Hello everyone! This is Reale雷耀 of the Cradle of Nightmare: Flowers to You translation team. We’re a two-man team consisting of myself and All-Bones Jones. I’m handling all the translation while Jones is handling all the graphics and code-related content.
We technically announced this project way before June, but a lot of people were still pondering about the translation status of this game, so we decided to officially announce it here!
For a bit of background, Jones had made an MTL fan-patch of CoN, so I reached out to him asking if he would be interested in working on an official (fully human translated!) English version of the game, as well as RedRustRain, the developer of CoN.
This was all the way back in late March, and we’ve been busy working on the translation since, but it’s not quite ready for release yet. Still, we’re excited to share a couple sneak peaks into some of the work that we’ve done on the game already.
There’s also been a lot of questions and conflicting information regarding the translation project, so we’d also like to address some of the most common questions in the FAQ below as well. Feel free to skip over it if you’re not interested.
FAQ
Who are the ones handling the translation?
The translation is being handled by Reale雷耀 (that's me!) and All-Bones Jones. I'm handling the translation and localization of the game while Jones is handling code and graphics-related stuff.
Why is the translation taking so long?
The translation is taking so long because we're translating the game from scratch.
Wasn’t there already a translation being worked on?
Before we reached out to the developer, he had been working with another translator. He claimed that the translation was more than halfway done, but hadn't received any of the files.
We tried to get in touch with this other translator, but he didn't (and still hasn't) responded to any of Red's messages, so all we could really do was wish the best for them and start translation efforts over from the ground up.
Is the translation out yet?
As of the time of writing, the game does not officially support any languages other than Simplified Chinese. All currently available language patches right now are fan-patches created by members of the community and aren't official translations.
This includes the currently available English patch made by Jones and to which I have contributed to. This was worked on before we got in touch with the developer to do an official translation of the game, and should not be considered official or otherwise endorsed by the developer.
How much of the current translation is complete?
As of now, the translation is about ~60% complete overall. A significant portion of the maps have already been translated and are merely awaiting the editing/proofreading pass.
We are currently working on translating the description of items, equipment, etc.
When will the official translation be released?
The plan is to have all the text translated by the end of June and begin polishing of the text in July, therefore the full translation is estimated to be released in late July or sometime in August.
What languages are planned?
At the moment, only official English support is planned. There are no plans to officially support any language other than English.
Will the English version affect my save file?
Save files should be compatible with the English version once it is released, but it's wise to back up your save just in case.
What will happen to the MTL fan-patch once the English version is released?
It’ll be archived in its current state on itch.io.
Where do I stay up to date with the progress of the translation?
We post updates intermittently in the Discord, although all major developments will be announced here on Steam as well.
And that ends the FAQ! Below are a few sneak peaks at what we've been working on behind the scenes.
============================================================================
(Spoilers below! Very minor ones, but still spoilers! You have been warned!)
============================================================================
Combat
Length limits are an ever-present headache in localization, even more so in a soulslike. Enemy names can get looooooong with all their fancy titles.
Thankfully, the game’s healthbar already has space to accommodate the longer names, although the latter half used to be reserved for status effect icons. Fortunately, that’s a pretty easy fix of simply moving the status effect icons over to the top.
Inventory
The inventory probably has had the most work done on it so far.
Something that has always bugged me with the item pickup preview is that the description tends to go off the screen, even in the original Chinese version, and with how much longer English sentences are, there’s no way a majority of the descriptions will fit into two lines. Therefore, the solution is naturally to expand it into three lines.
With this, we’ll also be able to make sure all the descriptions stay nicely fit within the pop-up when you pick up an item.
The item categories (Items, Weapons, etc) have also had its rendering code completely revamped to accommodate for English words, which have varying character length rather than the fixed 2 characters in Chinese. Here’s a sneak peak at a relatively full inventory screen and some of the items you’ll find throughout your journey.
Miscellaneous
Here’s the main menu. Nothing fancy, but the language has received some polishing from the fan-patch version.
Here’s the bird that’s present on the game’s store page!
Resting at a Flowerbed, the “bonfires” of the game.
The smoker, or as the community calls him, John Crestfallen (my favorite character). Every line of dialogue in the game has been translated from the ground up, and I hope that everyone can enjoy talking to and getting to know these characters.
Follow us!
If you have any questions or feedback, or simply want to chat with us, feel free to leave a comment in the pinned English discussion thread or say hi in the official Discord server:
