Introduction

Monster Hunter Frontier Z is a big game, it has a lot of items, weapons, armours, menus etc. all of which we ideally want in english.

The actual translation is all external to the game and requires no special tools, but we also expect a baseline standard of legible English.

These pages are to familiarise yourself with the standards we expect these translations to meet and conventions that should be followed.

---

Existing Translations

---

Global Guidelines

Translation Guidelines

---

Weapons Guidelines

Armour Guidelines

Items Guidelines

---

Other Guidelines

Menus Guidelines

---

Google Sheet

Sections

Read all of the conventions here and the translation guidelines before you edit a single cell on the sheet!

Contribution is completely voluntary and you should not expect any tangible benefit from said contributions.

If I don't know who you are and you don't justify yourself, you will obviously not get access!

Google Sheet

---

Section Navigation

Sections

Existing Translations

---

Global Guidelines

Translation Guidelines

---

Weapons Guidelines

Armour Guidelines

Items Guidelines

---

Other Guidelines

Menus Guidelines

---

Google Sheet

Existing Translation Adjustment

If a translation is accurate but too long you should try to avoid changing the meaning completely to fit into character limits.

As an example of this, the item 本気飲料【Type】 was translated as Serious Drink [Type], as this is an item the absolute ideal length is 17-18 characters and this is 20.

The translation of 'Serious Drink' is very much accurate to the Japanese, it is literally a 'Serious' or 'Earnest' drink.

As the serious part was actually accurate and literal, it should not be adjusted based on potential English readings. A 'Serious Drink' may seem like it can simply be changed to 'Potent Drink' to save a character but this is obviously inaccurate and loses all Japanese meaning.

Similarly you should obviously not just bullshit and make it into a 'Life Elixir' or similar, especially if you don't know the actual gameplay interactions of the item, these items boost elemental or affinity values, they have nothing to do with health or other stats.

As the original meaning was accurate quite literally the only change that should be done is removing the brackets, the name Serious Drink Type or similar is of desirable length and more accurate than the two alternatives.

Poor English

Correct typos if you see them and use the recommended dictionaries in Global Guidelines to verify words actually exist in the English language as you have spelt them.

Unknown Gameplay Interactions

If you don't know the context of an item that seems to be a consumable or a material from a specific break or similar, don't alter any existing translations without finding out if what you want to change to would be better or worse.

---

Section Navigation

Ultra Basic

Read the start of each section you are editing, it has character limits as well as any caveats that you need to be aware of for the section you are editing.

Global Conventions

Readability

Prioritise immediately readable names and avoid unnecessary use of contractions, things like 'NargaPwrfulBlkFur' are at best acceptable and if you can fit something similar in the character limits offered do so (e.g. Narga Black Pelt).

Similarly you should actually do some research on what the equipment or item itself actually is instead of filling in bullshit and using that as a free pass for disconnected nonsense.

Series Names

If a weapon is a tree with a single name it should reflect that, for a series such as the Wyvern Blade (竜刀) tre you should obviously use that term across all upgrades. Be sure to look for any existing names and either match or change them.

This applies equally to items, many event items will share a similar name pattern but will be staggered in the release cycle. Always look for existing translations if an item reads as a prefix with multiple suffixes.

Official Localisations

For cases of conflicting official localisation it's probably best to go with the closest to actual literal accuracy. The game game predates the newer generations and so names such as Dual Swords should be used over Dual Blades.

Ultimately in the case of equally good translations you should prioritise: Accuracy followed by the Older Official Translation with Newer Official Translations being last consideration.

Obviously official is not necessarily desirable and is often terrible. Go with a new translation that's accurate if you need to. A lot of older translations are a mess or a jumble of letters at a glance while a lot of the newer translation work comes off as the results of unnecessary purple prose busywork from a team desperately trying to justify their salary, you're not being paid so don't fall into that trap.

If you have something with an officially localised yet completely inaccurate name which gets a bunch more upgrades or variants that won't work because of bad Capcom practices you should just ignore the inaccurate original names and actually translate instead.

Bullshitting

There is a specific column for marking off your translation as being completely made up bullshit, only use this if you've exhausted all avenues for possible translations.

Don't make up a name if it's slightly awkward to do it properly, simply move on to something you can in fact tackle. A bad translation just creates work for people who actually have standards, don't do that.

