Haroohie Site/content/blog/: 13.2024-08-03-chokuretsu-chinese-chartable — German @ Weblate: ## A Foreword from Jonko Hi everyone! Today's blog post …

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## A Foreword from Jonko
Hi everyone! Today's blog post is from Xzonn who is working on translating *Suzumiya Haruhi no Chokuretsu* into Chinese. I became aware of Xzonn a month or two after he forked some of our repos on GitHub (as he describes in this very post!) and as soon as I found out he was doing this work I knew I had to reach out to him. What you're reading today is a reproduction (in English courtesy the man himself, with prose edits by me) of a blog post [on Xzonn's site](https://xzonn.top/posts/Suzumiya-Haruhi-no-Chokuretsu-Chinese-Localization.html). The hope is that by translating his work into English, we can reach an even larger audience for his work (and vice-versa, since he's been translating our posts into Chinese as well 🥰). Please enjoy!

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content/blog/13.2024-08-03-chokuretsu-chinese-chartable/de.md, string 2

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	--- title: &title "Chokuretsu ROM Hacking Challenges from China – Character Conundrums!" description: &desc "Xzonn explores how he went about modifying the character table and line height for the Chinese translation of Chokuretsu" locale: 'en' navigation: author: 'Xzonn' year: 2024 month: 08 day: 04 tags: ['chokuretsu', 'romhacking', 'chinese'] image: '0013/00_thumbnail.png' head: meta: - property: 'og:title' content: title - property: 'og:description' content: desc - property: 'og:image' content: &img https://haroohie.club/images/blog/0013/00_thumbnail.png - property: 'og:image:alt' content: '' - property: 'og:url' content: 'https://haroohie.club/blog/2024-08-03-chokuretsu-chinese-chartable' - property: 'og:type' content: 'article' - name: 'twitter:title' value: title - name: 'twitter:description' value: desc - name: 'twitter:image' value: *img - name: 'twitter:site' value: '@haroohie' - name: 'twitter:card' value: 'summary_large_image' ---	--- title: &title "Chokuretsu ROM Hacking Challenges from China – Character Conundrums!" description: &desc "Xzonn explores how he went about modifying the character table and line height for the Chinese translation of Chokuretsu" locale: 'de' navigation: author: 'Xzonn' year: 2024 month: 08 day: 04 tags: ['chokuretsu', 'romhacking', 'chinese'] image: '0013/00_thumbnail.png' head: meta: - property: 'og:title' content: title - property: 'og:description' content: desc - property: 'og:image' content: &img https://haroohie.club/images/blog/0013/00_thumbnail.png - property: 'og:image:alt' content: '' - property: 'og:url' content: 'https://haroohie.club/blog/2024-08-03-chokuretsu-chinese-chartable' - property: 'og:type' content: 'article' - name: 'twitter:title' value: title - name: 'twitter:description' value: desc - name: 'twitter:image' value: *img - name: 'twitter:site' value: '@haroohie' - name: 'twitter:card' value: 'summary_large_image' ---
	## A Foreword from Jonko Hi everyone! Today's blog post is from Xzonn who is working on translating Suzumiya Haruhi no Chokuretsu into Chinese. I became aware of Xzonn a month or two after he forked some of our repos on GitHub (as he describes in this very post!) and as soon as I found out he was doing this work I knew I had to reach out to him. What you're reading today is a reproduction (in English courtesy the man himself, with prose edits by me) of a blog post [on Xzonn's site](https://xzonn.top/posts/Suzumiya-Haruhi-no-Chokuretsu-Chinese-Localization.html). The hope is that by translating his work into English, we can reach an even larger audience for his work (and vice-versa, since he's been translating our posts into Chinese as well 🥰). Please enjoy!	## A Foreword from Jonko Hi everyone! Today's blog post is from Xzonn who is working on translating Suzumiya Haruhi no Chokuretsu into Chinese. I became aware of Xzonn a month or two after he forked some of our repos on GitHub (as he describes in this very post!) and as soon as I found out he was doing this work I knew I had to reach out to him. What you're reading today is a reproduction (in English courtesy the man himself, with prose edits by me) of a blog post [on Xzonn's site](https://xzonn.top/posts/Suzumiya-Haruhi-no-Chokuretsu-Chinese-Localization.html). The hope is that by translating his work into English, we can reach an even larger audience for his work (and vice-versa, since he's been translating our posts into Chinese as well 🥰). Please enjoy!
