Family Basic Manual - Translating what is left

[P]

Update: Translation complete! See my most recent posts for details.

I just got Family Basic with manual in good condition so I thought I could give translating it a try.
Of course this is a hobby project so I'm not making any promises on anything.

BASIC Introductory Compilation
A complete translation of the BASIC Introductory Compilation part of the manual (except page 14 and 15 but they are just front pages to the compilation) and everything after it can be found here http://volunteers.playpower.org/profile/SebastienVanDamme so everything from page 16 and on is already translated by this person. Note that he named the back cover "FamilyBASIC118" but it's actually page 114 so nothing is missing.
Edit: The above link seems to be dead so I took the liberty to upload his translation here http://www.sendspace.com/file/aw8t9g (84 MB).
Edit: It's now hosted on Famicom World. It has been turned into an PDF and has the CALL page inserted and translated http://famicomworld.com/Personal/uglyjoe/FamilyBasicManual.pdf.

Scans
I couldn't find any scans of the Japanese manual anywhere so I just scanned the missing pages including the pink insert and the separate character chart myself. I'm not very good at scanning but everything should be readable and I included edited versions of two of the pages that was hard to read. Also I haven't converted it to any lossy format yet so beware of large file sizes: https://ufile.io/5bh14 (187.05 MB)
If you need me to re-upload it to another host, just give a word.

Translation
Latest version can be downloaded here: Edit: It's now at the attachment at the bottom of this post.


Initial version
Pink insert is translated. I started on the table of contents on the front cover inside (page 0) and page 1 but it doesn't contain any new information so I skipped the rest and will come back to it later. Page 2 is also translated but see translator's notes on that page.

As usual in my translation projects anyone are free to contribute with helping with the translation, inserting the translation, commenting, making suggestions or other things.

[manuel]

Or as they say "commercially available item".

[P]

Thank you 80s FREAK and Manuel!!   I couldn't find 市敗品 in any dictionary or even by googling it.


Update time

• Changed 市敗品 to "commercially available item" on page 2.
• Page 3 is translated. Note that I translated parts of this page long ago but with mistakes. Now it's hopefully correct.
• Ran a spell check. Forgot to do this before!

Page 4 and 5 are also almost done but I have run into two other problems on page 5:

1) On the top of the page to the right of Mario there is a box with the red text "キーボード名キーの名称と使い方". I'm not sure what they mean.

2)
On the bottom of the page where the explanation for the DEL key is: On the picture there are letters ABCXDE and to show how the DEL key works they want to delete the X. First it says to move the cursor to the character to the right of X and then it says "DELキーを押すと”Ｘ”が消え、”Ｄ”より右の文字がつまります。". Tsumaru means to block or clog according to the dictionary. I can't make sense of this.

[P]

Yeah I also thought that it could be that the cursor is covering the letter D so I translated it to that for now. If anyone has an idea don't hesitate to post here!

BTW UglyJoe mentioned once that there is a version of the manual that are missing the CALL command on page 69, and I noticed that the other guy's translated scans happens to be one of those. Thankfully the CALL command on page 69 isn't missing in my manual (for the record, I have V2.0A) so I translated that part of the page.

Update time
This time there is some useful information (like the quick-start function) and mentions of a mysterious Biorhythm Board.

• I uploaded a text file with the whole translation including this update.
• Page 4 and 5 are translated. See my previous post for the problems I'm having with page 5.
• Page 6 and 7 are also translated. No problems here.
• The CALL command explanation on page 69 is translated. I also added the CALL command entry in the index (page 50) and the appendix (page 110).
• I scanned page 69. The link can be found on the first post (Edit: The link expired so I removed it but it's now included with the other pages I scanned).

Edit: I learned that the Biorhythm Board exists in in place of the Message Board in Sharp Playbox Basic. More info: http://www.sara.to/sigure/trea/h10.html click on the link to see screen shots.

[UglyJoe]

The CALL statement explanation looks good to me.  I'm not sure why it would want/need you to CLEAR the address that comes before the subroutine, though.

[P]

In the CLEAR explanation on page 55 it says that CLEAR both clears variables and stuff and at the same time assigns memory space so that BASIC won't automatically take it back again. When using BASIC together with assembly it's necessary to assign memory space for the assembly subroutine so that BASIC won't snatch it for its variables and such. ...or so I understood it. I might be way off base though.

[UglyJoe]

Hmm...I didn't know that CLEAR did any kind of memory reservation.  I thought it just cleared out any variables that were still in memory.  I'll admit I've never tried passing it a memory address, though.

[UglyJoe]

Ah. That makes sense then.

[P]

Yeah it's confusing. An explanation of CLEAR can also be found at page 61 and there it just says that it resets all variables and stuff. Anyway thanks for confirming my translation!

I've been busy and the translating have become slower. But I have a goal to do some translation work every day so it's always progressing and it's not that much left now so I think this will be done some time soon!

Update time

• Page 8 and 9 translated!
• I made another attempt to put the translation in spoiler clauses on the first post and it seems to work fine until the end of page 5 when it goes bold and other weird things, but only a few pages are affected and the latest version of the translation can be downloaded as a txt file.

On page 8 there is a rather confusing explanation of how many brackets you can use in a formula on the Calculation Board. The manual seems to say that you can use 10 brackets inside a one-folded bracket but I'm not sure what that means. I can't test it right now since my Family Basic cart won't boot!

