Snatcher Gets Fan Translation on Saturn — Using an Artificial Intelligence

In September, a user on GitHub known as pepa released an English fan translation for Snatcher on the PlayStation 1, labeled as release v0.5. After various iterations over the month, yesterday they released version v1.0, which surprisingly also contained a translation for the Saturn version of the game. But it was quickly superseded by a version v1.0.1 today to fix a softlock in the previous Saturn release.

For those of you not familiar with the game, Snatcher is a cyberpunk graphic adventure/visual novel by the famed Hideo Kojima, originally released for the PC-88 and MSX2 in 1988, but a later enhanced port for the PC-Engine and SEGA CD in 1992 and 1994 respectively. Once the fifth generation of consoles dropped, yet another port was released for the PlayStation 1 and SEGA Saturn in 1996, which this patch was made for.

You play Gillian Seed, a J.U.N.K.E.R (Judgement Undefined Network Killers Eradication Ratification) who remembers little of his past, but after rigorous training, is tasked with taking down Snatchers, artificial lifeforms that have been killing humans, and replacing their identity in society wearing artificial skin. Going through Neo Kobe City, you investigate and try to find out what’s behind the appearance of these Snatchers, and their purpose.

On GitHub, pepa lists what was translated in both versions of Snatcher:

• Every line of the script, in all 39 scenes: conversations, descriptions, Gaudi’s database and the phone calls, plus the lines only the Saturn has (the backup memory and cartridge messages, the videophone directory, the scene with Konami’s staff). Nothing is cut to fit the Japanese text boxes. When a line needs more room than the box has, it continues on a second page, and the speaker’s name stays on top.
• The voice acting, with subtitles in every voiced scene from the opening narration to the ending, timed to the voices. The speaker’s portrait sits on the left of the box and the name is drawn in the character’s own colour; when no portrait is on screen the text uses the full width of the box.
• Every menu, verb, item and location label, and the speaker names.
• The keyboard and the typed puzzles. The keys show Latin letters, and Gaudi’s name search takes English names.
• The graphics with writing in them: the memo pages, Gibson’s diary, the New Game disclaimer, and the opening’s captions and credit roll. A translation card and a short disclaimer about the translation play before the Konami logo.
• The OPTION MENU has a fifth item, WALLPAPERS. It picks one picture to sit behind the whole game: ACT 1, ACT 2 and ACT 3 (the three JUNKER plates), TWINBEE, KONAMI, TOKIMEKI, ENDING, GRADIUS and TURBOCAR (the pictures the original hides behind the Konami code), or BLACK for no wallpaper at all. Move the cursor to see each one behind the menu and confirm to keep it. If you never choose one, the game changes plates with each act as it always did.
  
  Names follow the Japanese original, so the subtitles match what the voice actors say: Randam Hajile, Dr. Madnar, Catherine Gibson, Gaudi.

The ironic part of this patch is that it uses machine translation to translate a game whose story is about an artificial intelligence replacing humans. Pepa describes the AI usage: “This is an AI-assisted translation. The first pass was machine-translated from the Japanese PlayStation script, not the Sega CD version. For 1.0 the whole script was translated again at full length, now that the engine no longer limits how long a line can be, and every line went through a human review that changed 10,970 of them. The voice subtitles are timed from a speech-recognition pass over the Japanese audio, checked by hand, and reviewed the same way.”

While using machine translation, pepa said they put in a considerate effort in making sure it’s human-reviewed: “I know what an AI-slop patch looks like, and I don’t want this to be one. The English is read against the Japanese scene by scene and rewritten wherever it reads like a machine wrote it. The 1994 Sega CD localization is a reference for terminology and tone where the scenes overlap, not a source. Names follow the Japanese, so the subtitles match what the voice actors say.”

Their effort doesn’t stop there. They even created an entire tool to verify every scene and vocal line: “The review is done in a tool built for it: every line of a scene on one row, with the speaker, the Japanese with furigana, the English, and a button that plays the voice line straight off the disc. A headless harness plays the game and photographs every subtitle, and every reported bug has a save attached so it can be reached again.”

This Undoubtably will not quell the discussion of the use of AI in fan translations thoroughly discussed and debated on our site and many others, you should decide for yourself if this machine translation of Snatcher is still worth playing — despite the irony.