aqua46
Inkling Cadet
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whoops... no. I'm too busy staring at that gigantic black, writhing mass powering the city. but honestly, I hadn't looked up at all before finishing single player (>.<)
Inkling: The Language of Splatoon
- Thread starter Mithical1
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Zombie Aladdin
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It's very interesting to me that you've done some independent work on this and have come to similar conclusions that I have. I think it means we're on to something, but even at this point, there may be some in-game text that are just gibberish, such as the Rockenberg logo. However, that can be attributed to multiple people writing the in-game text with some of them caring more than others.
Because of Inkling letter distribution (characters I believe represent A, E, I, O, and U are extremely frequent, disproportionately so compared to normal English), however, combined with the unusually large words and very infrequent use of small words, I feel like most Inkling English is actually transliterated Japanese. This would hinder me a lot, as I don't know much Japanese.
I still believe there is an Octarian character set, as there are letters in the Sunken Scrolls found in abundance not found anywhere outside of the Sunken Scrolls. It is possible that it's not Octarian-specific, however, but a more archaic form of Inkling. I am still pretty sure it's an Octarian-specific character set but that it can also be decrypted into English or Japanese (more likely Japanese).
I also have the number 7 figured out, so it's just 6, 8, 9, and some weird additional numeral. I haven't the slightest clue why there's an 11th one, and the one that looks like an upside-down A is sometimes underlined (as can be seen on the license plates for the Squid Sisters' trucks and on the kiosk-style advertisements in Arowana Mall). I feel like that upside-down A is a special case, but again, I can't even begin to figure out what it means.
It is definitely possible that some characters are actually multiple characters if put into English, but I do think Inkling English uses an English-style lettering system.
I have. It's important for me to see if the same phrase can be seen in multiple locations and in multiple context, as that can also provide the meaning of the text and thus provide insight into decrypting this. There is a third place I found that exact phrase, also in Inkopolis Plaza, but I forget where.
Incidentally, there are shipping bins in Port Mackerel and Walleye Warehouse for Shrimp Kicks, but curiously, none of the other Booyah Base stores.
The sunken scrolls are the thing I was planning to transcribe last, so I hadn't yet paid attention to the fact that the text in those could be different from what was found elsewhere.
As for the Booyah Base (or Inkopolis) stores, I've seen Cooler Heads's logo on banners in Moray Towers, as well as in a few single-player stages. I remember seeing it in the first or second stage of single-player, now that I think about it.
I don't speak any Japanese, nor can I read the writing, so if the writing turns out to be transliterated Japanese, then I'll be hard-pressed to crack it. I'm in grad school and am working at the same time, so it's not like I have a ton of time to learn Japanese on the side as part of this pet project of ours. In any case, it seems from what I've seen that it's at least a mix of Japanese with some English. Who knows, though... maybe English gets interspersed in Japanese in the real-world too, so this would just be equivalent to Japanese. I know the same is true in Nepali; there are plenty of words from English just strewn about through conversation and writing that make their way into the native language. English seems to have a way of doing that...
BTW, I only read this thread through page 6 before skipping to the end, so I may have missed the answer to this question, but here goes:
Does anyone know if native Japanese speakers have attempted to do this same translation? If so, what have their thoughts/progress been? I'd be curious to see.
As for the Booyah Base (or Inkopolis) stores, I've seen Cooler Heads's logo on banners in Moray Towers, as well as in a few single-player stages. I remember seeing it in the first or second stage of single-player, now that I think about it.
I don't speak any Japanese, nor can I read the writing, so if the writing turns out to be transliterated Japanese, then I'll be hard-pressed to crack it. I'm in grad school and am working at the same time, so it's not like I have a ton of time to learn Japanese on the side as part of this pet project of ours. In any case, it seems from what I've seen that it's at least a mix of Japanese with some English. Who knows, though... maybe English gets interspersed in Japanese in the real-world too, so this would just be equivalent to Japanese. I know the same is true in Nepali; there are plenty of words from English just strewn about through conversation and writing that make their way into the native language. English seems to have a way of doing that...
BTW, I only read this thread through page 6 before skipping to the end, so I may have missed the answer to this question, but here goes:
Does anyone know if native Japanese speakers have attempted to do this same translation? If so, what have their thoughts/progress been? I'd be curious to see.
Zombie Aladdin
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There definitely are signs in regular English. Having deduced the values of some of the numerals, you can see that the large text in this sign reads "25% off":
(Even though I can't begin to make out what the small text says, as it's blurred to the point of illegibility.)
