Mother 3 fan translation offered to Nintendo for free
Mother 3 has never been published in the west. But with Nintendo’s semi-recommitment to the series with the recent EarthBound Wii U Virtual Console announcement for the west, perhaps it has a chance of one day heading westward.
The localization process could be eased through a fan project completed in 2008. Clyde Mandelin, who led the efforts and has been known for his work at FUNimation, is now offering the entire translation to Nintendo for free.
Mandelin wrote in a blog post:
I realize that localizing a game this size can cost a lot, so if it’ll help in even the slightest, I’ll gladly offer to let Nintendo use my text translation files for any use at all, completely for free. I’ll even edit the files to fit whatever new standards are necessary (content, formatting, memory size, etc.), completely for free. I’ll even retranslate everything from scratch if need be. Just whatever it takes to get an official release out.
It might seem unlikely for a legitimate company to use a fan translation or work with fan translators, but it has happened before – Ys: The Oath in Felghana is one recent example. It’s more common among visual novel games at the moment, but I believe this sort of thing will only become more and more common over time. Only when the works in question are up to a certain standard of quality, of course.
This sounds pretty good to me! We’d love to see Mother 3 in the west…
