As some of you may have noticed by now, the front page for Haeleth’s website has now been replaced with a Japanese message dated “Autumn, 2010″. In it, he apologizes for his absence and the problems he’s caused and regrets having to end his participation this way, believing that there’s no point in trying to start up again after all this.
The message, translated into English, reads:
It has been a long while, so I guess everyone has already given up on me, right? I can finally say that people have been correct to have done so. I am truly sorry for having caused various problems for everyone.
I regret to see these very delightful several years come to an end like this, but
it seems that even if I were to try to fulfill all these promises at this late hour, there wouldn’t be any point. After all, I’m too embarrassed to even show my face, so there’s nothing much more that I can do.There’s no real way for me to truly apologize, but I sincerely hope you all understand.
Haeleth
Autumn, 2010
The original message is as follows:
ずいぶん経ったので、皆はずっと
前から私の亊を見限ってくれたの
でしょう。それは正しいと、よう
やく認めます。いろいろご迷惑を
掛けて本当に申し訳ありません。とても楽しかった数年間がこの様
に終わったのは実に遺憾とするが、
今さら約束を守ろうとしても意味
がないと思われます。どうせ合わ
せる顔もないから、これ以上は出
来ません。お詫びのしようもないが、どうか、
ご理解だけは是非ともお願します。ハレス
２０１０年、秋
Haeleth, originally with the ROM hacking community, is most well known for having started a translation project for Key’s popular game, Kanon, in 2002 or shortly before. This was one of the first attempts at translating such a game (the project for Radical Dreamers started probably around a year or so earlier), at a point when the visual novel translation community hadn’t yet split off from the ROM hacking community proper. The translation had a few releases from Haeleth until it was postponed indefinitely in 2006, or at least until he could secure the permission of the original copyright holder. This translation was eventually finished and released by Non-directional Translations, with several leaks involved along the way. Haeleth also ran a set of forums called the “gemot”, in which people could discuss about his projects and related interests and where registration was not needed for posting (The reason he gave for allowing guest posting was that registration doesn’t prevent a determined individual from posting and that he had liked the way 2ch worked).
Haeleth contributed to several other translation projects, including narcissu and its sequel. He was also behind various pieces of software needed for translations of games, including tools needed to disassemble and recompile games running under Visual Art’s’ game engines AVG32 and RealLive, as well as PONScripter, a fork of the open source engine for running NScripter games, ONScripter. PONScripter added better internationalization and font support and was used originally in the translation for narcissu -SIDE 2nd-. He eventually started gradually disappearing from public view of the visual novel community, contributing less and less to PONscripter and the slow narcissu -SIDE 2nd- project before finally posting the current message on the website after a long period of silence.