What do I need in order to force Skyrim to display Japanese text?

[Fredas]

Trying to get started adding Japanese to a mod I'm working on.  I want to be able to test the layout of the text in the menus themselves, but this is basically not possible when all the characters are "[][][][][]".

 

Thanks in advance!

 

[winny257]

exactly the same happened in my game if I install a Japanese mod!

 

I have the German version of Skyrim and use other language mods, changed the scripture in the game.

which goes so far if you do not know the language, which is not to understand the complete text! (one could say skyrim is unplayable)

for this reason, you should only use mods in his language. unless you are well versed in many languages and understand something of modding,

then you could just rewrite the ESP files.

[Fredas]

Nah, I understand how to change text in mods.  The problem is that my (English) Skyrim does not seem to have native support for Japanese text characters.  So where I should be seeing "日本語", I instead see "[][][]".  I'm basically hoping there's a well-established workaround for this.

[winny257]

I know what you mean when I use English mods shall the text English. but if I install a Japanese mod, arise this weird circles. I do not know why.

[b3lisario]

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9821/?

[zzz72w3r]

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9821/?

 

I think that mod replaces the font in Japanese Skyrim so your vanilla text will be in Japanese. 

 

To see Japanese text only in mods you will need Japanese Skyrim where vanilla text remains in English.  I don't think a font pack such as that exists because it is far easier to just translate the mod than redo the whole vanilla text.  Even if it does exist users not using Japanese Skyrim will still see the wrong codes because they lack the proper decoding dictionary. 

[Fredas]

Heh.  That's really an interesting find.  It takes advantage of an outdated feature of SkyUI (that still works, evidently) to basically superimpose a custom font over the existing one.  Unfortunately, since it replaces every character, including the Latin, with oversized versions of themselves, all the text readily breaks the boundaries of menus and such.  The Japanese works, but I'm hoping for a way to balance the appearance of the menus.  That mod appeared about two years ago.

 

Really amazing find though.

 

[b3lisario]

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9821/?

 

I think that mod replaces the font in Japanese Skyrim so your vanilla text will be in Japanese. 

 

To see Japanese text only in mods you will need Japanese Skyrim where vanilla text remains in English.  I don't think a font pack such as that exists because it is far easier to just translate the mod than redo the whole vanilla text.  Even if it does exist users not using Japanese Skyrim will still see the wrong codes because they lack the proper decoding dictionary.

 

No, that's just a font with japanese characters.

 

Non-japanese characters should be fine, as shown in the mod screenshots.

[Kendo 2]

One thing you can try is adding Japanese as a regional language on your PC.  That will at least allow NoteBook++ to decipher scripts typed in the mish-mash of kanji/hiragana/katakana Japanese characters.

[Fredas]

To see Japanese text only in mods you will need Japanese Skyrim where vanilla text remains in English.  I don't think a font pack such as that exists because it is far easier to just translate the mod than redo the whole vanilla text.  Even if it does exist users not using Japanese Skyrim will still see the wrong codes because they lack the proper decoding dictionary. 

 

My plan is to create a custom MyMod_ENGLISH.txt with the Japanese-language versions of all the menu text inside, as I gather this is what Japanese Skyrim players use for translations.

 

I'm not willing to toss in the towel on this one just yet, because the appearance is important to me, but I guess the worst case scenario is I can stare at those featureless squares and pretend they say what they're supposed to say, and hope that their spatial representation is a good match for the missing Japanese text.

[Fredas]

One thing you can try is adding Japanese as a regional language on your PC.  That will at least allow NoteBook++ to decipher scripts typed in the mish-mash of kanji/hiragana/katakana Japanese characters.

 

If you mean NotePad++, I guess I already got my PC set up as such, because I have the IME, and NotePad++ can handle Japanese text just fine.

[b3lisario]

Heh.  That's really an interesting find.  It takes advantage of an outdated feature of SkyUI (that still works, evidently) to basically superimpose a custom font over the existing one.  Unfortunately, since it replaces every character, including the Latin, with oversized versions of themselves, all the text readily breaks the boundaries of menus and such.  The Japanese works, but I'm hoping for a way to balance the appearance of the menus.  That mod appeared about two years ago.

 

Really amazing find though.

No I don't think so. Skyrim uses swf to display fonts, not sure how.

Take a look at fonts_en.swf in your skyrim bsa files. I don't have the skyrim font (futura?) on my system, so the font must be packed somewhere in the game, probably in that file

 

To inject a swf you need papyrus or a skse plugin and that mod has none.

I used that font to check MCM translations.

 

Another option could be changing your game to japanese and download and pick the actual jp font from the bsa. Then change back to the original languange and overwrite the font file.

[Fredas]

Another option could be changing your game to japanese and download and pick the actual jp font from the bsa. Then change back to the original languange and overwrite the font file.

 

Perfect.  That did the trick.  Well, with some extra fiddling with the fontconfig.txt tucked away in both bsas.

 

Thank you kindly.

[Fredas]

Well, while I'm on this topic, I'll offer a dumb question.

 

What might be preventing a mod_ENGLISH.txt file from working as intended?  Is there something more needed than to follow the format of

$TextInMenu  (tab)  Here is some text.

?  Do I need to check some flag in some other file somewhere for Skyrim to know to look for this text file?  Because right now it's not using it.

 

[b3lisario]

character encoding ucs-2 little endian

[Fredas]

You are a font of esoteric know-how, truly.  You're making my life very easy.