-: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

-: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

Right, something i get asked alot is, how do you translate?

Well this guide will tell you how I do it and also show some tricks and tips.

Let's start by following this guide :
http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showthread.php?t=28259

Now see this?


Notice the Generate? Depending on the game, we need a project file. In this guide I will use RPG Maker VX Ace,
but each editor is very similar to each other so If you know one you pretty much know them all.

So, once you got the rvproj2 file put it in the same folder
after the step "Now Select the Game.rgss3a and then Delete it."

So we wil have Audio,Data,Graphics,System,Game.exe , Game.ini and game.rvproj2

Create a backup of the game. THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! If you mess up at any point, be it Script, Items etc.
you NEED this to be able to re-paste anything you need to fix.

You CAN open the Game.exe and editor at the same time. Just keep in mind that any changes to
Scripts, Items etc. Will not take effect until you restart the Game.exe. The only thing that will change
is if you do changes to maps.

Now, click on the game.rvproj2 file.

And this will appear.


This is Seed of Evil and how it looks untranslated. But, where do start? Well the best place is the Database.
Click on Tools and then Database.

And now we are here.


Now from here I like to Translate each tab in a order.
Terms, System, States, Actors, Classes, Skills, Items, Weapons, Armors and finally Enemies.

Why? There is a reason for that.


Notice the Elements, Weapon Types, Skill Types and Armor Types?
Well, these will show up in other tabs and I use them as refrences when I translate.

Let's translate this...and done.


Onto next tab!


The only thing we need to translate here is the Game Title or just add Partial is up to you.

Moving on to next tab.


Right, so not much we need to do here. Let's just translate it.


See note? We don't need to translate that so leave it as is. Now we do a big jump!


This is the actors , or Playable characters.
Now, on Partials, I like to leave

This untranslated since it doesn't effect Machine Translators that badly.
However, this is a personal prefrences if you wanna translate it or not , but if you are doing a full
translation, then of course translate it.

Right, Classes, is not big deal here.


But, notice something?


See how on Features that the Term stuff shows up? That's good, but not useful here.

Now for the most...annoying part of any translation i do...


The skills. Now be careful translating 1-5 as they are used by the game itself. The only thing
you need to translate regarding this is the "Using Message" You can translate the Name, but nothing that
is needde. Let's go to a skill that matter.



Okay so, the things you need to translate is Name, Description and Using message.
There is a trick here. Notice the Skill Type? See how it says "Magic"?

Well, if we translate Name first then click on Casts it will generate " casts Heal! "
meaning that you do not have to translate Using Message. Right?

Not always. I recommend checking the Using message first before clicking it.
But , if it says they are casting message then of course just hit the button.

Same goes for if they are using a ability. Just click on Uses


Remember when i said : Not always? Well , let's look at a skill further down :

Like this one. Notice how it says " braces itself!"

Well, the Japanese for it was not use or cast so I had to translate it to this.
This is what i mean by that you can not always click on the auto generate button.

Right, so do need to translate every Description? Not always. Notice the --Ally Special Skill-- ?
Well, that means that its in a category that the creator of the game put in. That means
that the player will use the skill and the Description will be shown.

But, if we look at this :


Notice that i only translated the name and using message?
Thats because its in the category of ---Enemy Magic which means only the enemy uses it.

This is not always the case in every game, so do keep in mind of this.
Let's look at another thing.


This is a Passive skill ingame. Just like a normal Skill I translated the Description, but
I left the using message blank because it's not used . You can know this if check Occasion.

If you are unsure about something, check around how the skill is built.
Like, what Skill Type it is, the Scope (Who or what it targets) the element and it's type.

Remember how translated Terms first and State?
Well, those do show up here in Element and Effects.

Now okay , one more thing.


See Common Event? Well, this means that when the skill is used it calls a Event.
So, let's check it out. Check the name and then...Click on Common Event tab and let's see here it is!


Hey! States shows up again. How nice that it's translated so we know some here.
Let's look for a common event with some text.


Now , see the Text: and Show Choices? That we can translate and will show up ingame.
Just click on it and hit Space or Right click and select Edit.


