We recently reported on the news that the translator behind four Retro-Bit releases—Shubibinman Zero / Shockman Zero, Assault Suits Valken, Gley Lancer and Majyūō: King of Demons—had used existing fan-made translations.
Retro-Bit, to its credit, has already apologised for the oversight. However, the translator behind these four games has posted a lengthy rebuttal of the accusations on a Spanish forum, claiming on one hand that he doesn't "need to copy some fucking sentences from someone else's translation" while at the same time admitting that he was unable to finish some of the translations properly and used preexisting versions.
The post begins with the translator, Rod Mérida, refuting the claims quite strongly, pointing out that he has "spent years of my life studying written Japanese on my own" and that "these short games mean nothing to me." (We should note that we've translated the original forum post using Google, so this may not be a totally accurate translation).
Mérida also says that Retro-bit is aware that it has "used elements of fan translations to a greater or lesser extent" in the past, which is presumably a reference to the fact that the company has previously worked with fan translator Aeon Genesis (although none of the four games mentioned have that person's involvement).
He reveals that, in the case of Assault Suits Valken, he was unable to finish the game and lifted the translated text from the 2023 commercial Switch re-release, Assault Suits Valken Declassified.
Given that this release was translated from scratch by an entirely different company, Rainmaker, we're not entirely sure that's legal, but the translator claims that Retro-Bit "encouraged me to do whenever I wanted or saw fit (copying the text directly from the Switch version)."
According to Mérida:
As for the text in Assault Suits Valken, I started out by translating it myself, then taking the best of my translation and the Switch one, then taking elements of the Assault Suits Valken PlayStation 2 translation, and finally, as I got closer to the final stages and found it harder and harder to beat the game from the end of the previous stage and a good part of the new stage up until then to force the ROM to reload the text, I started copying a lot of the dialogue directly from the Switch, just to be done once and for all. Although I ended up comparing that part with the Japanese and introducing improvements or changes.
Another questionable point of defence relates to the fact that Retro-Bit's version of Gleylancer includes the name of the person who created the fan translation, MIJET.
In an attempt to explain why this name is present, Mérida admits in this case that he "didn't have the balls" to finish the translation:
I didn't have the balls to finish translating that before the delivery deadline. I was incapable. My company was pushing me to deliver it right away, and I couldn't seem to finish it... So at some point, after explaining this problem I was having to Retro-bit, my superiors gave me permission to abort the credits translation and leave it in Japanese, and I did a copy-paste of the Japanese credits block to revert the changes. Unfortunately, I made a mistake and copied it from the Mijet ROM, which I had open at the time out of sheer curiosity (I wanted to compare if there were any differences between his credits sequence and mine). It didn't occur to me to check it, and I handed in the translated ROM this way.
After spotting MIJET's credit in the game a few weeks later, the translator realised his error but didn't ask Retro-Bit to abort production for the most insane reason you could imagine:
"Mid Jet" was my first nickname from the IRC days, when I first started using mIRC on the computers in the computer lab at school, xD. It's a nickname I chose in reference to my favorite Master System game: Shadow of the Beast, in reference to the Jet Pac you use to cross the cave. And the way to transcribe "Mid Jet" in Japanese is just that, "Mijeto". I found it funny, the reference seemed ironic, and also a way to pay a veiled tribute to the fan translator MIJET, a fellow guild member, and so as not to beat around the bush any longer I left it like that.
As you can imagine, this post hasn't gone down especially well.
"The translator who worked on these titles has a portfolio of translating entire text-heavy games, so we believed he was capable of our translation request since they were games that contained less text," said Retro-Bit in a statement issued to Time Extension on Monday.
"We reached out to the translator for their explanation regarding these claims. After our discussion internally we as Retro-Bit concluded that the final work submitted contained, to a lesser or higher degree, uncredited work. We’ve always had a successful understanding of our shared responsibilities with our collaborators and unfortunately in this instance, we let our guard down. This was an irresponsible oversight on our end and we take full accountability for this outcome and not verifying the submitted translation. To amend this situation, we will set out to reach those whose work was not recognized to offer a means of resolution."