As lucky as we have all been to enjoy Shenmue's story this far, there are many countries that have never had the joy of these games in their languages. This is where the Lost in Translation project is stepping in. Thanks to the huge amount of work by
ShenmueMaster, very powerful translation tools have been made available to all. Shenmue Master says:
"Every
Shenmue fan in the world is called to translate the two chapters in
their own languages. We have built some powerful and complete software (
available on Sourceforge "Shenmue Translation Pack" ) to make Shenmue
as multi-lingual as possible. Thanks to all, Shenmue Master".
Many projects have already been started. Shenmue Master is leading the way with their translation of the games into french at their site http://shenmueangel.free.fr/index.php
Ryo Suzuki from Sega Saturno (http://www.segasaturno.com/portal/) is working on a better translation of the game into Spanish.
And Shenmue Brasil is hard at work getting the game converted to portugues.
For those ready to take up the challenge, the tools can be found here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/shenmuesubs/
I hope to have a link to instructions for the use of the tools soon. I know not everyone can handle these kinds of projects :)