Now, a few things to keep in mind.
The first thing is arrows here.
Notice the Face Graphic? If a Face Graphic is used, then you can fit the text into first arrow.
But, if there is none, then you can make the text fit into the second arrow.
You can press Preview to check how it looks and if it fits or not. Handy.

As for Choices.


The best is to fit the text inside the Choice box.

So, the things to translate is Show Choices and Text .

There are some times , depending on the scripts , or how the game is made that might find text inside
Script or Comment like this :


Ingame if you find the text and it is calling the Common Event and through script it displays it from here
then make sure to translate within "text here" <- and make sure to have "" as to not mess up the script.

Now, if you are doing a partial, this is not something need to worry about, but if you do full translation
then this can be important to know.

Okay, so next tab is Items.


There is not much to say here. Just Translate Name and Description.
Altough , there is one thing. Some games I notice they write in Note and that text shows up ingame.
Again, it is important to translate within "" if it does show up. Try to check ingame and in the editor
what is showing up or not and translate that and leave rest as is , this is to not mess things up
with the game. So, best to be careful . You can always check your backup and repaste it back if you mess up.

Now onto Weapons. It's basically the same as Items. Translate the name and Description.

Armor is a bit diffrent. See, some games uses Costumes and this is what they use for it.
MOST of the time you can translate the Name, but in some cases this screws up the game since it's
trying to refer to a Japanese name, but it can not find it. How to fix this?

Well, there are couple places one can look. First is Scripts, next is the Picture folder and finally Common Event.
Now, you can first translate it, check it works ingame and if it does not worry about it. This is mostly
because the Script is using the ID number (Its the list , notice how it says 002, 003 etc? Thats the ID).

But, if it doesn't work and you get a error, check what the error is and try go from there.
It might just be that you need to translate the name somewhere else, like i said, in Script, Pictures or in
Common Event.

Now for the last tab that need to translate here. Enemies.
The ONLY thing you need to translate here is the Name. That's it.

Just hit OK and let's exit from here.

I recommend every 10-15 mins you hit OK and then Ctrl+S to save as not to lose progress.

Okay, so with me so far? Right, where do we go from here? Well, we go into Scripts.
Click on Tools again and then Script Editor.

WARNING! Make sure that you made a backup of your folder before. If you do any mistakes in here
it will make the game unplayable most of the time. Be careful.

Where do we start? Well, first thing we wanna translate is Vocab.

Look here.


Notice how this is Purple and inside "" ? This means we can translate this. But, make sure you
translate within "" putting text outside may cause script error. Let's compare.



Notice something? %s this is a Term call. This is what the editor / game uses to call something.
Now, you can mostly tell what it is referring to in the message itself, so just put the %s where it would
make sense. You can later check ingame when play testing how the message itself is shown.

What I like to do is just create a new Project with RPG Maker. Go into Scripts, copy the Vocab script
and just paste it directly here. Saves time. One thing to note, you can't always do this.
Check the length. If its the same as a new Project file then okay you can just copy paste over.
If not, Check the Script for any diffrences and translate it.

Now, as you may notice, there are alot of scripts. And finding something here could take time.
Time for my next trick! Press Ctrl+Shift+F .


This allows you to search all Scripts for a text you wanna find.

But, what are we after? Well, let's start the game.


This is the menu. You can most of the time open it with X.
Now, left is translated and right is not. If you have translated Terms as before then most is already translated
but not everything. This is where the Trick comes in. Let's say we wanna find where 衣服耐久度 is. We type it in
hit search and


There it is. Now, click on Jump and :


Now, just translate the text and it Apply and your done. Long as you translate within the "" it's fine.
A important note. You need to think ahead a bit since the a long word will not fit most of the time.
The best is to use a shorter word or a word similar to it.
A example would be "Party Member Status Information".
Now this will not fit. But, let's shorten it down to "Party Info"
There, now it fits, its similar and as same meaning.

Now, for this one, it says Var_Prefix = "衣服耐久度"
But, most of the time it will say draw_text followed by the Japanese word. So your result may look more like this.


So, you should look for text that has the "" so sorta like

Is what we are after, the other results we wanna ignore. So, keep a eye out for that ""

And that is pretty much all you have to do if you are doing a partial.
Simply copy the Japanese word into search box, find it in script, look for draw_text ""
and translate it.

