3.9 Japanese text editors and translation tools
The following section mainly covers various tools for those that need to work with the Japanese language might find useful. Little, if any, usage will be covered in favour of some links and a quick overview.
Densetsu’s translation toolbox maintains a nice set of links to various tools and resources useful to those doing the translating.
3.9.1 General Japanese capable text editors
Although given an input method editor and an appropriately configured operating system just about anything will do there are certain features that are useful to have in a text editor when you are editing Japanese. To this end a link to a couple of them
NJStar NJStar
This is the most commonly used text editor for the Japanese language and has found favour among the translation teams working on ROM hacking. It is largely shareware/trial although paid options do exist.
JWPCE JWPCE
An older freeware program that in many ways sits alongside NJStar above.
3.9.2 ROM hacking tools
A hex editor capable of reading tables is quite useful but there are a couple of other tools that are useful
Get My Hex Filetrip download
PIC
Does what it is named for and will return the hexadecimal equivalent of the input text for several common encoding methods.
3.9.3 CAT tools
Although this is not a language document there are things you can do as a ROM hacker to help projects along and one of those is Computer assisted translation (CAT). This is not the same as machine translation but a kind of lookup program and database for previous translations and helps to ensure consistency in terms and other such things; for instance if you are translating a massive RPG and you meet a concept three times in a game but translate it three different ways it is not going to look good.
Free and Open source tools Although the professional field is dominated by a handful of pricey tools there are some freeware/open source tools
Anaphraseus Project sourceforge page
OmegaT Project sourceforge page
A java based tool and one of the more popular open source programs.
XLIFF Translator Project homepage
XLIFF is about as close as to an inter software conversion standard as it gets in CAT tool world. The program itself is an MIT licensed hook for a piece of professional software but functions none the less.
Commercial tools On the paid/commercial front there are other options. Being “industrial”/professional/industry specific software though the prices have a habit of getting rather high and there is a fairly well recognised/supported format known as XLIFF (an XML based format aimed specifically at translation) many of the open source tools support as well as some of the commercial ones.
Still
Trados Homepage
Arguably the market leader in the professional CAT tools.
memoQ Homepage
Not as popular as the other two and similarly priced but rapidly gaining a following.
Wordfast Homepage
Various tools have been released under this branding and depending where you go the term wordfast can refer to any or all of them. Still a very popular series of CAT tools and related technologies.