User blog comment:PitchBlack696/Monster Hunter Portable 3rd/@comment-119.160.188.79-20110106092310/@comment-3095880-20110106232546

That may be true if you are trying to rush a product out the door as quickly as possible, but there are other factors to consider. Things like waiting to see how well the game sells in japan to determine your initial factory run count, waiting to see the public's opinion and tweak aspects of the game that the public don't like, bug fixes, US playtesting, etc. Not to mention translating a game is not a case of just "changing the text". As you can see from the english patches out there, character space is of concern. English words take up far more space than Japanese characters, so either different english words must be chosen or menus/displays must be redone to fit the text. If the process was as simple as changing text, google could do it automatically. Wouldn't that be funny.


 * a bar appears at the top of your psp screen*
 * This game is in [JAPANESE] Would you like to translate it?  [Translate]  [Nope]*