 The Mother 3 fan translation project was announced in November 2006. Led by Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin, a professional game translator whose previous work includes games such as Kingdom Hearts II and anime such as Dragon Ball, a group of around a dozen individuals translated the game from Japanese to English in a process that took two years and thousands of work-hours. Those who worked on the localization were largely already known for their contributions to other fan translations, and Tomato's own experience in the fan translation community helped the project get the necessary resources. Tomato worked on the project as "a second full-time job" in addition to his full-time job as a translator. Young, who did public relations for the project and had little involvement in the process, estimated Tomato to have put over 1,000 hours into the project, Jeffman to have nearly 1,000, and even the smallest contributors to have put between 50 and 100 hours into the project, though no one tracked hours. The team chose to not alter the game aside for adding a new intro screen, which meant not adding their names to the credits. The localization included two elements: hacking the game data (ROM) and translating the scripted dialogue.