---

Section Navigation

Translations Guidelines

While obviously knowing either Japanese or Chinese would be your greatest possible strength for translating, this is not necessary for a best effort translation. Even official Capcom translations are frequently just outright made up.

Proper Case

Capcom tends to use Proper Case on all of its naming, it's best to continue that here. That means you would have a Wyvern Seeker "Dos" and not a Wyvern seeker "dos".

Unknown Gameplay Interactions

If you don't know the context of an item that seems to be a consumable or a material from a specific break or similar it might be best to avoid trying to translate it at all.

As an example 砲熱弾 is made up of the components 'Cannon', 'Heat' and 'Bullet', it's entirely logical that this could be something like a cannonball but it is instead the shot type loaded to use the HBG heat cannon and as such is best translated to simply Heat Cannon as that is the gameplay interaction.

Reference Sites

Translating without knowing the language is obviously going to require that you actively consult reference sites to look up Kanji, Hanzi and Kana. Likewise the primary English variant is British because of the person compiling everything being such.

Japanese Translations

Google Translate - The most obvious of obvious things, it is not the end all of translations and especially for Kanji you should be utilising it alongside other sources.

Jisho - A Japanese to English Dictionary, one of the best resources for working out intended Kanji readings.

Yomikatawa - A Japanese dictionary in Japanese, can often be used to narrow down real meanings for things Jisho is failing at.

RomajiDesu - A Japanese to English Dictionary, an alternative to Jisho.

Game Information

Ferias - The de facto Japanese resource on everything in MHF. All information is datamined and has nearly perfect accuracy to everything in game.

Translation Userscript - A translation script for Ferias, needs tampermonkey or similar to be used. Translates all important navigation.

English Variant

Fist is a Brit so by default British spelling is used anywhere he translated, by extension it's recommended to use:

Lexico - Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus.

Cambridge Dictionary - Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus.

Raw Kanji & Chinese

Kanji are titles that can usually be broken down in a straight forward manner:

Weapon Name: 殻王巨笛【豪】
殻 Shell	王 King	巨 Gigantic	笛 Whistle Generic Hunting Horn Kanji	【豪】 Powerful, Overpowering Jisho raw meaning on right, ignore Australia as standard reading

With this broken down you can pretty much assume the actual components are a title (Great Shell King) a weapon type (Horn) and a flavour suffix ("Powerful")

Looking it up on ferias (http://ferias.life.coocan.jp/sozai/equip.htm) you can see that it's a Shen Gaoren weapon.

Great Shell King Horn "Powerful" is far too long so you need to logically contract it to 24 characters.

To a large extent this comes down to personal taste to a great extent, you also need to take into account other variants on the weapon. The sheet is ordered so shared models are grouped so any existing translations or other weapons you need to keep in mind will be next to whatever you are looking at.

In this case the extra variant is 殻王巨笛【勇】, this can obviously be broken down identically to the above example with the only difference being "勇" which has the meaning "Courage"

With all of the above in mind you need to come up with something accurate, flavourful and short enough to fit.

Shell King, Crab Ruler, Great Shell etc. all work fine, in this instance Great Shell Horn "Power" and "Brave" were chosen.

Resulting Translations
殻王巨笛【勇】 Great Shell Horn "Brave"	殻王巨笛【豪】 Great Shell Horn "Power"

Kana Translations

Kana names vary from super straight forward to absolutely horrific nightmares even the creator probably has no idea about.

Easy Kana

The prior category, straight forward things based around english or monster names etc.

Oftentimes google translate will be your best bet for identifying raw transliteration, Chinese names can also be a godsend in this regard.

For an easy example there is this series:

Weapon Names
アメシスシャークⅤ	紫晶潛鯊Ⅴ

Google will immediately spit out Amethyst Shark and you can manually break it down:

Translation Breakdown
アメシス (Amesys) シャーク (Shark)	紫晶 (Purple Crystal) 潛鯊 (Diving Shark)

While the conclusion to call it Amethyst Shark is pretty obvious, it is vaguely complicated by there existing an official name:
Amesys Shark.

Amesys Shark sounds pretty bad and is less fitting than Amethyst for the weapon in question so the official bad name is disregarded as a matter of preference.

Horrific Kana

Some of the naming conventions are insane, for a 'this is probably right but we will never know' example we can use Zenith Anorupatisu.

