Reviewing my re-translation of Celeste

Custom Korean logo made by Patexum.

Okay, so, Celeste supports various languages, including Korean.

So maybe you could ask, "Hey, Celeste already supports Korean, why would you have to translate it again?"

To clarify, while Celeste does support Korean, as a native speaker, I can confidently say that some parts are not very "readable."

 

I first bought Celeste in January and began my journey up the mysterious and challenging mountain.

I didn’t notice anything unusual until I finished Chapter 3, but when I started Chapter 4, I began to feel uncomfortable with some of the dialogue. What the characters were saying sounded unnatural, and their way of speaking resembled machine translations.

Look at those tiny little letters bruh

I also noticed that the text in the journal was abnormally small. The tiny letters made it hard to read, and this negatively affected my experience.

 

So, I switched the language settings to English, continued playing, and completed Chapter 7. After watching the ending, I discovered that some unofficial Korean translations had already been created by fans who were dissatisfied with the original. I, too, was unhappy with the translations, so I decided to re-translate Celeste into Korean myself.

 

Step 1) Translation

Translating English to Korean wasn’t particularly difficult. Celeste manages all its strings through text files, so applying my translations to the game was fairly straightforward. However, what held me back were the output errors caused by missing font images. Unlike other games that use ttf files to display text, Celeste uses fnt files and font images. If a letter that isn’t included in the image file is called to be displayed, the game simply won’t display it.

This is an example of the output error. The word with the red underline should appear as "외톨이", but since there was no image for the letter "톨", the game only displayed "외이", excluding "톨".

 

So I had two options. I could either translate the dialogue using only the limited available letters, or I could add the missing font images and translate freely. The first option seemed impractical, so I chose the second. However, I took it a step further. I decided to change the Korean font to one that closely resembled the English font style and added most of the Korean characters to ensure flexible maintenance. (Celeste only includes the images of the letters used in the dialogue text files.)

 

After replacing the font files.

Replacing the font files resolved the output errors and made the dialogue frames look much better than before. After updating the files, I continued translating the game. After spending a week on it, I finally finished translating Farewell. Now, I need to play through the game again to check for any issues with the text outputs.

 

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I also found that the Japanese translators had translated the paper in the Celestial Resort, so I translated it into Korean as well. However, I couldn’t find a way to apply that image in the vanilla version, so I decided not to include it in my translation.

 

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I made the tiny letters in the journal larger by changing "Progress" to "Chapter List." (The space available for the chapter name increases in proportion to the length of the text, so this adjustment helped.) Translating "Progress" directly into Korean felt awkward, so it wasn’t a suitable option.

 

Step 2) Inspection

The inspection process was theoretically simple: check all the dialogs you can encounter, while using Assist Mode and Cheat Mode as needed.

lol

However, I also had to check the dialogs in Chapters 2 and 3, which depend on whether Madeline meets Theo or not, and whether she introduces herself to him. Additionally, the epilogue dialogs vary based on how many strawberries you’ve collected. I repeatedly completed Chapter 3, then deleted the save file to inspect the dialogs related to Theo. This process was straightforward but tedious. After that, I reached the summit without collecting a single strawberry, then checked the epilogue dialogs by collecting 30 strawberries in each chapter. Finally, I checked the dialog about the heart gate in Chapter 8 using a new save file with Assist Mode, then cleared Chapter 8 and Farewell.

Farewell was tough, but it was worth doing.

 

 

Step 3) Distribution

I needed to distribute these translation files to other communities, but simply providing a single file wouldn't be enough to explain how to install the translation. So, I created an installation guide. Thanks to Patexum's help, I was able to use the Korean logo of Celeste that he created. Patexum had told me I could include the logo in the translation files, but since it wasn’t possible to apply the logo in the vanilla version, I decided not to include the image.

Image of the installation guide. I love the Korean logo of Celeste.

After making some guildlines, I uploaded the translations file on the KR Celeste Communities.

Step 4) PROFIT!!

Now everything is done!

It took about a month to complete this work, and it was pretty tough, but I had an amazing time doing it. I hope more people can understand and enjoy the story of Celeste. (Actually, I had read the original translations of Farewell, since I hadn't played that part in Korean, but honestly, even Google Translate would’ve done a better job than the official translation... I was shocked when I saw Madeline miss the bird and shout "Hey!" translated as "Damn!") I’ve contacted EXOK via email to ask if it’s possible to replace the existing Korean translations, and I’m still waiting for a reply. (Of course, I’m not making any money from these files.) I hope to hear something positive from them.

 

Here's the gameplay video of the prologue and chapter 1 with the new translations. Take a look at how the translations play out.