Working on a ChatGPT translation of Mirai Nostalgia - any tool to extract/repack script files from this game (or Purple Software titles in general)?

[Mondblut]

I started to do a ChatGPT based machine translation of Mirai Nostalgia. Due to the lack of any tools to open and re-pack .cpz files I've worked with textractor and a simple spreadsheet for now. However the more time I've put into this project, even slightly started editing the text, the more I realized that it would be wise to rather do an actual patch than just a spreadsheet kind of translation walkthrough.

 

Does anyone have any knowledge about Purple Software games? Is there any tool that lets you extract and re-pack .cpz files?

 

The progress so far btw.

Common route: 100%

Iori route: 100%

Uta route: 80% (probably)

 

Some proof of how good (or bad) the TL is for anyone interested:

https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/1775wlw/mirai_nostalgia_unedited_chatgpt_translation/

 

Edit: the tool (https://github.com/xmoezzz/CMVS-Engine) linked here in the forum does nothing when dropping the .cpz files into the exe and executing the exe via cmd doesn't do anything either. It's a bit frustrating that there's no command documentation on how to use the tool, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right or not.




 

Edited October 15, 2023 by Mondblut

[Zakamutt]

Hi learn japanese instead thanks bye

[Erogamer]

15 minutes ago, Zakamutt said:

Hi learn japanese instead thanks bye

Wow, this is assinine statement. I am honestly surprised you made a statement like this. It sounds like something Gambs would say. If ChatGPT can do fairly accurate translations, then why can't it be an option?

Edited October 15, 2023 by Erogamer

[Zakamutt]

34 minutes ago, Erogamer said:

Wow, this is assinine statement. I am honestly surprised you made a statement like this. It sounds like something Gambs would say. If ChatGPT can do fairly accurate translations, then why can't it be an option?

ChatGPT is not some kind of revolutionary technology in MTL, it's a gradual polishing of the turd that is any current MTL method. I don't support MTL, and I don't even encourage the publishing of bad human translations (though these have a hope of improving the makers' skills, so they're not worthless even if low quality). """"Fairly accurate"""" is not good enough. Also, for the record Gambs' opinions on this are pretty schizo (as he maximizes for attention rather than consistency) but he's frequently supported using deepL for translations in more recent times (pandering to the inane "instead of letting the loocalizers do it" narrative).

If MTL were actually good I wouldn't object to it. However, I do reserve the right to object to bad translations of any kind, and always have.

[HataVNI]

ChatGPT doesn't do ero, so as soon this happens, it will fail. There's possibility to jailbreak that stuff, but this only works temporarily. Learning Japanese is definitely important to translate, so we can't really condone this. We can't stop you either though, so we can just appeal that you at least find a TLC to look over this before you prepare a release. 

Hello Mondblut, welcome to Fuwa. 

[Mondblut]

1 hour ago, HataVNI said:

ChatGPT doesn't do ero, so as soon this happens, it will fail. There's possibility to jailbreak that stuff, but this only works temporarily. Learning Japanese is definitely important to translate, so we can't really condone this. We can't stop you either though, so we can just appeal that you at least find a TLC to look over this before you prepare a release. 

Hello Mondblut, welcome to Fuwa. 

ChatGPT 3 which I use for my case does translate h-scenes, from 3.5 onward it doesn't. There's an example screenshot of a properly ChatGPT translated h-scene in the Reddit thread.

Either way, is it a violation of this forum's rules? If so I apologize and don't mind if you delete my thread. I just wanted to do this for myself and eventually decided to share it with others once finished. It's not some official project or anything.

Either way, it seems Purple Software's .cpz files seem to have some encryption. Looks like it will stay a spreadsheet.

 

[HataVNI]

It's not a violation of the rules, but I'm not going to promote that project or share it on Twitter or cover it on the blog. Otherwise we would need to cover all the SVN (Sugoi Visual Novels) projects as well and there are countless of those whose quality is unverified. Also it's simply against our translator/localizer belief (some appropriate localization is ok, memelation is not.)

I wouldn't ever play these works, simply out of conviction, but if you don't mind quality and just want to play a game - here you go.
https://vndb.org/p15756

You maybe could post about this on F/95/Zone which are a community much more attentive to unverified quality translation projects. We will keep this thread up, but it should be obvious that this kind of MTL needs to be marked. Your post title already does it well, but we might create a flair for it so ppl see immediately.

MTL-tech isn't there yet, so it shouldn't be encouraged to use. It also puts legit people (not just the memelators you so hate) out of jobs, because employers like to cut as many corners as they can to keep costs low - which is also not great.