Right, the next part is a event.
Let's pick a random one.
This one will do.

Just double click him and


This is similar to Common Event.
Ill explain. A Common Event is something a Normal Event can Call. It can be to show a picture, refer to a variable change
or if it needs to do something. This is handled by a thing under Flow Control called just that "Call Common Event".

So, IF a event as the Call Common Event, I recommend going to that Common Event and checking what it does.
Is there text here? Does it need to be translated etc.

In what order you translate is up to you. I would recommend just going by the map list on the left side and then go
down the list and translate that way and checking every single event.

Check each tab and look for Text and Show Choices and translate that only.
Now,let's say we can't fit text into the 4 rows. What to do? Well, let's do this.
Select it, Right Click or Ctrl+C, select Under it like this and paste it or Ctrl+V


And there we go, more space to use.

Right, so what if find a message that looks like this:
\C[21]【\N[1]】\C[0]
「え？」

Well, the \C[21] is a text command for rpg maker. It will change the next text color into yellow.

This is the color code.

Here is a handy guide on what does what .


So, what does above do? Well, first it changes the text to yellow. Then it displays Actor 1, it then changes the text color
back to white. 「え？」 but what does this? Well, is just a fancy way for the text to be displayed.

So, if we hit Previw.


Hey, see I was right.

Now, okay, is there anything else you ask? Well, there is one more thing.
Notice the list on the left?


Let's take a closer look at it. Click on one, then hit Space.


Now, notice the name? Some scripts uses the Name Display here for say Save Files or something. So, if this is
the case, translate this.

Secondly, in this case there is no Display Name, but if there is, then do translate this as it will show up ingame.

Aight, so let's summarize.
Translate Database first.
Translate Scripts with Draw Text or similar as long as it's got "" in it.
Translate each Event with Text and Show Choices.
Translate in Common Event each one that has Text and Show Choices.

Is there anything more? Yes. But, this is outside the editor.
You might notice Show Picture in some event or you might notice that you can't find a particular word in Script.
Well, it might just be a image. So, you need to go into Graphics Folder. There are two folders in particular we are after.
First check inside System. Check each graphic file here.Is there any Japanese in the images? If so, well,
you gotta translate that.

Then go check Pictures.
WARNING! This place is spoiler! This folder contains the CG for the game. If you do not wish to spoiler yourself
or earn the CG the right way, I recommend letting someone else check this for you.
If find any Graphics that is need of translating, then yeah go ahead and translate it.

Course make sure it's transparent. So, use a program like Paint.Net to save it as a PNG. Also, make sure
you do not mess with the file name, keep it as is.

Phew! Okay, that was alot? Don't worry if it seems that way, it's alot first time, but once you get used
to it, well is not a big deal. I recommend checking some Youtube videos about how to make a basic game and more
advance tutorial if you wanna educate yourself on how a game is made. That way translating may become easier.

If come across something you are unsure about, do leave a reply and ill try answer it. Good luck and have fun.

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

Thanks for the lesson and the hard work put on this!

(imaginary +rep)

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

This brings me back nightmares ... How I wish I had this like 2 years ago when I had started translating PGF (though most of it I alrealdy knew because of my previous experience with RPGMaker) ...

There are these special items and equips in the game: the materials and the titles. Both of these have their own tab in the items menu and the titles also have their own part in the equip menu.

Now the young me went to translate these menus and found out they were in one of the scripts:

Then promptly translated these names and descriptions, and boom(image ilustrative):

The game didn't recognize display the items anymore, so I went and discovered that there was a marker in the notes part of the items that was used to recognize them: (lower right part of the image)

So then I went to change that part in every special equipment and material ... no wonder I didn't touch it again for almost 2 years afterwards, but it worked out in the end.

So basically, if you change stuff in scripts make sure to see if it didn't break the game! And be sure to keep a backup with the original game to test against! (basically what yugifan3 said)

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

Thanks for all the help it provide.

When I read the part about script and common event, I kinda feel like I'll have to avoid touching it

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

Bryanis said:

Thanks for all the help it provide.

