Startling Odyssey II: Maryuu Sensou English translation
スタートリング・オデッセイII 魔竜戦争
TruMisery's English patch for the PC Engine CD RPG Startling Odyssey II, a long-running one-person project built from machine translation and then corrected by hand.
What it is
Tru (TruMisery) worked on and off for about eight years to bring Startling Odyssey II to English, and released the patch around spring 2010 after announcing it on the Magic Engine forums. With no dedicated translator on the team, the script was put through several machine translators and then rewritten by hand so that the story reads sensibly; later help with the Japanese came from Eien Ni Hen and aishsha.
What to expect
Tru was open that this is not a word-for-word translation: some lines were summarised to fit the space available, and a few names were changed to fit the four-letter limit of the status screen. He called it a beta-alpha release and asked players for feedback on spelling and story flow. EsperKnight contributed a font hack that gives the game a cleaner English font.
Playing it
Apply the patch to your own copy of the Japanese disc, following the instructions in Tru's project thread.