2014-04-01, 10:19 PM
WOW, you weren't kidding about the epic amount of text! Nor about the massive repetition... I'm not finished scanning the file, but some blocks are repeated in excess of 10 times. 
The hardest part of this project I think will just be sorting out all the data properly (keeping strict tabs on start/stop positions, size of each translation block, etc.) I spent a few hours playing with some methods for automation of finding the real text blocks, but I think it will be much more reliable (and faster, at this rate) to just scan the file in the hex editor and jot down the positions. I noticed some patterns, but nothing that repeats perfectly. I've had good luck simply searching for instances of common characters, such as ã â and the ellipsis block â⬠¦The (duplicate) text is strewn over the whole of PACK.DAT, so for now, I'll just translate a few sections, insert back into the .dat file, and see if that's good enough to start. Eventually, when I've translated all the unique text blocks, it shouldn't take long to swap those out.
Thanks for the tip on ARMIPS! That looks like just the ticket.
I'll try to provide occasional updates, though feel free to poke me if it's been a while. This is just a very crude estimate, but I'll try to have the organizational stuff sorted out by the beginning of summer, and all the translation of the unique blocks done by around the end of summer. The text I've seen seems easier to translate than that in STA - it appears to be more conversational/colloquial, which is much easier for me than translating obscure item names and the like, since I didn't learn by studying 'textbook' Japanese.
At any rate, I'm committed now, so it'll happen (slowly)!