So someone PM'd me asking to post here with an update. I don't really have anything to say, but out of obligation, I'll at least post.
The person who was coding my update script moved away to finish their masters' program, so I dunno if I'll ever get it. It appears I will have to use the "shotgun" method provided by the guy who wrote the translation script in the first place, Jaypee. It's not that it doesn't work--it does--it's just that it doesn't account for any lines that merely had a minor grammatical error in Japanese in the older version when updating and deletes any lines that aren't explicitly present character-for-character in the new version of the game. When translating I ignore minor errors like those, so they don't affect my work at all, but when updating a script this huge losing those means retranslating a lot of lines. It was a pain I was hoping to avoid with a context-aware updater.
That all being said, I wasn't really bugging the guy writing the updater because I wasn't in a position to work on TF in any real capacity yet anyway. I still have a few professional obligations that must be completed before I can return to focusing on TF. I do still check this forum and the threads on 4chan, and even post on 4chan whenever there's a question I can answer. Ray has stopped development on TF indefinitely to focus on his latest game "Determinable Unstable," so at least for now 2.5.2 is where things are stopping. He hasn't dropped TF, and as always the "final" update will be a marriage event, but for a while it'll be a dead codebase.
There's a guy over on 4chan who made a nice lightweight translation patch for 2.5.2 for people who are impatient. It's using Google Translate as they don't speak a lick of Japanese, so it's not perfect by any means, but it's significantly better than the alternative. If you're tired of waiting, I'd suggest grabbing that.
Anyway, that's it for now. As soon as my professional obligations are taken care of, I'll make one last poke to see if there's hope for the context-based updater then probably give up, use the "speculation" plugin, and retranslate any missing lines from scratch. As always, you guys will be the first to know.