kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5938 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German
| Message 1 of 10 26 May 2009 at 6:25am | IP Logged |
So, tonight, I had a little free time and had the option to do a little Swedish study or play Pokemon Leaf Green that I just downloaded with a GBA emulator (of course I came here instead), when I thought to myself, "What if I could find ROMs in Swedish so that I could play, for instance, Pokemon, while learning Swedish?" And of course the logical consequence of this thought is a thread here, asking if any of you language nerds out there are also video game nerds who have links to places where one could find ROMs in other languages (any language, really, although I personally would love to find some in Swedish or French). Thanks in advance!
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snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5660 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian
| Message 2 of 10 27 May 2009 at 7:55am | IP Logged |
I actually did this quite a bit when I was first learning Russian. Unfortunately Russian is not one of the most popular languages for video game translations, but translations are out there, and I know that there are some for Swedish as well. I played through most of Final Fantasy V for the SNES in Russian (after already having played through the game in English). I also played for a while in Chrono Trigger (SNES), but the quality of the translation eventually deteriorated to the point where it was replacing English letters with the Cyrillic ones that look like them, which was useless.
I know that Swedish translations of ROMs are out there. I know that one exists for Chrono Trigger and I think for Tales of Phantasia there is one as well. I like SNES RPGs because they are dialogue-intensive and use a lot of vocabulary compared to, say, a shooting game. I haven't explored the Pokemon series but it's definitely worth a look.
Beware of the translation, though if you have a good command of Swedish to play through a dialogue-intensive game and understand thing it would probably be obvious if the translation was botched.
It's probably discouraged to release actual links to the sites on the forums, but I would simply search for the title of the ROM, and if you are unable to find translations, try something like +Swe. Good luck!
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LittleKey Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5887 days ago 146 posts - 153 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Japanese
| Message 3 of 10 29 May 2009 at 7:30am | IP Logged |
Well I hope no one does post links to ROM sites, because that could get the site shut down. The way it works is that the emulator is legal, but the ROMs aren't.
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flatlandllama Diglot Newbie United States Joined 7024 days ago 35 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Vietnamese Studies: Khmer
| Message 4 of 10 29 May 2009 at 8:20am | IP Logged |
Actually, I think ROMs are legal as long as you own the game...It's probably not an issue since kottoler is looking and doesn't own them...Anyhow, Japanese games are easy to find, so that works forquite a number of people on this site. I also have found a copy of final fantasy on nintendo in Chinese...but I've since put it away because once I start playing games, I don't payattention to anything else, school and languages included =)
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40pancakes Newbie Australia Joined 5740 days ago 38 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French
| Message 5 of 10 29 May 2009 at 10:57am | IP Logged |
Google dgemu. That should get you some translated/original foreign language roms.
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snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5660 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian
| Message 6 of 10 29 May 2009 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
40pancakes, that is the site I use, and it's a very good one.
Regarding legality, it is illegal to download ROMs even if you own the original cartridge, unless they are freeware or you created the ROM yourself. That said, it is a MUCH bigger issue if you are using the ROMs to make money than if you are simply downloading translated ROMs to practice your foreign languages.
Nevertheless, I wouldn't advise posting any links on this forum.
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zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6307 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 7 of 10 30 May 2009 at 1:20am | IP Logged |
I'm pretty sure you can post links. Google has links to them. All you are doing is
pointing to where they already are. That's why they can't shut down piratebay and
such. Because their site doesn't have anything on it. It just has links like google.
Edited by zerothinking on 30 May 2009 at 1:21am
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Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6600 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil
| Message 8 of 10 30 May 2009 at 11:58am | IP Logged |
In a perfect world ROMs of old video games wouldn't be illegal, since they're not economically hurting the companies (on the contrary: Nintendo doesn't sell Super Mario for NES any more, but people playing it on an emulator might become interested by the Mario brand...)
To steer the discussion in another direction: You can easily find PC-games/recent games in foreign languages, e.g. on amazon.de for German. Why bother with emulators and old games, when you could simply buy recent games in another language?
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