This sign is what gave me hope that Inkling can be deciphered.
I don't know if there are any Japanese attacks on the "language." I have a hard time finding anything out about the Japanese fanbase for this game other than that it's large.
The latter half of this topic seems to be a continued attempt to extract meaning out of the in-game text that went in a completely different direction than mine. It was then deemed gibberish and the topic was largely abandoned.
(Even though I can't begin to make out what the small text says, as it's blurred to the point of illegibility.)
This sign is what gave me hope that Inkling can be deciphered.
I don't know if there are any Japanese attacks on the "language." I have a hard time finding anything out about the Japanese fanbase for this game other than that it's large.
The latter half of this topic seems to be a continued attempt to extract meaning out of the in-game text that went in a completely different direction than mine. It was then deemed gibberish and the topic was largely abandoned.
There's a sign similar to this one in one of the single-player levels. It's an advertisement for Shrimp Kicks and it reads:There definitely are signs in regular English. Having deduced the values of some of the numerals, you can see that the large text in this sign reads "25% off":
"Shrimp Kicks"
"1-1/2 miles"
Is there a simple way to import screenshots to this thread from my WiiU? It'd be nice to be able to show this stuff instead of just describe it.
Since there seems to be a mix of English and Japanese, perhaps we need to collaborate with someone who knows both languages. Otherwise I've been trying to find images of signs in Japan that look similar to the warning signs and road signs that I see littered around the Splatoon world.
aceofscarabs
Inkling Fleet Admiral
You can import screenshots by uploading screencaps of gameplay to Miiverse, then accessing Miiverse from a browser and copying screenshots from the Miiverse album.
Zombie Aladdin
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Me, what I do for most of these is take screen captures from other people's YouTube videos. I do have video capture devices, one of which is more or less permanently hooked up to my Wii U, but I don't have Splatoon, so the only screen capture I've put up in this video is the Ika shirt from this recent Testfire (which I also used to get better, clearer closeups).
L95
Inkling
Another method (that gets better quality screenshots) is to hit home like normal, but instead of going to miiverse, go to the internet browser and go to imgur or something and upload there. As I said, this gets you bigger screenshots than miiverse.
An example screenshot using this method.
Miiverse screen, though I assume you peeps know what these look like.
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MissingNumbers
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L95
Inkling
Yeah, it's pretty nice.
Okay, so when you finish single-player, a monolith appears near the single-player entrance that you can activate to play the credits. I thought that this was going to be a Rosetta stone for the game, since it's got Inkling and you can compare it to the names of the development crew. Turns out that it's either:
1. A red herring and is not meant to actually mean anything, or
2. Evidence that the Inkling language is just gibberish.
I'm not certain which of those two it is at this point, but unfortunately I'm currently leaning toward the idea that it is gibberish. But here's what I found to show that, in the best case scenario, this particular object is not going to help decode the Inkling language. At worst, it's proof that Inkling can't be decoded.
Basically, the monolith is composed of 4 lines of Inkling repeated over and over and over. Lines could be flipped 180 degrees, but otherwise what first looked like it was the credits in Inkling is just the same 4 lines repeated in a bunch of different combinations so that, from a distance, it resembles the credits but is actually just meaningless. The images below are the 4 lines that are repeated, and an image of the monolith. I used several images of the monolith to get a composite view that showed each portion in focus enough to check if there were any regions that were not repeats of one of the four sequences (or upside-down versions of them). It's all the same.
.
Also, the reason why I'm leaning toward the idea that Inkling is just gibberish has to do with some of the lines that I see repeated in this monolith are ALSO seen in other places throughout Splatoon. For instance: compare my notes in the previous post to these images taken from warning signs dotting Camp Triggerfish. There are several phrases of three or more characters that are repeated across these three images AND in the monolith.
These images are all warning about hazards or dangers, while the monolith is supposed to be the list of credits. There's very little reason that I can see for why they should contain the same words as one another, unless the words didn't have meaning. Specifically, compare the second bullet point on that warning sign that has lots of text (image below) and the first line of text I wrote on the graph paper (image in the previous post). It's almost identical, and I can't think of a good reason why that would be other than that it's meaningless.
So, with this in mind, I'm currently leaning towards the postulate that Nintendo did not invent some kind of transliterative code that can be decoded to reveal meaning in its signs. Instead, I think Nintendo developed a series of characters that represent the Inkling language, but did not set up any rules about when or how to use those characters, so that instead you end up with some uses of the language where characters are chosen so that it is quasi-readable, and other times it's just a garbled mess of jumbled characters.