	## Without Further Ado... Recently, my enthusiasm for localizing games into Chinese has been high. There are several Haruhi Suzumiya games that have not been translated into Chinese, including two works released by Sega, "Suzumiya Haruhi no Chokuretsu" (The Series of Haruhi Suzumiya) and "Suzumiya Haruhi no Heiretsu" (The Parallel of Haruhi Suzumiya). A while back, someone wrote an article entitled ["NDS《凉宫春日的直列》的一些破解信息"](https://blog.csdn.net/LuckilyYu/article/details/5424928) (Some Hacking Information on the NDS game "Suzumiya Haruhi no Chokuretsu"), but due to its age, the <abbr title="Chinese Software Developer Network">CSDN</abbr> has started charging fees, so I was not able to read all of it.	## Without Further Ado... Recently, my enthusiasm for localizing games into Chinese has been high. There are several Haruhi Suzumiya games that have not been translated into Chinese, including two works released by Sega, "Suzumiya Haruhi no Chokuretsu" (The Series of Haruhi Suzumiya) and "Suzumiya Haruhi no Heiretsu" (The Parallel of Haruhi Suzumiya). A while back, someone wrote an article entitled ["NDS《凉宫春日的直列》的一些破解信息"](https://blog.csdn.net/LuckilyYu/article/details/5424928) (Some Hacking Information on the NDS game "Suzumiya Haruhi no Chokuretsu"), but due to its age, the <abbr title="Chinese Software Developer Network">CSDN</abbr> has started charging fees, so I was not able to read all of it.
	However, I found an [English patch](https://haroohie.club/chokuretsu/) created by the [Haroohie Translation Club](https://haroohie.club/), and then found out that the [build code](https://github.com/haroohie-club/ChokuretsuTranslationUtility) is open source. I pulled it to my local machine and tried it out. The code is very functional and can definitely be used to create Chinese patches. Of course, there are still certain differences in the focus of work between English and Chinese localization, so it cannot be directly copied. However, the experience gained by one's predecessors is still worth learning and borrowing from. In the spirit of mutual communication, I will write down my research results and share them with everyone.	However, I found an [English patch](https://haroohie.club/chokuretsu/) created by the [Haroohie Translation Club](https://haroohie.club/), and then found out that the [build code](https://github.com/haroohie-club/ChokuretsuTranslationUtility) is open source. I pulled it to my local machine and tried it out. The code is very functional and can definitely be used to create Chinese patches. Of course, there are still certain differences in the focus of work between English and Chinese localization, so it cannot be directly copied. However, the experience gained by one's predecessors is still worth learning and borrowing from. In the spirit of mutual communication, I will write down my research results and share them with everyone.
	## Font First, let me briefly introduce the file structure of the game ROM:	## Font First, let me briefly introduce the file structure of the game ROM:
	``` plaintext ├── dat.bin ├── evt.bin ├── grp.bin ├── scn.bin ├── snd.bin ├── bgm │ ├── BGM001.bin │ ├── BGM002.bin │ ├── ... │ └── BGM034.bin ├── movie │ ├── MOVIE00.mods │ └── MOVIE01.mods └── vce ├── ANZ_ANOTHER00.bin ├── ANZ_ANOTHER01.bin ├── ... └── TRY_WRITE00.bin ```	``` plaintext ├── dat.bin ├── evt.bin ├── grp.bin ├── scn.bin ├── snd.bin ├── bgm │ ├── BGM001.bin │ ├── BGM002.bin │ ├── ... │ └── BGM034.bin ├── movie │ ├── MOVIE00.mods │ └── MOVIE01.mods └── vce ├── ANZ_ANOTHER00.bin ├── ANZ_ANOTHER01.bin ├── ... └── TRY_WRITE00.bin ```
	From the file names, it can be roughly inferred that `dat.bin` stores data files, `evt.bin` stores game storyline related scripts, and `grp.bin` stores image files. These three files are actually archive files, which store a large number of small files. The other files are all audio or video files. To modify the font used in this game, I need to edit the character table and the image of the font itself. The character table is file #`0x71` in `dat.bin`, and the font image is file #`0xE50` in `grp.bin`.	From the file names, it can be roughly inferred that `dat.bin` stores data files, `evt.bin` stores game storyline related scripts, and `grp.bin` stores image files. These three files are actually archive files, which store a large number of small files. The other files are all audio or video files. To modify the font used in this game, I need to edit the character table and the image of the font itself. The character table is file #`0x71` in `dat.bin`, and the font image is file #`0xE50` in `grp.bin`.
