That would depend, but it sounds to me like the journals are literally a graphic of a journal, open to a page, with a bunch of Japanese text literally drawn on the page, filling it up. As part of the CG. That could not be easily edited (note: edited, now, not redrawn) without a very skillful Photoshop master, which I am assuming Peach Princess does not happen to have and cannot pay for.
As for popping a text box over the journal screens, assuming my conjecture is correct…that would either require opaque windows covering the whole screen, or a lot of text windows for each Journal entry. A distant third choice is superimposing a translucent English text box over Japanese language character, which would be hard to read to put it mildly.
This leaves having the CG redrawn, which probably the Japanese companies would insist be done by the original artist and which in fact we would probably WANT redrawn by the same artist.
[This message has been edited by Nandemonai (edited 01-06-2003).]