[Mondblut]

2 hours ago, HataVNI said:

It's not a violation of the rules, but I'm not going to promote that project or share it on Twitter or cover it on the blog. Otherwise we would need to cover all the SVN (Sugoi Visual Novels) projects as well and there are countless of those whose quality is unverified. Also it's simply against our translator/localizer belief (some appropriate localization is ok, memelation is not.)

And I would never ask of this or any site to promote this MTL I'm working on. It's just something I'm working on for myself to be able play something that will probably never see an actual translation. And since I don't want to keep this just to myself I decided to share this with others. Also the thread was not meant as a project announcement or anything. I just wanted to know if someone knows how to work with Purple Software files. Probably I shouldn't have even mentioned that I'm working on an MTL of the eroge.

 

Also: the Sugoi VN MTLs read like garbage. The only one I tried is Maitetsu Last Run and quite honestly it's better to just use Sugoi Japanese Translator with DeepL and even that is unreadable.

 

2 hours ago, HataVNI said:

MTL-tech isn't there yet, so it shouldn't be encouraged to use. It also puts legit people (not just the memelators you so hate) out of jobs, because employers like to cut as many corners as they can to keep costs low - which is also not great.

It's very close though. I think in 2 or 3 years we will have Chat AIs that can read and process an entire VN/eroge at once, therefore having the context of each line as a human translator would. Once this point is reached localizers will be obsolete. Given what kind of ilk works in that profession nowadays, I can't wait for that day to come soon enough.

The only ones I feel sorry for are passionate fan translators who will be discouraged by this technological evolution. It's actually the reason why I'm considering to just release this "project" as a spreadsheet and nothing else, so that no one will be discouraged to do an actual TL of that or any other eroge in the future. It's actually a moral dilemma I've been pondering recently.

Edited October 16, 2023 by Mondblut

[Erogamer]

I get it, I am against crappy translations, but the sad thing is that I have seen some MTL's that were better than "official" translations.  ChatGPT I am not familiar with, but it looks better than standard MTL. I just think Zaka came off a little harsh.

[Clephas]

16 hours ago, Erogamer said:

I get it, I am against crappy translations, but the sad thing is that I have seen some MTL's that were better than "official" translations.  ChatGPT I am not familiar with, but it looks better than standard MTL. I just think Zaka came off a little harsh.

Most of the early Mangagamer translations were MTL... until they redid most of them (Edelweiss's original localization was an abomination).  The biggest improvement in MTL is in the English grammar, not the actual translation, from what I can see.  Before, the mtls would try so hard to translate stuff directly that the results were garbled word spaghetti.   

MTL is completely useless for turns of phrase, proverbs, idioms, and the like, and it still screws up the subject of sentences roughly 60% of the time from what I can see.  On the other hand, most localizers and fantls are just as bad on the former.  The latter is mostly because Japanese prose and dialogue heavily overuse implied subjects and pronouns.  Essentially, a decent translation of a scene requires the translator to comprehend the entirety of the context of the scene up until the line in question, which is where MTL seems to fail the most drastically.  At the same time, most English-speakers share a similar problem, as English grammar doesn't use implied subjects, though the use of pronouns in place of names and the like is normal.  From what I can tell, this is why decent manual translations consistently beat out even the most advanced MTL.

The best option would to be to make a specialized MTL setup for translating prose, but that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

[Mondblut]

10 hours ago, Clephas said:

Essentially, a decent translation of a scene requires the translator to comprehend the entirety of the context of the scene up until the line in question, which is where MTL seems to fail the most drastically. 

Which is exactly why ChatGPT is such an evolutionary step. It analyzes the entire block you submit before it attempts to translate. The more text you provide, the more context it gets. Essentially: if the processing power increases and entire VN scripts can be fed into such an AI, the result would be not worse than how a human native speaker being fluent in both languages would translate.  Sadly right now ChatGPT has a limit of how much it lets you process, so you offer it only limited context, but it's context no less.