Zenith Anorupatisu Weapons
ゼーゲ・ウィッシュ	Anoru Twin "Wish"	Simply "Wish" (Uisshu)
ゼーゲ・ソウハート	Anoru Edge "Souhait"	Likely wish in French (Souhaato)
ゼーゲ・ワンス	Anoru Lance "Wunsch"	Likely wish in german (Wansu)
ゼーゲ・オンスカー	Anoru Shot "Onskar"	Swedish or Dutch Onske/Onskar for (Onsuka)
ゼーゲ・ドレスク	Anoru Horn "Dilek"	Maybe Turkish Dilek butchered (Doresuku)
ゼーゲ・デッソ	Anoru Tonfa "Deseo"	Likely Spanish Deseo (デッソ)

There is a consistent theme across most of the weapons where they have transliterated foreign words such as Wish or Pain from multiple languages.

Wish itself can be derived simply and then you can search for 'Wish in Other Languages' on google to get a bunch of extra examples.

Ultimately, a best effort pass should be made on this type of name and then after you exhaust obvious paths just go with raw kana and mark as bullshit in the proper column.

As an extended example, a lot of the festival weapons use the same 'random language base transliterated' ideal:

Zenith Anorupatisu Weapons
デュアメッサー	Dua Messer	Messer, german for knife
デュアリーゼ	Dua Riese	Riese, german for giant
デュアシュベルト	Dua Schwert	German for sword
デュアヘクサ	Dua Hexatonic	Assumed to be a reference to hexatonic scale
デュアシュピース	Dua Spies	Afrikaans for spear
デュアカノーネ	Dua Kanone	Kanone for cannon
デュアアルム	Dua Arm	Arm for Tonfa

In many cases the Official Chinese names are often themselves just made up, don't take them as gospel (even if they are infinitely easier than the above)

Japanese Colour Names

Japanese has a large number of kanji and traditional names for colours, if you have a block of items that seem likely to be differentiated by colour you should check the following references for the colour shades.

Nippon Colors - The most in depth and detailed source of information. Searching does not jump to the correct row usually, check 2 rows below the top of your page or so.

Wikipedia Traditional Colors - A wikipedia index that is easier to use than the above but doesn't cover every possible variant as the above tries to.

Japanese With Anime Color Index - Just a third alternative that might cover things not on the above two which is easier to navigate.

---

Section Navigation

Weapon Guidelines

The biggest current focus is mostly on weapon names, there are several thousand of these and they vary from incredibly.

Bracketed Weapon Names

Convert bracketed names into suffixes with quotations unless there's an established convention for the series conflicting with this.

E.g. 鉄刀【禊】 would become Iron Katana "Grace" and not [Grace] or (Grace).

If there is an issue with space, bulleting in place of quotations is a valid alternative. E.g. Totomi-Nagamitsu"Thing" could be changed to Totomi-Nagamitsu・Thing and if really pressed for space, simply add a space.

Bulleted Weapon Names

Bulleted names should just be translated with the bullet in place. For example ヒュージ・マグナ would become Hyuji・Magna.

G Finesse Names

There is very limited space for an affix for these, Pro is currently in use to stay with the 'Finesse' aspect but a special character may be required if some names are too tight to fit four characters.

Raviente Weapons

These are all translated, the convention is listed below simply for reference on used terminology.

Raviente Terms
Upgrade Tiers
HR17 Ophion	HR100 Ophion "Suffix"	GR1 Shesha "Suffix"	Z1 Apophis "Suffix"
Upgrade Paths
Raw Path 燦然 Flash	Ele Path 絢爛 Shine	Long / Status / Dual Path 煌然 Glory	Affinity / Very Long 玲瓏 Clear

References

Below are some examples on terminology you can use on a per weapon basis (with many working across multiple weapon types without issue).

