



Believe it or not, most of the glare is in the picture


Hope you enjoyed; I wish there were more!

[Sonozaki Futagotachi]

Originally Posted by Ahasuerus

Perhaps when you guys ordered yours the calandars weren't out yet? At any rate, it's almost an injustice due to your dilligent work on the Higurashi project. It would be cool if you could get in touch with R07 and see if he'd grant permission for a U.S. translated version of the games I'd pay (again) for that Or maybe even just a patch FOR the games, for a reasonable fee?

Well, I tried searching on the 07thExpansion website for 'English translation' (the Japanese words of course) and found a post Ryukishi07 wrote about people contacting him about an English release. He said he's gotten a lot of such requests, but because his English is too poor, he can't trust making a written contract, so he has to refer them to the Japanese publisher, which ends up being too difficult and expensive so talks break down there. He feels bad about it always going that way, but doesn't know what to do about it as a doujinshi writer.

From what I've heard, making a patch is tolerated, so long as you're not profiting from it. And as good and interesting as the Higurashi stories are, the market in the US for VN's is waaay too small to pay back the licensing fee even if we did have the $$ for it (or could borrow it off you guys ). I'm enjoying the translation as a side hobby to my frustrating full-time job, so if you're okay with the pace we're keeping I'm happy to continue this way as a fan translation. Pics of juicy merchandise help too, so thanks for those

Shion (Sonozaki Futagotachi)

[Sterling01]

Originally Posted by Sonozaki Futagotachi

Well, I tried searching on the 07thExpansion website for 'English translation' (the Japanese words of course) and found a post Ryukishi07 wrote about people contacting him about an English release. He said he's gotten a lot of such requests, but because his English is too poor, he can't trust making a written contract, so he has to refer them to the Japanese publisher, which ends up being too difficult and expensive so talks break down there. He feels bad about it always going that way, but doesn't know what to do about it as a doujinshi writer.

From what I've heard, making a patch is tolerated, so long as you're not profiting from it. And as good and interesting as the Higurashi stories are, the market in the US for VN's is waaay too small to pay back the licensing fee even if we did have the $$ for it (or could borrow it off you guys ). I'm enjoying the translation as a side hobby to my frustrating full-time job, so if you're okay with the pace we're keeping I'm happy to continue this way as a fan translation. Pics of juicy merchandise help too, so thanks for those

Shion (Sonozaki Futagotachi)

Why does the contract have to be in english?

[Rias]

You are talking about this, right?

Spoiler:

[375] 外国の方とのやり取り。 投稿者：竜騎士07 投稿日：2007/03/01(Thu) 00:16

『ひぐらし』のコミックス等が海外に出たこともあってか、たまに外国の方から、『ひぐらし』のPC翻訳版を 出せないかとご相談いただくことがあります。

こういう時、非常に悩むのは、相手が信頼できるに足る方かどうかを測ることです。
何しろ、舞台は日本の外に移るわけですから、それを直接視察できない竜騎士07には、相手の言い分を鵜呑みにする以 上のことはできないわけです。何らかの不利益を受けた際にも、その国の裁判所を経ることになるでしょうし、 竜騎士07は英語だってろくろくわからず、契約書の内容すら満足に理解はできないでしょう。いや、下手をすると契約書の捉え方すら国によって異なるかもしれません。

こういう場合、私は大抵、「日本の会社を通じて頼んでほしい」と返答するのですが、すると大抵、そこで話は 潰えます。日本の会社を経由すると膨大な手数料がかかり採算性がなくなる、というのです。

こういう話になる度に、ひょっとして私は外国人恐怖症で相手に無理難題を吹っかけてしまったのだろうか…、 慎重な良い対応だっただろうか…、と自分を苛むことになります…。

いわゆる海外版権の正しい対応はどんなものなのでしょうか。
一同人作家に過ぎない竜騎士07には非常に難しい問題です…。

Basically it's becuase he cannot oversee the operations since it's oversea. In the event that he has to go through any problems that might lead to legal problems (such as royalities or copyright issues), the trials will be held in that respective country instead of Japan. Of course, signing a contract beforehand can prevent those problems, but he cannot do it himself since his english isn't good enough to understand the contract. Thus his solution is to refer those who wanted to legeally translate his work, to the publishers. Of course, the talk ends there since much money is involved.

Side note: This reminds me of the story of the one-person translation effort that is being done in Taiwan, Chinese translation. The person is quitting after Tatarigoroshi-hen finishes, as he feels discouraged after seeing other people rip off the work that he has put into the project. He recalls going to shops and seeing that Higurashi the PC game was sold on the shelves, with giant words of "chinese version" slapped in the front and was sold for about 8 USD (bootlegs, of course.) At the back cover was the summary that he translated for the game. One can easily guess who translated the content in that disk.

Another story from that same person was that he was contacted by a cellphone company, they wanted to move Higurashi to cellphones (same thing as the PC game, just on cellphone), and offered to pay him about 330 USD for Onikakushi-hen's translation and implementation. That company was actually offered that price by another translator, but they found out that the person would probably just copy-paste his work, so they contacted him instead. Needless to say, he turned it down (those who have played Onikakushi-hen would know how many words there are actually in that one chapter alone...), and never knew if they actually made the game or not.

[Ahasuerus]

^ Thanks for that interesting look into the legal/illegal issues involved. Interesting stuff. While I feel bad for R07's business position as a doujinshi, I hope he's aware of how highly regarded he is among our "little" Higurashi fanbase, not to mention the rave reviews of the series by knowledgable reviewers.

I'm enjoying the translation as a side hobby to my frustrating full-time job, so if you're okay with the pace we're keeping I'm happy to continue this way as a fan translation.

