Fan translation is perceived as having a number of advantages; in particular, it allows gamers to play, and understand, games that were never released in their native language. Many video games, as well as animes, are marketed exclusively in Japan, for example; the text encoded in the ROM images of these Japan-only games can be translated to English or another language, for the enjoyment of English-speaking players and players who speak neither Japanese nor English. Not only is the practice of fan translation considered by many video game players to be a reaction to a disappointing regional decision, or the answer to a Japanese's company's decision to keep a game exclusive to Japan, but it is also considered a sign of a demand for companies to start translating games into languages that they never bothered to translate into. Another reason for fan translation is that the English release is considered inferior to the Japanese release as to gameplay or script content or if the Japan-only game is an enhanced remake of a game that was released outside Japan or that has an original version that was already fan-translated into English.

Some of the Japan-only games that have been translated into English through emulation include Dragon Quest V ( Super Famicom), Dragon Quest I & II Reprise (SFC), Cosmo Police Galivan ( Famicom), Adventure Island 4 (FC), Tales of Phantasia (SFC), Final Fantasy IIFinal Fantasy ( Japanese: Fainaru Fantajii is a very popular series of role-playing video games produced by Square (aka Squaresoft), now Square Enix. The Final Fantasy video game franchise originated in Japan in 1987 (with Final Fantasy I and was brought (FC, remade for Final Fantasy OriginsFinal Fantasy Origins is a Sony PlayStation video game from Square Enix. It is the re-release of remastered versions (or enhanced remakes) of the NES classics Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II on the PlayStation platform. Final Fantasy I and II were orig), Final Fantasy III (FC), Final Fantasy VFinal Fantasy ( Japanese: Fainaru Fantajii is a very popular series of role-playing video games produced by Square (aka Squaresoft), now Square Enix. The Final Fantasy video game franchise originated in Japan in 1987 (with Final Fantasy I and was brought (SFC), Seiken Densetsu 3Seiken Densetsu is a Role-playing game series from Squaresoft (the company behind the Final Fantasy series), now Square Enix ( Enix is the maker of the Dragon Quest series), created by Koichi Ishii. Started in 1991, Seiken Densetsu is known for its live-a (SFC), Live-A-Live (SFC), Bahamut LagoonBahamut Lagoon is a strategy role-playing video game developed by Squaresoft (now Square Enix). It was released only in Japan for the Super Famicom in 1996. It was directed by former Square Enix employee Kazushige Nojima. It is similar in gameplay to Fina (SFC), and Radical DreamersRadical Dreamers is a video game produced by Squaresoft. The game was released in Japan in 1996 through the Satellaview add-on for the Nintendo Super Famicom. Radical Dreamers is a role-playing game in which the player takes the role of Serge, a young adv (SFC). In addition to English, other fan translations have also been translations into other languages such as FrenchFrench le francais la langue francaise is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother to, SpanishThis article is about the international language known as Spanish. For other languages spoken in Spain see Languages of Spain Spanish is an Iberian Romance language, and the third or fourth most spoken language in the world. It is spoken as a first langua, ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people, most of whom live in Italy. Standard Italian is based on Tuscan dialects and is somewhat intermediate between the languages of Southern Italy and the Gallo-Romance languages of the North., Greek, Portuguese, Latin, Norwegian, German, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, and Serbian. American subsidiaries of Japanese video game companies usually translate their games only into English. They do not bother to translate into Spanish, although Spanish is a widely spoken language in the United States. European video game companies seldom bother to translate their English-language games into languages other than Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

If a Famicom game gets fan-translated from Japanese to English, it gets respectfully dubbed an NES game. The same goes for Super Famicom games.

1 Legal issues

While fan translations are indisputably illegal (Article 8 [Right of Translation] of the Berne Convention explicitly reserves the right of translation to the copyright holder and whomever receives permission of them, saying "Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall enjoy the exclusive right of making and of authorizing the translation of their works throughout the term of protection of their rights in the original works."), it is unusual for copyright holders to object. This is probably largely because the electronic games in question are generally not considered commercially viable in the target language, so the translation is rarely seen as a source of lost revenue.