That's where I'm leaning toward at the moment. I'm not completely convinced at this point, though. I need to dig a little deeper.
1. A red herring and is not meant to actually mean anything, or
2. Evidence that the Inkling language is just gibberish.
I'm not certain which of those two it is at this point, but unfortunately I'm currently leaning toward the idea that it is gibberish. But here's what I found to show that, in the best case scenario, this particular object is not going to help decode the Inkling language. At worst, it's proof that Inkling can't be decoded.
Basically, the monolith is composed of 4 lines of Inkling repeated over and over and over. Lines could be flipped 180 degrees, but otherwise what first looked like it was the credits in Inkling is just the same 4 lines repeated in a bunch of different combinations so that, from a distance, it resembles the credits but is actually just meaningless. The images below are the 4 lines that are repeated, and an image of the monolith. I used several images of the monolith to get a composite view that showed each portion in focus enough to check if there were any regions that were not repeats of one of the four sequences (or upside-down versions of them). It's all the same.
.
Also, the reason why I'm leaning toward the idea that Inkling is just gibberish has to do with some of the lines that I see repeated in this monolith are ALSO seen in other places throughout Splatoon. For instance: compare my notes in the previous post to these images taken from warning signs dotting Camp Triggerfish. There are several phrases of three or more characters that are repeated across these three images AND in the monolith.
These images are all warning about hazards or dangers, while the monolith is supposed to be the list of credits. There's very little reason that I can see for why they should contain the same words as one another, unless the words didn't have meaning. Specifically, compare the second bullet point on that warning sign that has lots of text (image below) and the first line of text I wrote on the graph paper (image in the previous post). It's almost identical, and I can't think of a good reason why that would be other than that it's meaningless.
So, with this in mind, I'm currently leaning towards the postulate that Nintendo did not invent some kind of transliterative code that can be decoded to reveal meaning in its signs. Instead, I think Nintendo developed a series of characters that represent the Inkling language, but did not set up any rules about when or how to use those characters, so that instead you end up with some uses of the language where characters are chosen so that it is quasi-readable, and other times it's just a garbled mess of jumbled characters.
That's where I'm leaning toward at the moment. I'm not completely convinced at this point, though. I need to dig a little deeper.
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aceofscarabs
Inkling Fleet Admiral
The Splatfest Battle Theme is apparently titled Kimi iro ni Somete, which is roughly "I painted your color [of ink]" according to my forum buddy Elsewhere.
I wonder if this can help us figure out the lyrics better.
Zombie Aladdin
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I have long figured there would be no Rosetta Stone. There's no Rosetta Stone for Hylian, and there's no Rosetta Stone for Animalcrossingese. (Hylian has been solved, but to my knowledge, the weird character set used in the Animal Crossing game remains unsolved.)
By the way, that word you pointed out on the wall signs also comes up in Camp Triggerfish's sign about the gates, on one of the quarterpipe ramps in Moray Towers, and on an overhead road sign also in Moray Towers. In all of those instances, they seem to be a warning of some sort. I am pretty convinced that that word, at the very least, means "Caution," "Danger," or "Warning."
However, you are absolutely right in that different in-game text follow pretty different rules in how they work, leading me to believe that multiple people typed it up without necessarily having close communication with each other (which is strange for a Nintendo game, as Nintendo normally designs things precise to the nanometer).
I agree that the header for each of those signs is supposed to be a 'WARNING', 'CAUTION', or 'DANGER' alert, and that's fine. That makes sense within the world of Splatoon, and is consistently used throughout the world for that kind of purpose. What I'm more concerned about is the fact that the second bullet point on the sign (below) starts with the exact-same phrase as one of the lines on the monolith. Specifically, the phrase that resembles the characters "MC460U..." is seen in the 'caution' sign as well as one of the repeated lines in the monolith. This isn't the only instance of repeated lines in ways that don't seem to make sense; I just thought it was the most compelling example. If Inkling is decodable, why is the monolith just 4 lines repeated over and over? If the monolith should be ignored, why do one of its lines appear in other places in the world of Splatoon?
Zombie Aladdin
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Ah, I see what you mean there.
There is the possibility that they don't expect anyone to figure it out, or they're really not concerned about where they're placed as long as it looks natural. It's like the signs that say "Benvenuto!" in Super Mario Sunshine, which are found all over Delfino Plaza regardless of context.