And I'm enjoying you and your sister's translations as I'm sure that most reading this thread are as well. Whatever pace you can manage is fine with me as long as you're able to keep one

Don't work too hard

[Jesiah]

Is there a hope for me who discovers now about this marvellous project to download the translation?

I've seen all the old links are unavailable due to the rimotion of the files.

Please let me know!

[DaCyclops]

The patch is still up for download. Let me see...

Originally Posted by Sonozaki Futagotachi

The Sonozaki Futago-tachi English patch for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Onikakushi (Days 1-5,9) is now ready! Check out our RapidShare folder at http://rapidshare.com/users/MQK6IW.


You may download the translation patch for the full version of the game (aka Himatsubushi-hen) at http://rapidshare.com/files/94455305...kushi_Day9.zip

Here's the translation patch for the demo version of Higurashi: http://rapidshare.com/files/94455799...kushi_Day9.zip

If you experience problems with downloading from RapidShare, you can try our folder on MediaFire.

To install a translation patch, simply unzip the contents into a subdirectory of the original Japanese game; double-click "onscripter-en.exe" to play.

You can download the demo game here. The download mirror sites are at the bottom of the page; follow the directions for which mirrors to use.

Someone put together a guide for buying Higurashi through one of the paid download sites; you can find it here. Let us know if you have trouble.

On Windows, you'll need to have Japanese language support enabled to install Higurashi. The easiest way to do this is by using Microsoft AppLocale: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=17598

If you use Mac OS X or Linux, you can download the latest version of onscripter-en from the Onscripter-En website: http://dev.haeleth.net/onscripter.shtml. Mac users should be able to drop the onscripter-en.app file from the dmg image into the translation patch subdirectory, and double-click to play.

-----

There's a new savegame fix (to end all fixes?) in this release, so don't be surprised if some of your older save games crash or load into a different place than where you saved; just resave at the appropriate point in this release. From now on, there shouldn't be problems with loading savegames you make using this release and any later ones.

Please let us know what you think!
Also let me know if you have problems installing or running a patch.

Mion (Sonozaki Futagotachi)

Originally Posted by DaCyclops

And of course, because I love wasting time... (not really. the longest parts of making this was extracting the files over my network, and adding in a link to the Controls Guide)

http://www.dacyclops.com/higurashi/S...kushi_day9.exe

Only for use by the Full-version users. Installs to the right folder, and also over the Day5 one that I made. Enjoy!

EDIT: As a note, if you were refering to the "Minagoroshi / Matsuribayashi Translation Project" from the title, that has been dead a long time. This thread is currently used for the Sonozaki Futagotachi sisters patches, which start at the first chapter of the game. Maybe these should be split into their own topic, in case of confusion....

[Christen]

Looks like it got renamed.

[Sonozaki Futagotachi]

Originally Posted by Christen

Looks like it got renamed.

Yep, I thought DaCyclops had a good idea there.

Mion (Sonozaki Futagotachi)

[Captain Spyro]

This is my first comment in this thread, but I want to commend the Sonozaki Sisters on the wonderful translation. I'm only playing the game through the demo, but I am heavily enjoying it thanks to your efforts.

[Ahasuerus]

Just thought I'd add an update: For anyone "on the fence" about ordering the three official game CDs through Himeya-shop, my friend who ordered them after I did also got a Higurashi 2008 calendar as well (see pics above). It's a gamble, of course, so nothing's guaranteed. Sure is a nice surprise though

Looking forward to the rest of Onikakushi-hen; great job Sonozakis

[Christen]

I might order the 3 CDs when I get my next pay. *crossing fingers

[Proto]

Just thought I'd add an update: For anyone "on the fence" about ordering the three official game CDs through Himeya-shop, my friend who ordered them after I did also got a Higurashi 2008 calendar as well (see pics above). It's a gamble, of course, so nothing's guaranteed. Sure is a nice surprise though

Then again I ordered the 2 Umineko cd's that have been released and got naught. Aw well, though luck

[Ahasuerus]

Then again I ordered the 2 Umineko cd's that have been released and got naught. Aw well, though luck

Hm, bummer Maybe it has to be Higurashi product in order to get the Higurashi calendar? And all three CDs I'll bet. I wish they would communicate in English so I could (a) express thanks and (b) ask about what's needed to get the calendar. I guess it's a secret, anyway

I've only checked out a little of the Umineko thread... I'm very interested but don't want to get spoiled. Also, the lack of a translation kept me from investigating further. Using Atlas and AGTH sucks, especially when compared to the Sonozakis work. But the story seemed really cool

Is there an estimation of how many CDs there's going to be for Umineko?

[Sterling01]

Originally Posted by Ahasuerus

Also, the lack of a translation kept me from investigating further. Using Atlas and AGTH sucks, especially when compared to the Sonozakis work. But the story seemed really cool

Well no need to worry as a translation patch is currently in the works

Here

[Ahasuerus]

^ Ah, that's great! *bookmarked*

"Ten Little Indians"/"And Then There Were None" was always a fave; I'm intrigued by the possibilities!

Thanks to you and Klashikari for overseeing the project and to all who are helping, including Mion :-)

[DaCyclops]

Gha! Topic Split! Now I have to learn a whole new topic number, and get that into my most-frequently-visited address list (wont take long, im sure )

What? Another person got the calendar? Either I ordered too early, I ordered too little (didnt get Rei) or im just unlucky (because I actually got sent the wrong thing originally, too. Got Umineko part 2 instead of Higurashi Kai. Unlucky would just fit).

Screw it, im ordering Rei now and seeing if im lucky.

My poor credit card.

[Ahasuerus]

Judging from how we ordered, and if this is how they measured their criteria, we both ordered all three of the 07thExpansion CDs for Higurashi at the same time. That's all I have to go on, sorry

My sympathies to your credit card