From YS-Italia, a Shenmue Italian Language translation pack is in the works. This will give our Italian fans access to an accurate translation of all the speech subtitles within the game.
The patch will work with the Steam version of Shenmue II at present and it is unclear whether this would also be applied to the Dreamcast version.
The team have noted the following in their work (translated by google) –
To tackle a massive project like this patch, we are using an AI-translated file to speed up the translation process. The actual work performed by the YS Italia team involves manually adapting, correcting, and rewriting every single line. This process is crucial for ensuring the translation makes logical sense, flows naturally in Italian, and remains easy to understand. In this regard, we have chosen to keep location names unchanged—both to avoid inconsistencies with in-game signs and to ensure you can complete the adventure without any difficulty. Beyond the adaptation itself, a huge part of the job involves manually adjusting line-break control bytes; these are essential to keep the text within the screen boundaries and prevent glitches in the game interface. These releases represent our commitment to delivering text that has been fully reviewed and hand-polished.
If you want to download the current WIP then click HERE for the direct link to the GitHub page.
There is a Reddit topic if you wanted to give any feedback to the team – https://www.reddit.com/r/Shenmue/comments/1udnje3/shenmue_ii_italian_patchpatch_italiana_di_shenmue/