There is the possibility that they don't expect anyone to figure it out, or they're really not concerned about where they're placed as long as it looks natural. It's like the signs that say "Benvenuto!" in Super Mario Sunshine, which are found all over Delfino Plaza regardless of context.
pumpCurry
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I succeeded in an analysis of lyrics, "plaza's theme at splatfest : (ハイカラシンカ)". When subtitles are right, they seem to read several characters as this. A way of an analysis synthesizes sound and takes out, and is only this which hears that earnestly and catches a component of sound.
sounds witten in katakana, I try translate to alphabet or please help me some works with me. thanks!
Pronunciation of the character I know was just transcribed by Katakana.
How to be used seems different by the character which is being used as an alphabet as a result of the analysis and the character used as pronunciation. There is a possibility that a linguistic rule isn't identical with a block style font or this font.
I read this thread and felt uneasiness. I'd try to checked it and reached only one of fact.
I discovered that the brand name and the shop name are completely different in the Japanese version and the mufti-language version.
To say that reading of a Japanese edition seems closest from the number of the phoneme for a logo, it's necessary to mark.
please see also this page : (The page is written in Japanese.)
http://wikiwiki.jp/splatoon2ch/?%C6%FC%B1%D1%C2%D0%B1%FE%C9%BD
Zink -> ironic (アイロニック)
Cuttlegear ->atarimeid (アタリメイド)
Tentatek -> arome (アロメ)
Zekko -> ezzokko (エゾッコ)
Krak-On -> kurah-ges (クラーゲス)
Inkline -> sigureni (シグレニ)
Splash Mob -> jimon(ジモン)
SquidForce -> battloika(バトロイカ)
Forge -> folima (フォーリマ)
Skalop -> hotax (ホタックス)
Firefin -> hokkorie (ホッコリー)
Takoroka -> yako(ヤコ)
Rockenberg == Rockenberg (ロッケンベルグ)
Yes,eli !!
This is Rosetta stone for certain!
Promotional video with these lyrics was the material official by which pronunciation is specified only offers!
An analysis result of the way to read was uploaded in ths thread page 10.
I written by Katakana, but I think it'll translate into English later.
sounds witten in katakana, I try translate to alphabet or please help me some works with me. thanks!
Pronunciation of the character I know was just transcribed by Katakana.
How to be used seems different by the character which is being used as an alphabet as a result of the analysis and the character used as pronunciation. There is a possibility that a linguistic rule isn't identical with a block style font or this font.
I read this thread and felt uneasiness. I'd try to checked it and reached only one of fact.
I discovered that the brand name and the shop name are completely different in the Japanese version and the mufti-language version.
To say that reading of a Japanese edition seems closest from the number of the phoneme for a logo, it's necessary to mark.
please see also this page : (The page is written in Japanese.)
http://wikiwiki.jp/splatoon2ch/?%C6%FC%B1%D1%C2%D0%B1%FE%C9%BD
Zink -> ironic (アイロニック)
Cuttlegear ->atarimeid (アタリメイド)
Tentatek -> arome (アロメ)
Zekko -> ezzokko (エゾッコ)
Krak-On -> kurah-ges (クラーゲス)
Inkline -> sigureni (シグレニ)
Splash Mob -> jimon(ジモン)
SquidForce -> battloika(バトロイカ)
Forge -> folima (フォーリマ)
Skalop -> hotax (ホタックス)
Firefin -> hokkorie (ホッコリー)
Takoroka -> yako(ヤコ)
Rockenberg == Rockenberg (ロッケンベルグ)
Given these lyrics, assuming we have all these characters (can't check right now but will tonight :D ) , it'd be INCREDIBLY helpful if someone could transliterate these lyrics into the Latin (English) alphabet. @Joseph Staleknight, @PiyozR, @aggravatedTranscription? Thank you all! Working on the font now. :)
Yes,eli !!
This is Rosetta stone for certain!
Promotional video with these lyrics was the material official by which pronunciation is specified only offers!
An analysis result of the way to read was uploaded in ths thread page 10.
I written by Katakana, but I think it'll translate into English later.
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Zombie Aladdin
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Heh, thank you for tackling this from the katakana front. I don't know much Japanese, so I'd be hopeless with that.
pumpCurry
Inkling
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okok I translate tonight JST, plz wait ;)
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aceofscarabs
Inkling Fleet Admiral
Nice to see that we have a real breakthrough!