	### Character Table I extracted the character table file using the command-line tool "ChokuretsuTranslationCLI" in the ChokuretsuTranslationUtility, and opened it with the hex editor HxD:	### Character Table I extracted the character table file using the command-line tool "ChokuretsuTranslationCLI" in the ChokuretsuTranslationUtility, and opened it with the hex editor HxD:
	``` plaintext Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F	``` plaintext Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
	00000000 01 00 00 00 38 11 00 00 14 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 ....8........... 00000010 01 00 00 00 81 97 81 41 81 42 81 44 81 45 81 46 .....—.A.B.D.E.F 00000020 81 48 81 49 81 51 81 58 81 5B 81 5C 81 60 81 63 .H.I.Q.X.[.\.`.c 00000030 81 65 81 66 81 67 81 68 81 69 81 6A 81 73 81 74 .e.f.g.h.i.j.s.t 00000040 81 75 81 76 81 77 81 78 81 79 81 7A 81 7B 81 7C .u.v.w.x.y.z.{.\| ```	00000000 01 00 00 00 38 11 00 00 14 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 ....8........... 00000010 01 00 00 00 81 97 81 41 81 42 81 44 81 45 81 46 .....—.A.B.D.E.F 00000020 81 48 81 49 81 51 81 58 81 5B 81 5C 81 60 81 63 .H.I.Q.X.[.\.`.c 00000030 81 65 81 66 81 67 81 68 81 69 81 6A 81 73 81 74 .e.f.g.h.i.j.s.t 00000040 81 75 81 76 81 77 81 78 81 79 81 7A 81 7B 81 7C .u.v.w.x.y.z.{.\| ```
	The first `0x14` bytes are obviously the file header, where `0x04-0x07` is the size of the file[^1] (these bytes will need to be modified after expanding the character table). From `0x14` to the end is all the characters contained in the font image, in order. At first, I thought these two-byte characters might be UTF-16-LE encoded, but parsing with that encoding gave a garbled result. So I tried Shift-JIS encoding and found that it was consistent with the extracted image. I opened it with VS Code directly and change the encoding to Shift-JIS, and I got characters included in the file:	The first `0x14` bytes are obviously the file header, where `0x04-0x07` is the size of the file[^1] (these bytes will need to be modified after expanding the character table). From `0x14` to the end is all the characters contained in the font image, in order. At first, I thought these two-byte characters might be UTF-16-LE encoded, but parsing with that encoding gave a garbled result. So I tried Shift-JIS encoding and found that it was consistent with the extracted image. I opened it with VS Code directly and change the encoding to Shift-JIS, and I got characters included in the file:
	``` plaintext ＠、。．・：？！＿々ー―～…‘’“”（）《》「」『』【】＋－×＝°％＆☆■♪０１２３４５６７８９ＡＢＣＤＥＦＧＨＩＪＫＬＭＮＯＰＱＲＳＴＵＶＷＸＹＺａｂｃｄｅｆｇｈｉｊｋｌｍｎｏｐｑｒｓｔｕｖｗｘｙｚぁあぃい... ```	``` plaintext ＠、。．・：？！＿々ー―～…‘’“”（）《》「」『』【】＋－×＝°％＆☆■♪０１２３４５６７８９ＡＢＣＤＥＦＧＨＩＪＫＬＭＮＯＰＱＲＳＴＵＶＷＸＹＺａｂｃｄｅｆｇｈｉｊｋｌｍｎｏｐｑｒｓｔｕｖｗｘｙｚぁあぃい... ```
	Since the modified text is in Simplified Chinese, I need to find a way to map Simplified Chinese characters to Shift-JIS codes. I wanted to directly use the [GB18030 encoding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_18030) at first, but I found that GB18030 contained far more characters than Shift-JIS, so I gave up on that. The solution I settled on was to count the number of Simplified Chinese characters in the translated text, sort them according to frequency of use, and then check whether they are in the original character table. If they are present, the original Shift-JIS code is directly used; if not, we replace a Japanese character that does not appear in the translated text. This ensures that as many characters as possible can be displayed correctly. Finally, the replacement table was saved as a `.json` file for use when importing text.	Since the modified text is in Simplified Chinese, I need to find a way to map Simplified Chinese characters to Shift-JIS codes. I wanted to directly use the [GB18030 encoding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_18030) at first, but I found that GB18030 contained far more characters than Shift-JIS, so I gave up on that. The solution I settled on was to count the number of Simplified Chinese characters in the translated text, sort them according to frequency of use, and then check whether they are in the original character table. If they are present, the original Shift-JIS code is directly used; if not, we replace a Japanese character that does not appear in the translated text. This ensures that as many characters as possible can be displayed correctly. Finally, the replacement table was saved as a `.json` file for use when importing text.