Terms for Weapon Types
Great Sword	Great Sword, Blade, Punisher, Riese, Cleaver, Decimator, Slasher
Long Sword	Long Sword, Katana, Slicer, Edge, Cutter, Carver, Saber, Ripper, Destroyer, Schwert
Sword & Shield	Dagger, Bite, Bang, Rapier, Kris, Sword, Wail, Messer, Knife, Sword, Saber
Dual Swords	Dual Swords, Shears, Scissors, Rippers, Edge, Duo, Pair, Twin, Dual Blades, Twin Daggers, Blades, Claws, Slicers, Cutters
Hammer	Hammer, Mace, Stamp, Basher, Masher, Impact, Beat, Crusher, Smasher, Club, Bop, Maul, Blow, Bash, Trampler
Hunting Horn	Hunting Horn, The Visual Instrument Name, Horn, Whistle, Bagpipes, Rock, Flute, Hexa
Lance	Lance, Drill, Spear, Javelin, Tusk, Pike, Stinger, Piercer, Spies
Gunlance	Gunlance, Cannon, Blast, Shot, Sting, Buster, Exploder, Burst
Tonfa	Tonfa, Arm, Sticks, Rods, Tuifa, Baton
Switch Axe	Switch Axe, Axe, Axt, Chopper, Cleave, Hacker, Raider, Slash, Grinder, Slicer, Cleaver, Edge
Magnet Spike	Magnet Spike, Spike, Pillar, Magnet, Driver,
Light Bowgun	Bowgun, Blitz, Trigger, Spitter, Rifle, Shot, Buster, Bullet, Crossbow, Shell, Barrage, Gun, Cannon
Heavy Bowgun	Bowgun, Assault, Shooter, Blaster, Cannon, Kanone, Destruction, Destroyer, Bazooka, Caster, Quiver, Turret, Vulcan, Artillery, Bolter, Rifle, Punisher, Buster
Bow	Bow, Perforator, Arrow, Arch, String, Shaft, Fletcher, Fletch, Thread, Blaster
You can also can use (almost) any the above as affixes fine, e.g. Frostbow, Powerblade, Iceshot etc.

---

Section Navigation

Item Guidelines

Scope

Items covers all consumables, materials, decorations and cuffs in the game.

Monster Carves, Decorations and Cuffs are all fully translated but could do with extra passes based on in game presentation.

Pretty much everything else is in varying states of completion and quality and could do with first or extra passes.

Series and Special Names

Many event items will share a similar name pattern but will be staggered in the release cycle. Always look for existing translations if an item reads as a prefix with multiple suffixes.

Items with brackets should retain them. For example ポルタ輝石【赤】 is would become Porta Ore [Red] and not "Red" or (Red). Avoid using the Japanese full width brackets as they take up the same space as two characters.

Items with bullets should either retain them or have the term merged on a case by case basis. For example Ｎメダル・銅 breaks down to N Medal and Copper which can be translated to either N Medal・Copper, Copper N Medal or N Medal Copper with the first being preferred for simply producing nicer looking search results and material lists.

Decorations and Cuffs

G Rank decorations are translated in the pattern of BM GX1 or GN GX1 respectively to indicate Blademaster or Gunner and decoration type.

Cuffs simply retain the standard Japanese SA1, PA1, PZ1, SZ, etc. suffixes.

Unknown Gameplay Interactions

If you don't know the context of an item that seems to be a consumable or a material from a specific break or similar it might be best to avoid trying to translate it at all.

As an example 砲熱弾 is made up of the components 'Cannon', 'Heat' and 'Bullet', it's entirely logical that this could be something like a cannonball but it is instead the shot type loaded to use the HBG heat cannon and as such is best translated to simply Heat Cannon as that is the gameplay interaction.

---

Section Navigation

Armour Guidelines

Currently the plan is to mostly automate actual translation of piece names.

Affix Gathering

Armours are built up from (generally) consistent prefixes and suffixes.

i.e. バトルヘルム is actually バトル and ヘルム which are respectively translated to "Battle" and "Helm". This means replacements can be automated to replace it to make the piece "Battle Helm"

To help you should break down Armours into prefix and suffix components and add them to appropriate columns. Hand crafted translations for select pieces can come later but automation is the only sane way to tackle 60,000 pieces.

The best example is just actually looking at the component section and seeing how it relates to the things it's breaking down.

---

Section Navigation

Other Guidelines

Monster Names are complete and unlikely to be changed.

Skill Names are complete and unlikely to be changed.

Skill Descriptions are not started or indexed easily on the sheet currently.

Zenith Skill Names need a second pass for fitting in-game but are mostly complete.

Monster Ecology is complete but could do with some extra passes.

Quest Names & Objectives are complete but could do with some extra passes, you cannot realistically help with this without access to the game itself.

---

Section Navigation

Menu Guidelines

The sheet is currently not organised in the slightest to enable blind translation of the menus, you should only be attempting this with access to the game itself proper.

Currently this simply boils down to OCRing or hand typing menu elements and locating them in the soup of strings in the MHFPAC and MHFDAT sections of the sheet which contain raw dumps of all strings not sorted logically.

---

Section Navigation