We made that effect by placing two text elements next to each other, one using an "alien language" font and the other using our normal font. The normal font text was right-justified, and the alien language font text was left-justified to make the two look like they're a single text. Then, we wrote a script that facilitated moving one letter from the alien text object into the normal one after a short delay.
After putting that all together, it looks like the entire sentence is being translated from alien to english!
We agree with you. Some last-minute background image changes made with our font hard to read and unfortunately it was too late to fix it. A font with a black outline would have been an elegant solution if we had the time.
