Overworld Map Characters, Japanese to English

I hope there isn't already a thread about this topic, but if there is please just link me and delete this thread.

Anyway my question is in regard to the only last pieces of Japanese still in the "English translation"... The two characters in the overworld map that can be seen when Link tries to use the flute and the bird to fly to his next location. Considering how often this item is used in the time-sensitive BSZ:AST compared to the original ALttP (where if I remember correctly it is given to you so late that it's almost more of a toy than an actually useful item), it seems kind of weird that we have still retained the Japanese characters for these two last locations. I'm totally used to them by now, but I remember that this was one of the things that bothered me the most the first time I played through. Here's a convenient graphic so that you can see them in case anyone forgets (not likely).


The questions are:
1)Is this something that would be easy to make a translation patch for?
2)What do these characters mean anyway?

In regard to question #2 I have a theory but it's completely speculation so I'd welcome corrections from someone who knows better than I.
My basic idea comes from the spoken/romaji versions of the characters:
ス = Su
マ = Ma
As we've probably all noticed, the Ma character (マ) always marks the Magic Shop whereas the Su character (ス) always marks the location where the player starts from. I'm thinking that the Ma is supposed to be "Ma" (マ) as in "Magic" (マジック), and perhaps the Su is supposed to be "S" (ス) as in "Start" (スタート).
If this is the case, then I'd like to see the characters possibly replaced by "S" and "M" or whatever people think is the most appropriate English equivalent.

On the other hand... I know the Japanese name for the magic shop is "魔法のクスリ屋" where the kanji "魔法" means "Magic", but perhaps the katakana translation of "マジック" is used for simplicity's sake here to match case with the word "スタート"... I'm not sure. As of now I'm going with this theory as my best guess.

Any thoughts on either what these characters mean or whether anyone agrees with me that they should be replaced with non-katakana Anglo characters?

This post has been edited by Duke Serkol on Mar 9 2011, 05:48 PM

Well depends, the tiles in AST are compressed like in Zelda 3, unfortunately.
It's rather difficult to uncompress them unless you're Euclid. However, the mascotts are uncompressed in AST's code, what means that if these marking tiles are new like the mascotts, there is small chance that they are also uncompressed in AST and you can easily find them using snesedit and edit them (2/4 bitsearch). But I doubt that.

Red scorpion currently has the same problem with translating parallel worlds. I was able to help him for the German translation in AST using a trick and insert uncompressed menu tiles and hooked them.
However this is a hard and actually unprofessional mode. And this only worked in one direction and only for AST because DN left a decompressing tool

If you are ET and can contact Euclid, then I'd prefer "M" for the witch and "S" for the startig location.

Hmm... Yeah I thought it might be something tricky like that.
I really don't know Euclid at all except by reputation and I'm not sure if he'd be interested in a project so small... and maybe trivial...

I was just kind of hoping on an off-chance that it would be an easy fix. Oh well. If I get worked up enough about it maybe I'll send Euclid an email though. It does seem to me like one of the very last steps still left on the "To Do" list.

Thanks for your response, Con.

Hey, I got an idea! What about this?

The compressed graphics data is left intact. Instead, some code is injected between after the game completes decompressing the data and before this data is displayed. That code actually modifies the relevant sprites in RAM with the translated one.

Anybody interested in testing a new patch? I think this ips fixes the map problem I was talking about earlier so the game should be 100% translated at last.

Attached File ( Number of downloads: 43 )
 BSZInSMapTrans.ips ( bytes)

M - Magic Shop
S - Start?

Well. looks good, but i have another idea:
Week 2 - S means Sahasrahla (that's his Kakariko house).
Week 3 - replace S with L (becuase Hero begins inside Link's house).
Week 4 - replace S with C (becuase Hero begins in the Church).

There is no "S" in week 1, becuase Start in location 1.

Thanks for verifying the patch, JamesBond007. Glad to see everything works. I think it works for the sublines and non-sublines versions as well as the Master Quest.

As for your suggestions, I like them, but maybe they could be included in a separate version. My intent was only to finish the translation of the Ancient Stone Tablets. The rest of the Japanese in the game had been translated already but these two characters on the map were still in Japanese and it was sort of an aesthetic bother to my eyes. So when I selected M for Magic Shop and S for Start, I'm really just trying to translate the original "マ" (Ma) and "ス" (Su) characters on the map. I prefer things to be as close to the original as possible so this is just a direct translation. (You can see more details about this decision in the first post in this thread up at the top.)

Another question for everyone/anyone: Do the English letters on the map look OK aesthetically? I tried to make them appear similar to the numbers but I'm not sure how successful I was. Do they look decent or should I modify them at all?