 

As an experiment I let ChatGPT edit a block of 50 lines of a bad MTL which had the characters not use correct personal pronouns and names instead of "my," "I" or "your." I ordered it to infer the pronouns correctly from the context of the text. And It surprisingly did so flawlessly. Even if it had no speakers listed (so basically without Person A: "...." Person B: "...."). If the speakers are listed next to the lines it would do so even more reliably. Personally I think this technology is fascinating from a translation context and we might see it develop even further in the years to come.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Mondblut

[Satsuki]

Well, I have only tried 2 games from SVN (out of pure curiosity), and I have to say that the quality of MTL (or at very least, Sugoi), seems to heavily depend on the genre/setting of the game. For example, the translation for the 1st game that I tried, Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha, is completely nonsensical, probably due to all of the sci-fi and technical jargons (mainly about machine/weapon forging and stuff). However, in the 2nd game, Kanojo to Ore no Lovely Day, the translation is actually quite accurate and readable (other than the usual gender/pronounce confusion), which I assume thanks to its normal SoL/school life setting with no weird futuristic/fantasy element.

Purple Soft titles will probably prove a challenge with all the mystery/fantasy stuff, so...good luck with it, I guess?

Edited October 18, 2023 by Satsuki

[shiny5478]

Quote

 I just wanted to know if someone knows how to work with Purple Software files. 

The problem is after telling people it's an MTL people will not give you tools. It's that sort of community, unfortunately. Super sekrit club

[Satsuki]

20 hours ago, shiny5478 said:

The problem is after telling people it's an MTL people will not give you tools. It's that sort of community, unfortunately. Super sekrit club

Good job villainize the community for absolutely no reason, mate.

Apparently any translation attempt should be treated equally, even if the translator does not know a slick of the language and will DEFINITELY butcher the whole thing?

[shiny5478]

3 hours ago, Satsuki said:

Good job villainize the community for absolutely no reason, mate.

Apparently any translation attempt should be treated equally, even if the translator does not know a slick of the language and will DEFINITELY butcher the whole thing?

It's only villainize when you're an echo chamber. It's called criticism.

What does it matter if it's MTL? Only because it's not up to your standards? But who are you? What if he wants to translate into Mongolian? Do you think someone will come along someday and make a proper translation of the game into Mongolian? Do you see the problem with gatekeeping like this?

Of course, I'm not asking anyone to change the behavior. You do what you do. But I can criticize it. And I'm free to do that, I think

Edited November 12, 2023 by shiny5478

[Satsuki]

2 hours ago, shiny5478 said:

It's only villainize when you're an echo chamber. It's called criticism.

What does it matter if it's MTL? Only because it's not up to your standards? But who are you? What if he wants to translate into Mongolian? Do you think someone will come along someday and make a proper translation of the game into Mongolian? Do you see the problem with gatekeeping like this?

Of course, I'm not asking anyone to change the behavior. You do what you do. But I can criticize it. And I'm free to do that, I think

Oh, we are not gatekeeping anything. He can go ahead and translate the VN into cat language for all I care. In fact, I even wished him good luck right above, if you bother to read that one. However, that doesn't mean we will be obligated to provide him with any help - that's a completely different matter. Feel free to help him if you think MTL is perfectly up to your rock bottom standard, but you don't get to accuse people of being "that sort of community" for not helping with a not-so-good idea. I mean, who even are you?

Edited November 12, 2023 by Satsuki

[shiny5478]

I didn't say you were obligated to do anything. You're fighting a strawman. I did however criticize you for picking and choosing who you decide to help or not.
And yes, I do get to criticize the whole community if the whole community does that

Unless you feel like deleting these posts. Which definitely sounds like something you guys would do

[Satsuki]

9 hours ago, shiny5478 said:

I didn't say you were obligated to do anything. You're fighting a strawman. I did however criticize you for picking and choosing who you decide to help or not.
And yes, I do get to criticize the whole community if the whole community does that

Unless you feel like deleting these posts. Which definitely sounds like something you guys would do

Any sort of help, here or in the real world, is based on picking and choosing. After all, like you said, it's not an obligation. That's why you don't see people going on GoFundMe and just throw money everywhere with their eyes closed. Gonna go and criticize the whole humanity next?

Btw, your posts have been here for like 2 days already, so again, stop accusing us of things we don't do, yeah?

[Mondblut]

On 11/11/2023 at 11:10 AM, shiny5478 said:

The problem is after telling people it's an MTL people will not give you tools. It's that sort of community, unfortunately. Super sekrit club

I learned my lesson. Being honest and open is never getting you what you need and lying is always more effective to achieve one's goals. Sadly I'm an honest person.

Either way: I've released it a while ago as a spreadsheet.
 

I was sadly unable to decrypt the files and making a patch. I'm currently working on a Java based VN overlay subtitle app which works like Sugoi Japanese Translator as an overlay textbox loading the text directly from the spreadsheet. It should bypass the issue that a patch is not possible.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Mondblut