	The essential idea of how we process the character replacement is similar to that of the English project, but a Chinese localization needs to use far more characters than an English one. I extracted all the text and machine translated it to get an idea of which characters would be needed. The required Chinese characters number about 3,000, while the original character table only contains about 2,200 characters. The solution is either to simplify the use of words, or to expand the capacity of the character table. (By the way, the whole text of the game is about 800,000 words in Japanese, including many branches. So, if someone just wants to clear the game, it is very simple because there are only 5 chapters. But if one wants to play all the branches, it will take a long time. Of course, it is also hell to translate, and it even took me three days to finish just the machine translation.)	The essential idea of how we process the character replacement is similar to that of the English project, but a Chinese localization needs to use far more characters than an English one. I extracted all the text and machine translated it to get an idea of which characters would be needed. The required Chinese characters number about 3,000, while the original character table only contains about 2,200 characters. The solution is either to simplify the use of words, or to expand the capacity of the character table. (By the way, the whole text of the game is about 800,000 words in Japanese, including many branches. So, if someone just wants to clear the game, it is very simple because there are only 5 chapters. But if one wants to play all the branches, it will take a long time. Of course, it is also hell to translate, and it even took me three days to finish just the machine translation.)
	### Font Image With a character table and replacement table, generating images becomes much simpler. The font size is 14px, which is exactly suitable for Chinese pixel fonts (you can refer to the article ["小点阵字体速览"](https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/142419693) (Small Pixel Font Overview) written by 星夜之幻 (Xingyezhihuan)). I used SimSun, which is bundled with Microsoft Windows, to generate 13x14px characters. As for creating an automatically building workflow, the file `C:/Windows/Fonts/simsun.ttc` can be used.	### Font Image With a character table and replacement table, generating images becomes much simpler. The font size is 14px, which is exactly suitable for Chinese pixel fonts (you can refer to the article ["小点阵字体速览"](https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/142419693) (Small Pixel Font Overview) written by 星夜之幻 (Xingyezhihuan)). I used SimSun, which is bundled with Microsoft Windows, to generate 13x14px characters. As for creating an automatically building workflow, the file `C:/Windows/Fonts/simsun.ttc` can be used.
	However, there is a small issue here. As the line height of the text in the game is exactly 14px, using a 14px font will cause the text on the top and bottom lines to stick together. This problem needs to be solved by modifying the executable file of the game.	However, there is a small issue here. As the line height of the text in the game is exactly 14px, using a 14px font will cause the text on the top and bottom lines to stick together. This problem needs to be solved by modifying the executable file of the game.
	Additionally, due to the insufficient number of characters in the original character table that I mentioned earlier, the generated font image also needs to be larger than the original image. The original image size was 16x35328. If the image is imported directly using ChokuretsuTranslationCLI, only the top part of the image will be imported. The solution, without modifying the code, is to manually generate an empty binary file, import that empty binary file first, and then import the image. Then, ChokuretsuTranslationCLI will properly process the image with the new size.[^2]	Additionally, due to the insufficient number of characters in the original character table that I mentioned earlier, the generated font image also needs to be larger than the original image. The original image size was 16x35328. If the image is imported directly using ChokuretsuTranslationCLI, only the top part of the image will be imported. The solution, without modifying the code, is to manually generate an empty binary file, import that empty binary file first, and then import the image. Then, ChokuretsuTranslationCLI will properly process the image with the new size.[^2]