AI-Assisted Fan Translation Projects
Not word-for-word translation. Context-aware localization that understands your characters, your world, and every line's intent.
Most AI translation works line by line. The AI sees a sentence, translates it, and moves on. But games aren't lists of sentences. They're interconnected scripts full of recurring characters, branching dialogue, and terminology that needs to stay consistent across menus, tooltips, and cutscenes. A character who speaks casually in one scene shouldn't suddenly sound formal in the next. A spell name in a tooltip should match the same name when an NPC mentions it in conversation.
Without context, the translation may be grammatically correct but feel lifeless. Characters all sound the same, terminology drifts between scenes, and the player senses something is off even if they can't pinpoint exactly what.
Every project goes through a structured pipeline designed to give the AI translator the same context a human translator would need, and in many cases, more.
Every proper noun, game mechanic, location, and recurring term is identified and given a canonical translation before any dialogue is touched. A party member's name, a spell, a faction: each appears the same way every time, across every screen.
Named characters get individual voice profiles: their speech register (formal, casual, archaic), first-person pronoun (critical in Japanese), verbal tics, and personality traits. A grizzled mercenary and a nervous scholar won't just say different things. They'll say them differently.
Before translating a batch of dialogue, the system analyzes where in the story it occurs, who is present, what just happened, and what the emotional tone is. A line like "I didn't expect to see you here" translates very differently in a tense confrontation versus a happy reunion.
Every line is tagged with its speaker, listener, tone (threatening, pleading, sarcastic), and whether it's player dialogue, NPC speech, narration, or system text. No line is translated without knowing exactly who is speaking and in what context.
With all of this in place, dialogue is translated scene by scene, not line by line. The AI sees the full conversation, knows the characters, and has the glossary enforced. Post-processing validates markup preservation, glossary consistency, and formatting.
Translation is available for any language pair. The AI pipeline supports all major languages and many smaller ones. For translations involving English to Japanese or Japanese to English, I can personally review and verify quality. For other language pairs, the AI pipeline still applies the full process (glossary, character profiling, context analysis), but human review would need to be arranged separately.
Pricing is on a per-project basis, with rates starting from as little as ~1 JPY per character depending on script size, engine complexity, number of languages, and whether human review is included. Contact me for a quote.
Projects can be handled in two ways, depending on your needs:
Raw AI translation is worse than a good human translator. But raw AI translation isn't what this service provides. By building a full context pipeline (glossaries, character profiles, scene analysis, per-line metadata), the AI receives the same information a professional translator would get from months of immersion. The result is significantly better than generic AI translation, at a fraction of the cost and turnaround time of professional human localization.
Is it perfect? No. Puns, wordplay, and culture-specific humor often don't carry over well. Highly poetic or literary prose can lose some of its rhythm. And occasionally a line will sound natural but miss a subtle implication in the original. These are areas where AI still falls short, and honesty about that is part of the service.
Absolutely. Many of the projects on this site started as fan requests. If there's a game you'd love to see translated, get in touch and I'll take a look at whether it's feasible. Fan translation projects are typically done on a volunteer or low-cost basis, and priority goes to games that are a good fit for the pipeline (text-heavy RPGs, visual novels, narrative-driven games tend to work best).
Use the contact form and select "Translation for My Game (Developer)." Include some details about your game: the engine, approximate script size, source and target languages, and whether you can provide the script directly or need full extraction from the game build. I'll get back to you with a timeline and quote.
Due to the nature of AI-assisted translation, there are no guarantees of specific quality levels. The pipeline is designed to maximize consistency and accuracy, but edge cases, ambiguous source text, and creative nuance can still produce imperfect results. I will work with you on revisions and corrections based on your feedback for an agreed period after delivery, but the final output should be understood as AI-generated with human oversight, not a professional human translation.
The pipeline is engine-agnostic at the translation layer. I've worked with Unreal Engine 5 (locres binary format), Unity (Ink scripting, asset bundles), and custom engines. If your game stores text in files that can be extracted and reimported, it can be translated. If you provide the script directly, engine compatibility isn't a concern at all.
Yes, and these projects often produce especially good results. Adult and mature games tend to have strongly defined character voices, consistent emotional registers, and clear scene context, which is exactly the kind of structure the pipeline is built to leverage. There are no content restrictions, as long as the project has no legal issues.
In many cases, 1 to 2 days. Larger or more complex projects may take a bit longer, but the exact timeline will be clear at the time of your order. This is dramatically faster than traditional localization, where the same scope might take weeks or months.
Yes. The pipeline is designed to be re-run against new game versions. When strings are added or changed, only the new or modified strings need translation. The glossary, character profiles, and existing translations all carry over. Update turnaround is typically hours, not weeks.
Revisions based on your feedback are included for an agreed period after delivery (typically 30 days). During this window, reported issues such as mistranslations, inconsistencies, or tone mismatches will be corrected and redelivered. Beyond this period, additional revision work can be arranged as a separate engagement.
Interested? Let's talk about your project.
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