PokéBase - Pokémon Q&A
4 votes
6,506 views

That question title was probably confusing. Throughout the Galar region, there's a variety of signs and things with symbols on them, which I assume are letters. Is there some sort of key that can be used to translate this into a recognizable language, preferably English? I'm quite curious as to what some of the symbols say.

by
retagged by
Do you mean origin mark?
What's an origin mark?
This is a hard question, kinda, because some of us don't know other languages to know the symbols, but well, we can't do anything about that.
I highly doubt Galar's language is a language in the real world. I'm simply wondering if there's a translator of some sort out there.
Is there any picture or example you can show us?
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSEQvTE54ZKRuFpAi5aPJ2O3aZHeIxK07lfyraFaKE&s=0

The words on the Nursery, that sort of thing. There's a ton of other examples as well.
That's Japanese.
Is it? Could I have some pictures of those characters in real life?
保育園 is Nursery in Japanese according to Google. (It's most likely nursery but idk)
The characters do look a bit simplistic to be Japanese, I think.
Isn't 子供部屋 nursery? According to a couple translation sites "保育園" is "nursery school" while "子供部屋" is nursery :P


Doesnt really matter tho :P
Man, the daycare signs are not Japanese, It's a kinda weird language.

But, this looks pretty similar デイケア (daycare)
Prob a made up language
The words in Kyogre's and Charizard's comments are Kanji Japanese. The words in 8666's comments are Kana Japanese. That's why they look different.
The words in Y's comment looks a lot like chinese
Im Chinese, and it’s 100% not a Chinese word
I checked and it's 繁体字/older version of chinese language. And @rebel I also can read chinese
Kanji Japanese borrowed a lot of characters from traditional Chinese. I'm pretty sure those are Japanese words written using traditional Chinese characters.
@soul stealer
Oh it’s the older version?
Lol, I only know the new version

3 Answers

6 votes
 
Best answer

Contrary to sumwuns answer, I can say for a fact that The written language in Pokemon games bares no resemblance to Japanese. As someone who was taught from a young age by a native Japanese speaker, and proceeded to self teach throughout the years, I can confirm with every bone in my body that no signs in the game are in any form on Japanese. There are a few characters that resemble Katakana and Hiragana, but are plain, incoherent messes.

Although I do not remember where I heard this, in Gens 1-4 they did use real Japanese in the games and Anime, but since Gen 5 they made their own symbolic language that's gibberish for the sake of making it easier for universal releases and translations. According to this, The language, dubbed Pokelingo, used previously was able to be decoded as it was written based around English, but unfortunately the one in Sword and Shield is a completely different language as far as I can see. As for my observations in game, there seems to be two types of fictional language in Galar, and so far, it seems to be copy-pasted in majority of places.

I ran throughout the game like a madman and noticed a few consistencies:

-Every sign was the same (in regards to route)
-The symbols used in the gyms are different than the symbols used in the overworld and in houses, signs, etc

So they did try to add a variation to make it look more realistic, but from what I seen the majority of it looks to be copy-pasted.

From the knowledge we know and from what we can see, it is in fact possible that there may be a way to decode Galars Alphabet, purely based around the history of what they did in the Gen 5 Anime. But unfortunately, as for my observations, it seems unlikely as the majority of the text seems to be repetitive in multiple areas, making it unlikely, and rather that they have random assorted letters and signs premade and ready to be dropped into the game.

As of now, there is no known translation.

by
selected by
So there's no translator or way of translation in existence?
Probably not, i'll see if i can find my source and any backing up evidence tomorrow but i really felt the need to clear up sumwuns mess in the meantime. I will add more to this when i can
Alright. I won't switch BA yet but I'll upvote for effort.
Thanks son
Yeah, thanks for your effort. (+1 vote)
1 vote

After looking closely at uniforms, signs, and league cards, I’ve concluded that Galarian writing cannot be translated, but some of it is designed to resemble actual words. The signatures on league cards are actually the names of the trainers in the Japanese games, with their characters replaced with similar characters from the Galarian alphabet. I’ll give you some examples:

image
Milo’s signature looks a bit like his Japanese name, Yarrow.

image
Chairman Rose’s signature clearly says “Rose”. The character used for R on this card is completely different from the R on Milo’s card, which is now used as an O.

image
Bede’s card is supposed to say “Beet”, but Galarian cursive is tricky to read. Thankfully, Bede’s rare league card is signed in print:
image
These letters appear to be the same ones from Bede’s regular card. The R and A from Milo’s card are now a B and a T, which basically confirms that Galar letters have no actual meanings.

image
Here’s another cursive signature. This one looks like “Ruri”. It’s probably short for Rurina, Nessa’s Japanese name. I’ll leave you to guess what letters are used.

image
Klara’s signature looks like just a face, but it’s actually based on Japanese katakana. Assuming she wrote the “nose” first, her signature looks like “クララ”, or “Kurara” (Klara).

The rest of the league cards follow suit. Additionally, most league uniform jerseys have text that resembles the name of the uniform’s type in Japanese, and the flyers in the gym stadiums appear to read “Galar Pokémon League”. There may be other places where the text has meaning, but most of them seem to be nonsense.

by
edited by
0 votes

The signs (at least the ones in the comments) are written in Kanji Japanese.
source
source

by
reshown by
If so, why other well-experienced people can't uncover them, also, all letters aren't in kanji japanese! For example, the 'E' like sign in the Gamefreak logo present in the stadium.    Moreover, a single letter sometimes takes the role of a single word, which makes it almost impossible to find out what they are! Nobody could decipher this code yet! If they were Japanese, other people would have find it earlier! Are you sure that what you're doing? You mean other Pokéfans are mistaken?
All I know is that those 2 sources support my answer. I don't know about "other well-experienced people". Are you one of them? If no, do you know where I can find them?
Please tell me, if it's so, is your answer infact a 'way to decode Galar's alphabet'? Why any body aware of galar alphabet can't figure out this thing? Why we can't find a translated version anywhere in internet?
> Please tell me, if it's so, is your answer infact a 'way to decode Galar's alphabet'?
yes
> Why any body aware of galar alphabet can't figure out this thing?
Have those people tried putting those characters in Google Translate? If no, why not? If yes, what did Google Translate say?
> Why we can't find a translated version anywhere in internet?
I'm pretty sure it's because you haven't looked in enough places. Keep searching.