Forums > Bugs > Why no fan translated ROMs?
Virgil (8563) on 10/23/2016 1:17 PM · Permalink · Report
As I was looking through the standards page I noticed that there's a rule stating that screenshots from fan-translated ROMs are not allowed. What's the reason behind it? I could understand the desire to have original screenshots, but here it also means a dead end.
There's a trove of not only Japanese, but also Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong-Kong games that had never been translated or released abroad. And let's face it - the overwhelming majority of the users are not from those countries and the language barrier is too high. Of course there are contributors, like Oleg Roschin, who are proficient (or just very lucky) with the language, but it is just a drop (though in his case a rather large one) in the sea. So, fan-translations are the only way to get familiar with those for 99% of Western players. I'm not even saying that the quality is usually sky above the usual shitty Engrish. So I think if the screens just said something like (fan translation) it should've been fine.
Simon Carless (1834) on 10/23/2016 1:40 PM · Permalink · Report
Probably the main reason is that we already have some trouble in our database distinguishing between 'official' and 'unofficial' releases - particularly with homebrew for consoles. So this would be even worse. When there's a release date in MobyGames it's presumed that it is for the commercial version. And for a lot of fantranslation patches, release dates might be tricky to find...
I think if we can do a better job of labeling homebrew at some point, it might be OK, but most people who see a release on MobyGames presume it's the 'when game was available for stores' release date. Which would not be the case for fan translations.
Of course, you can use the translated version to document the Japanese version's content, right? :P
Pseudo_Intellectual (66423) on 10/23/2016 2:35 PM · Permalink · Report
The idea has always been that we document games as they would have appeared after being bought from store shelves, taken home and installed: stock, official versions. This has meant no crack screens, even though plenty of us would have been unable to document games without their being cracked, no fan mods even when they make the game look better (eg. enhanced texture packs or improved models) , and no fan translations -- as they could deceptively indicate that publishers had released the game in a language that they never did. "But here is the screenshot, it's truth!" Well, SOMEONE translated it...
Does this mean that kanji-illiterate gaijin contributors can't submit screenshots from the ends of JRPGs? Sadly, it does, but I think ... for good reason.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66423) on 10/23/2016 2:36 PM · Permalink · Report
The caption is a nice idea, but you can't guarantee (especially here in our post-watermark era) that the caption will always be seen when the picture is.