This post has been edited by MadHatter on Mar 7 2011, 01:59 PM

S is good, but M could be smaller if possible, becuase it doesn't fit completely in white circle.

Yeah I definitely noticed that the "M" kind of runs into the map a bit on the bottom and that it violates the typographic rules for these characters. I had trouble with that character because it's such a bulky one. Below I'm posting an image that shows the characters that currently exist and their positioning relative to the white background circle:


As you can see in Row #1, the numbers are all exactly as they appear in the game. I chose numbers here that filled up the most space or that illustrated certain points. We can make out certain typographic rules from these numbers.
Rule 1 - All characters are 6x6
Rule 2 - All characters have doubled vertical lines and single horizontal lines
Rule 3 - No characters can have elements that are flush with the edge

The first two characters in Row #2 are the versions in my patch.

As you can see, my "S" fits rules 1 and 3, although to meet rule 2 we would have to double the top and bottom tails of the S or remove them and we'd also have to thin down the diagonal into a doubled line instead of a tripled line.

My "M" violates rules 2 and 3. For rule 2 to be met, we'd have to double the right leg of the "M" and cut in half the height of the diagonals. For rule 3 to be met we'd have to shrink it. Unfortunately, the minimum size I can come up with for an "M" is 4x5 (see the character at Column #2 in Row #3) so there's very little room to properly double the verticals to meet rule #2. I played around with various attempts at shrinking it while keeping to rule 3, but the best I got was "Column #3, Row #3" These shrunken "M"s also violate rule 1... I'm not sure what would be best.

One possible change that I thought of is to make the diagonals come into conformity with rule 2 as shown in "Column #3, Row #2", but considering that I can't think of a way to make the right leg of the "M" conform to rule 2, I don't know if it's worth it.

I'll try to make a version where the "S" and "M" both conform to rule 2 as much as possible while still within the framework of rules 1 and 3, but I don't think the "M" can ever fully conform to both rules 1, 2, and 3 simultaneously.

Hey, how about this one? I made a quick-edit of your image, and that's my result. If you don't like doing this without permission, I'm sorry. But that was the easiest way to share my idea as quickly as possible.

This post has been edited by JamesBond007 on Mar 8 2011, 07:56 PM

Attached Image (Click thumbnail to expand)

If my vote means anything I like this one the most!

OK I played around with both the "S" and "M" to make them follow the rules more. Here are a variety of options I came up with. You'll notice one of my ideas was quite similar to yours, JamesBond007. (And by the way, I'm totally cool with you editing/using my images. That's great.)

Various options
In this picture, "Column #1, Row#1" is my original "S" and "Column #1, Row #2" is my original "M"
All of the "S"es after the first column are fully legal according to the rules.
Of the "M"s, only the two in Column #2 re fully legal. Both look like crap in my opinion.
All of the other options for "M" violate the rules but that's fine. The only reason I'm trying to stick to the rules is to make the letter look like it fits in with the others.

So apart from these options, there's your new "M" suggestion and one more option I came up with for "S". The new "S" idea is basically the same as if you overlapped the "S"es from Columns #2 and #3 in my "Various options" pic just above. I think it works pretty well and even though it breaks the rules a tiny bit, I think it still looks fine.

So I implemented both of these changes and took a screenshot to compare them. Here is the result. My original patch is applied on the right and the new versions are applied on the left. I think that the "S" looks useable in the new version (left), but the "M" seems a little thin and out of place... I'm not sure. Does seeing it in this perspective change your opinion or do you still think it would be an improvement?

MoP, of course your vote counts. I'm trying to come up with the solution that looks the best to the most people. I only get one vote too. The majority should dictate which we use. And thanks for weighing in. The more votes the better the result will be.

Personally, I like the bottom left M best.
And that S looks good to me too.

Failing that, how about one of these I'm attaching?

Anyway, good job MH!

...but aren't you guys forgetting something?



Attached Image

Thanks, Duke.

I'm trying to use the typographic rules that were applied to the other numbers as my basic guideline and as a stand-in for consistency so that the letters appear to be the same style as the numbers and not out of place. But the rules themselves are only guidelines so I can violate them wherever we need them violated. The important thing is what the letters look like in context and also their readability. I'll post pics of overworld maps with all of the options discussed so far tonight. Then we can more easily judge them in context.

As for the something we forgot... Are you talking about the character on the bag? I don't think I can touch that... My Hylian is much worse than my Japanese. Or do you mean that the patch doesn't work with the Link patch?

It is Japanese.

As far as I know, it reads "Stuff".

That's not exactly epic... but I reckon "belongings" wouldn't fit.
So... items?