A popular belief in the fan-translation community is that distributing only the translation, as a patch to the original game, is legal; this belief has no support in international copyright law (probably because for video games, the translation can be played only through emulation), but it seems plausible that the strong anti-piracy stance the fan translation community has taken has contributed to the tendency of copyright holders to turn a blind eye. Fan translations are mainly done for Japan-only games that were developed for the Japanese versions of game systems that were discontinued in the United States. Article 8 of the Berne Convention, or international copyright law, may be controversial for the fan translation community and the emulation community, and it has been believed by some gamers to have unintended chilling effects on free speech, and that it only serves to force the audience to learn the language that the games in question were marketed in, thus unintentionally making more potential translators.

There have never been any legal cases involving fan translation issues. As for manga, there was never a need for a test case, since manga fan translations have been published on the Internet for years. Japanese companies are unlikely to sue the fans, especially for animes, and fan translations of animes have been around a long time. According to Yu's Behind the Scenes of IRC, there have been beliefs that "there is a gap between people's opinion and what is written in the law."

2 Fan Translators (External Links)

3 See Also

4 List of Fan-Translated Japan-only Video Games

This is a partial list of Japan only games that have been translated into English through console emulation.

YoJR = Year of Japanese Release.
YoFTR = Year of Fan Translation Release.

4.1 Complete Translations

Game Title	Platform	Game Publisher	Fan Translator	YoJR	YoFTR	Reason for Japan-onlyness
Alcahest	Super Famicom	Squaresoft	F.H.	1994	2002	Reason unknown
Bahamut Lagoon	Super Famicom	Squaresoft	DeJap Translations	1995	2002	Reason unknown
Cosmo Police Galivan	Famicom	Nihon Bussan	Jair	1988	1998	No localization office or rights
Cyber Knight	Super Famicom	Tonkinhouse	Aeon Genesis Translation Proclamation	1993	2002	No localization office or rights.
Dragon Quest I&II	Super Famicom	Enix	RPG-One Translations	1993	2002	No localization office. Enix America Corporation was closed.
Dragon Quest III	Super Famicom	Enix	DeJap Translations and RPG-One Translations	1996	2003	No localization office. Enix America Corporation was closed.
Dragon Quest V	Super Famicom	Enix	DeJap Translations	1992	2002	A translation was attempted, but the English script was too long to fit into the largest cartridge ROM size available at the time. PlayStation 2 remake may get localized to North America.
Dragon Quest VI	Super Famicom	Enix	DeJap Translations and NoPrgress	1994	2001	No localization office. Enix America Corporation was closed
Final Fantasy II	Famicom	Squaresoft	NeoDemiforce	1988	1998	Preliminary translation was completed and a full English prototype exists, but work was abandoned in favour of Final Fantasy IV for the SNES. PlayStation version was released in the United States and Europe under Final Fantasy Origins.
Final Fantasy III	Famicom	Squaresoft	Neill Corlett and Alex W. Jackson	1990	1999	Squaresoft did not have the resources to translate the game and the Super Famicom was released around the same time.
Final Fantasy V	Super Famicom	Squaresoft	RPGe	1992	1997	Squaresoft opted for Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest and did not have the resources to translate Final Fantasy V. A PlayStation port of Final Fantasy V was released in the United States under the name Final Fantasy Anthology. Final Fantasy V was the first game with a large amount of text to be translated by fans. The primary innovation of its fan translation was the incorporation of reverse engineering in the translation process. It proved to the fan translation community that such large-scale translations were indeed possible, and soon many other games followed in the reverse engineering model.
	Super Famicom	Nintendo	J2E and others	1996	2004	Nintendo was not kind enough to localize this game to North America. Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken for Game Boy Advance is the first Fire Emblem game to be localized to North America.
Front Mission	Super Famicom	Squaresoft	F.H.	1995	2000	The developer decided that it would be denied a North American release.
Front Mission: Gun Hazard	Super Famicom	Squaresoft	Aeon Genesis Translation Proclamation	1996	2004	Most likely, localization was not done because Front Mission was not localized.
Mother ( Earthbound Zero)	Famicom	Nintendo	NeoDemiforce	1990	1998	Localisation was completed under the name Earthbound. A prototype was obtained by Neo Demiforce, who hacked the ROM image to remove copy protection and allow it to be played in emulators. This hacked ROM was released with the title Earthbound Zero, because its sequel came to be known as Earthbound in the United States.
Mickey & Donald Magical Adventure 3	Super Famicom	Capcom	RPG-One	1996	2004	Reason unknown.
Radical Dreamers	Super Famicom	Squaresoft	NeoDemiforce	1998	2003	Square USA stopped localizing and publishing SNES games in 1998
Rockman & Forte (Megaman & Bass)	Super Famicom	Capcom	Aeon Genesis Translation Proclamation	1998	2002	Capcom USA stopped localizing and publishing SNES in 1998. The Super Famicom version was translated into English before the Game Boy Advance version was released in the United States.
Rudora no Hihou	Super Famicom	Squaresoft	Aeon Genesis Translation Proclamation	1996	2003	Squaresoft had localization problems at the time, and the director of the game was probably fired from the company. Rudora no Hihou came out late in the life of the Super Famicom.
Seiken Densetsu 3	Super Famicom	Squaresoft	Neill Corlett and others	1995	2000	Squaresoft cancelled localization in favor of Secret of Evermore.
	Super Famicom	Technos Japan Corporation	Aeon Genesis Translation Proclamation	1994	2003	American Technos did not have the resources to translate the game.
Snatcher	MSX 2	Konami	Daniel Caetano, Takamichi Suzukawa & Artemio Urbina	1988	2003	MSX not released in North American
	Super Famicom	Enix	DeJap Translations	1996	2004	No localization office. Enix America corporation was closed. Graphics pack, released by fan translator, is required to play the game through emulation.
Tales of Phantasia	Super Famicom	Namco	DeJap Translations	1994	2001	Namco intentionally kept the game Japan-only (and continued to do so for the subsequent PlayStation and Game Boy Advance ports)
Ys IV: Mask of the Sun	Super Famicom	Nihon Falcom	Aeon Genesis Translation Proclamation	1993	2000	No localization office or rights.