When I read the part about script and common event, I kinda feel like I'll have to avoid touching it

Click to expand...

Is not "that" bad. Long as your careful and just edit the correct things your fine.

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

Well now that's a thread to bookmark . I'm pretty sure that this'll help me a lot if I have any questions. Well done

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

You could use Habisain's program for it's ease of use and then ytinasni's (VX ACE only unfortunately) for text's that weren't patched by RPGMakerTrans

RPGMakerTrans because it groups same texts.
ytinasni's because it can take more texts deeper in the code but you might make mistakes with it. You do need to PM him for games not supported by his program so he can patch it.

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

This is more for if you want to translate directly. See where things are located etc. It's more of a personal preference. Anyway, like said guys, if you have any question, even if its a minor one ill be happy to answer it. Can either post here, pm me or talk to me on Discord. : )
Ive used Rpg maker for quite alot time so i know my way around it. Yes, even mv. xD

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

RPGMaker isn't free though but it has a 30 day trial. I don't think anyone here would buy RPGMaker just to translate games.
I would get it, if I plan to make RPGMaker games though.

You should mention that almost all games use the same Vocab.
How about placing your own Vocab here, so others could just copy it.

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

igotnostuffs said:

RPGMaker isn't free though but it has a 30 day trial. I don't think anyone here would buy RPGMaker just to translate games.
I would get it, if I plan to make RPGMaker games though.

You should mention that almost all games use the same Vocab.
How about placing your own Vocab here, so others could just copy it.

Click to expand...

I did mention that you can just make a new Project and copy the Vocab from there.

And as for trial...well, you could just go the other way...

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

yugifan3 said:

I did mention that you can just make a new Project and copy the Vocab from there.

Click to expand...

Oh you did. I wasn't able to catch that.

yugifan3 said:

And as for trial...well, you could just go the other way...

Click to expand...

We could but let us not make that a habit though.

Pretty solid tutorial only thing left is the formatting.

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

Wasn't there a free version ... lite, or something like that? Though I'm not sure how the limitations would affect things

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

There is RPGMaker VX Ace Lite, but it's not an option for the majority of H-games; the limitations are very tight, and I struggle to think of any H-game that would fit into them. Especially "10 common events and events per map" - that seems really harsh for H-games where most commonly each H-scene is a common event.

The legal way of doing translation patches without RPGMaker installed would be RPGMaker Trans for the XP/VX/VX Ace games, or any other similar tools that exist (MV will eventually be supported, but for now can be edited with standard text editors without the need to pay for an RPGMaker license). I'd also point out that RPGMaker Trans is, in a lot of ways, far simpler to use than RPGMaker editor for doing the translations (Pasted in Libreoffice, Yugifan's written 8 pages without including the pictures - it's a really long explanation, and there are a lot of steps) and is certainly easier with the scripts (as translatable items are extracted from scripts with no requirement to directly edit them). Of course, it's not a perfect tool, but should be a lot better once the next version is out as it should remove some of the longstanding bugs and limitations.

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

I posedt them as url because they are very large.

And this tutorial is more into how I do it. It's a preferences of how I like to do things.

I also tried to be detailed into what things are and what they do in RPG Maker for those unfamiliar with using it.

As for MV, all files are in JSON format, so you do not need the editor, you can just edit everything straight in Notepad++

If people wanna use editor, then this is for them. If they wanna use your tool, you have a guide and how it's explained right?

In any case, let's not argue what is better or not and try stay on topic for those interested in translating using the editor.

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

Oh, not intending to argue at all, and you have done a good job at the guide. It is very thorough. However, I answered in response to a question on how one might do translation without paying for a license for RPGMaker, and gave a little context on why you might want to go that route (including pointing out that it is by no means a perfect method). Apologies if I overstepped a mark.

Re: -: How to Translate in RPG Maker:-

habisain said:

Oh, not intending to argue at all, and you have done a good job at the guide. It is very thorough. However, I answered in response to a question on how one might do translation without paying for a license for RPGMaker, and gave a little context on why you might want to go that route (including pointing out that it is by no means a perfect method). Apologies if I overstepped a mark.

Click to expand...

Ah I see. Heh, I'm not angry.

Edit : Bumping it so more people can see it.