Before I forget.
@Asleep asked what tools we use to translate JSK's games. I'll run down the list.
1.) FFDEC
A great JAVA based GUI Flash decompiler. It allows you to edit most, if not all, of the Japanese found in the games. Be that text entries, SVG shapes, Font files, Sprites, or even game logic by editing the action scripts. The down side is that it can be clunky or dangerous to use for certain types of edits.
2.) Tengux's JAVA GUI Text Parser
This GUI based tool allows you to easily extract, edit, and then recompile game texts. When you do an extract operation, it outputs a CSV file. This can be loaded into any cell based program or web app. It is particularly useful when loaded into Google Sheets. This way you can share access to your uploaded file so multiple people can help translate at a time. You also can use some fancy cell logic operations to get a quick machine translation banged out for reference.
e.g.
Here's a simple formula to do a Google translate on a cell.
=googletranslate(K2,"Ja","En")
Enter that formula into the second row cell of your choosing. Then just highlight the entire column, deselect the top cell, then hit control + D. That will fill down the entire column with the formula, it will auto increment the K2 value all the way down. It will take a while for Google Translate to catch up. This allows you to translate the entire sheet at once.
3.) Donocad's Linux parser
This bash prompt based parser allows you to extract and import text that is stored in simple TXT files. It also has a duplicate line detection function as well. Quite a bit slower than Tengux's parser, but useful if you prefer to do your editing in a standard word processing program like Notepad++.
4.) HEX editor
Not used very often due to it's cumbersome nature. It still has it's uses when doing more esoteric maneuvers. Specifically, it allows you to insert new shape IDs in the middle of the SWF files. This is needed since if you try inserting a new shape ID with FFDEC, it will place the new ID at the end of the file. SWF's don't like this very much. If the end of file shape is needed while the rest of the SWF is running closer to the center of the SWF file, the end of file shape will fail to load. By using FFDEC Hex Dump view, we can determine where in the file to insert a new shape between other relevant shapes. But some steps need to be taken first before that edit can succeed.
5.) JSK Codec
This was my little experiment into making a simple GUI based program to get at FFDEC command line operations with menu based commands. The Codec based in ancient (1983) Windows Batch script. A poor choice overall, but one I had some familiarity with already from my DOS gaming days. It's mostly obsolete now, but it does have a few nice functions. specifically, it allows you to de/compress the SWF files. You may not know this, but SWFs are zipped internally. If you tried to do a HEX edit on a zipped SWF, it would look like garbage data.
6.) Adobe Illustrator/ InkScape
These programs are used to edit shape files (SVGs). Some of the Japanese in JSK's games are not stored as standard text. Instead they are stored as Scalable Vector Graphic files (SVG). A whole discipline in and of itself. Editing these shapes can be a daunting task for those unfamiliar with vector graphics editing. The plus side is that once you get the hang of it, you can really spice up the game in other ways. Since almost all the graphics in JSK's games are stored as SVG files, you can mod things like the character's skin color, clothes, weapons, add translation credits to the screen of your choosing, completely revamp the skill tree screen, Make a fancy game logo, and so many other things. So long story short, sharp learning curve, master level game manipulation.
EDIT 1) I added this info to the JSK Community Guide for easy reference. It's in a new section called
Translation Tools 101.