5 List of Retranslated Video Games

This is a list of games that were retranslated through emulation although they were previously localized to North America.

Japanese Game Title

U.S. Game Title

Platform

Original Localizer

Retranslator

Reason for Retranslation

Akumajou Densetsu

Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse

NES

Konami

Vice Translations

The US version was censored due to religious themes, and the original version used a custom chip, incompatible with American NES consoles, that enhanced the game's music and graphics.

Assault Suits Valken

Cybernator

Super NES

Konami

Aeon Genesis Translation Proclamation

Konami deleted too much dialogue and deleted cutscenes.

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy II

Super NES

Squaresoft

J2E Translations

Too many items, too much dialogue, and some abilities were dummied out of the first American version of Final Fantasy IV. Many things were censored also. Also, the fan translator believed that Squaresoft's old Final Fantasy IV was bad.

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy III

Super NES

Squaresoft

RPG-One Translations

Some members of the fan community believe that Squaresoft's translation (by Ted Woolsey ) was poor; they especially complained that the names of characters were changed extensively from their original Japanese names (Tina to Terra, Cait Sith to Stray, etc.). The US-version also featured instances of censorship, see Censorship and localisation in the Final Fantasy VI article. Computer and video game terminology

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Home > Fan translation

1 Legal issues

2 Fan Translators (External Links)

3 See Also

4 List of Fan-Translated Japan-only Video Games

4.1 Complete Translations

5 List of Retranslated Video Games

Topics: Fan Translation, Legal Issues, Fan Translators (External Links)...