[P]

I finally got my Family Basic cart to work again but I can't use brackets on the Calculator Board at all! All I get is デキマセン (can't do). I guess I'm doing something wrong.


Update time

• Page 10 and 11 translated! (Latest update can be found in the first post as always.)
• There are lot's of musical terms I'm not familiar with so I expect it to be full of errors.

Page 10 (Music Board explanation) was a bit tough to translate. I haven't tried out the Music Board yet and the explanations aren't always very clear.
Post Merge: February 02, 2013, 04:54:15 PMFirst some rambling: I found another thing in my manual that's different from the other guy's scans. On page 45 there is a picture of a tape recorder. In my manual it's just a generic tape recorder while in his translated scans it's the official Nintendo Data Recorder. Sounds like I have an earlier revision of the manual than him. That makes me wonder why the CALL command is missing from his manual. My manual has an A on the top-right corner of the front cover (as in Revision A I believe).

Update time:

• Page 12 and 13 translated
• Page 14 and 15 also finally translated!

I'm finally done!! Well I still have the table of contents but at least all information of the whole manual should now be in understandable English! Though it's formatted for easy insertion rather than easy reading, and all the pictures and stuff are missing (it's just a txt file).

All that is left now is to proofread and see if I can make better/shorter English sentences (anyone are free to help), to insert the translated script into the scanned pictures and maybe make a PDF or something out of it so it gets easier to read.

If anyone are interested in helping with inserting the script, just make a post here and I will try to hurry up with the proofreading. Be sure to tell me if I need to upload the scans in some other manner (they are quite big).

[P]

Yeah the pink insert that was included with my Family Basic, advertised the Data Recorder since it hadn't been released yet at the time. Hinting that my revision is the older one.

If v2.0 exist, where is v1.0? And maybe this version does not support CALL and some others.

People say v1.0 wasn't released but there are some screen shots of it here http://www.sara.to/sigure/game/g12/index.html the ones to the left are Family Basic and the ones to the right are Sharp's Playbox Basic. Both seems to be v1.0 but "Sharp" and "Nintendo" has swapped places.
BTW the biorhythm program from Playbox Basic still exists in Family Basic in the form of The computer's fortune telling.

[manuel]

1) On the top of the page to the right of Mario there is a box with the red text "キーボード名キーの名称と使い方". I'm not sure what they mean.

Without reading everything I'm not sure either. 
Without knowing any context I'd translate it like:
"Names and usage for the name keys on the keyboard."
名キーwould be "name key" if there's any keys like that.


2)
On the bottom of the page where the explanation for the DEL key is: On the picture there are letters ABCXDE and to show how the DEL key works they want to delete the X. First it says to move the cursor to the character to the right of X and then it says "DELキーを押すと”Ｘ”が消え、”Ｄ”より右の文字がつまります。". Tsumaru means to block or clog according to the dictionary. I can't make sense of this.

"tsumaru" here just means that the other letters that come afterwards (namely DE) will "move up" i.e. there won't be a blank space where you delete the X. After deleting the X the text will read ABCDE and not ABC_DE.


I hope that helped. 

[P]

Thanks for the link. "1983 BYTES FREE" - interesting.

Haha one whole whooping byte more than V2! I didn't notice that.


Oh thank you Manuel this helps allot!!

1) On the top of the page to the right of Mario there is a box with the red text "キーボード名キーの名称と使い方". I'm not sure what they mean.

Without reading everything I'm not sure either. 
Without knowing any context I'd translate it like:
"Names and usage for the name keys on the keyboard."
名キーwould be "name key" if there's any keys like that.

Yeah I guess the context isn't obvious just from my post. The "red box" (I noticed there's not much red in it ) I'm talking about can be found in the top of every section in the manual and it usually ends with the "How to..."-like 使い方, 方法 and such. Since page 5 is a continuation of page 4 the "red box" can be seen as a reminder of what the current section is about.

There's no 名キー or name key unfortunately. I assumed they just meant that they are explaining what every key is called and how to use them. So my translation goes like: "The names of the keys and how to use them".

2)
On the bottom of the page where the explanation for the DEL key is: On the picture there are letters ABCXDE and to show how the DEL key works they want to delete the X. First it says to move the cursor to the character to the right of X and then it says "DELキーを押すと”Ｘ”が消え、”Ｄ”より右の文字がつまります。". Tsumaru means to block or clog according to the dictionary. I can't make sense of this.

"tsumaru" here just means that the other letters that come afterwards (namely DE) will "move up" i.e. there won't be a blank space where you delete the X. After deleting the X the text will read ABCDE and not ABC_DE.

Aha now I see! Allright I guess it says something like this: "By pressing [DEL] key "X" will be erased, and "D" and the other characters to the right will move up and cover the space."

P.S. it's always tricky to translate tech stuff. You have to know subj first.

True that!

[manuel]

Problem solved. 
I looked at the scan. It's not 名キー, but 各キー. 
The kanji look a bit similar, but they're different.

So the translation is just "Names and usage of all keys on the keyboard."

[P]

OOOPS!! Sorry about that! It's not the first time I mix up the two together. I'll be more careful from now on!

Anyway that explains why it didn't make sense! Thank you!