pmdtranslate

pmdtranslate is a tool that allow translation of pokemon super mystery dungeon (at least US/EU rom). It may work with no or minor change on other language or with gates to infinite and RTDX, but I haven't tested this.

how to use

This is a command line tool. Right now, I don't provide precompiled binary. I guess you will have to look on how to compile rust program (if cargo is already installed, run cargo build --release).

extract translation

You need to have a decrypted and depacked rom. You may use ctrtool to unpack a rom. You'll then need to find the file you'll translate. For US PSMD, it should be message_us.bin. Be aware that there should be a message_us.lst file in the same folder, as it used by the tool. Then, you'll need to run pmdtranslate farc to-pot <path to message_us.bin> <out .pot file>.

The pot file is the model file. You should then use some method to edit po file (I used poedit).

Make sure the software keep comments and other metadata, as the comment entry is also needed by pmdtranslate.

Once you start editing the string, the input message are in the form of <id> text. When you translate, you should no include the <id> as well as the next text. For example, if I have 1014321 Welcome and I want to translate it to french, I should write Bonjour.

There may also have special symbol like [CENTER] or [PARTNERNAME]. Those are special content that shouldn't be translated. If you want to write a [, you need to write \[, and to write a \, you need to write \\. For example, if I want to display [HELLO] on the screen (rather than having the effect of this character), I would write \[HELLO]. (the ] doesn't need a \).

use translation in game

First, you'll need a way to patch the game. One cool trick about PSMD is that the game include the functionality to read custom translation (but not custom font) from the SD card. To do this, just place your custom message_us.bin into the private/Nintendo 3DS/app folder on the sdcard (create it if needed).

To create a new message_us.bin file to translate the game, you'll need to run : pmdtranslate farc from-po <source .po or .pot file> <target message_us.bin file>. You should then have the target message_us.bin, that you should load in the game (by placing it at private/Nintendo 3DS/app/message_us.bin on the sdcard).

You can also patch the file using more traditional patching mathod.

change font

You'll need to use pmdfonttool.