Japanese to english translator for PS2?

[Moe]

Has anyone heard of a device that can translate japanese text to english for imported games?

Sounds pretty off the wall to me but my brother says his friend say he modded his PS2 in 2 ways, a mod chip to play imports (no problem) but also something that "converted" in his words the japanese to english.

I asked my bro to get info from him so i could find this thing and he came back with check NCSX for a "converter".Of course all i can come up with are various video,cable, and stepdown converters.

Supposedly he imported Star Ocean 2 from japan and is able to play it and get english text ingame.


I have had zero luck finding anything like this. A mod chip of sorts? An external device? An interface that runs thru a computer with character recognition? I have no idea...

Is this just a pipe dream or is there something out there?

[randombs]

you what? if there was i think it would have been big news. translation is complex as it is without having something that does character recognition as well...

what he probably has is just jap games that have been patched into english

sounds like a blag to me. i'd put it on the shelf with the other blags i've heard - right next to being able to fight sheng long in SF2

unless someone here can prove it that is

[Papercut]

Sounds pretty off the wall to me but my brother says his friend say he modded his PS2 in 2 ways, a mod chip to play imports (no problem) but also something that "converted" in his words the japanese to english.

Bull****.

In a box.




A big stinking box of ****.

[Stroker Ace]

If all games stored text in the same way, shape and place, then it'd be possible.

But they don't. So it's not.

And even if it were possible, it'd only in the loosest sense. Take a look at the Babelfish translator or similar to see the kind of garbage it spews out.

[Lyris]

Supposedly he imported Star Ocean 2 from japan and is able to play it and get english text ingame.

If the Japanese version of that game had English text stored on the disc, and some device ("converter"???) that NCSX were able to supply him could somehow tell the game to use the English text instead, I guess that would be possible. But like has been said, that's more of a feature that'd already part of the program code, it's not like you could just pick up an obscure Japanese title that no company ever had any intention of bringing to the West from a store shelf and have it display in English.

[Flabio]

Machine translation of Japanese to passable English is doable, but not really on the fly and it certainly can't intercept a games text and change it.

Was it April 1st when he told you this?

[Moe]

Lol no wasnt an april fools joke.. I think its just more like very poor communication (my bro isnt the brightest) combined with 2nd hand info...

Anyway got my bro to get more specific info and what he came back with were printouts of webpages for ordering the stuff his friend says does this.

What i got were a basic PS2 mod chip and the "converter" being a plain old Swap Magic disc set. In the description of the Swap Magic it says:

"Provides Multi-Language menu including:English,chinese,korean,German,Italian"

I would assume thats just menus specific to whatver swap magic itself does, and not menus within the game.. but im being told that "You hear characters speak verbally in japanese but the text is english."

I dont understand why you would need both a mod chip and swap magic, far as i know they are just 2 methods of accomplishing the same thing (fooling the system into thinking it has an origonal,local disk), unless it can do something mroe than just boot for the import.

So anyway has anyone used Swap Magic with imported games and gotten any effect beyond just allowing them to boot?

Would be funny if it just turned out that specific game had english dialogue to begin with Ill have him ask if the guy has played any other games to the same effect.

[jimtendo]

"Provides Multi-Language menu including:English,chinese,korean,German,Italian"

Refers to the swap magic disk, rather then 'actually' changing the games language.

So no, this device will not translate a JPN game for you.