by Nick - 10.22.06
And here I thought fictitious languages were only for Star Trek. Over at ZeldaPower they have translated the text in Zelda, known as Hylian. The advent of the Hylian language dates back to Ocarina of time and has appeared in every Zelda game since, including the upcoming Twilight Princess.
Nintendo first started using a workable Hylian language in 1998 with Ocarina of Time. Players could find Hylian characters carved into walls, painted on signs, and even written on items, such as Zelda’s letter. The Hylian featured in this game was based heavily on Japanese, as is illustrated here. An English-speaking player could translate the Hylian characters into Japanese, and from there translate the Japanese into English. This same Hylian script made more appearances in Majora’s Mask, but translation is not possible, as all of what was written is incomprehensible gibberish.
All of this is very cool. It just adds another layer of depth to the already rich Zelda universe and, as dorky as it sounds, makes me want to load up some old Zelda games and run around and translate the Hylian glyphs for myself.
Wow, I always thought that it was just random scratches. I didn’t realize that they had actually made a Hylian alphabet.
Mushroom Pie - 10.22.06 2:16 pm
Ack, should’ve read the whole thing before commenting.
That makes me smile that the Hylian in MM is gibberish. That just goes to show how much attention they paid to detail to establish the surreal environment, even going so far as to alter something that players won’t even notice in the name of bizzareness.
Mushroom Pie - 10.22.06 2:18 pm
This is a little old, and I believe Hylian can only be translated fully to and from Japanese, not English.
Dejital - 10.22.06 2:21 pm
Always been fond of knock knock jokes in Klingon.
Spence - 10.22.06 2:29 pm
This is so awsome! its just like Lord of the Rings! Zelda truly is and will always be the greatest video game series known to man!!!
Alex - 10.22.06 3:11 pm
They guy from www.kasuto.net made his own font, and language. Its pretty cool. Not very useful, but cool.
Kee hee, knock-knock jokes in Klingon.
Fank - 10.22.06 3:21 pm
now they just need to decode that “L for luigi” thing…y’know, the plaque that’s on mario 64 and OoT…
btw, star trek is not the only fictitious language writers, true LotR fans will know what I mean when I say kela le yrch
Captain_404 - 10.22.06 3:46 pm
Heh, I seen this stuff several months ago.
Rasengan_Master - 10.22.06 3:58 pm
I remember discovering this shortly before Wind Waker was released. I really did think it was a bunch of random stuff until I think IGN did a thing on it. Seeing how the glyphs were just modified katakana, I quickly learned how to read it. Fun times.
Neko Tsukimi - 10.22.06 4:13 pm
>Old Hylian
>Notable features
>The script is primarily written horizontally left to right, top to bottom, but can also be reversed and written in the opposite direction: right to left with the letters flipped horizontally.
lol, sounds like some of the texture were flipped.
ThatGuy - 10.22.06 4:13 pm
what about the hylian from link to the past?
EL Hobito - 10.22.06 4:31 pm
hmm i would have enjoyed this article more if it wasn’t such a blatant copy from go nintendo.
spire - 10.22.06 4:52 pm
“what about the hylian from link to the past?”
Whether or not that was actually Hylian is up to debate.
Not to mention that the characters varied from the Japanese and English versions (piss poor localization in the NES and SNES era has effected Zelda more than other titles of that time)
Rasengan_Master - 10.22.06 5:10 pm
I’m pretty sure that the Japanese instruction manual for Wind Waker had a translator in it.
supadude5000 - 10.22.06 5:20 pm
Spire: Are you serious? I was curious as to what you were talking about so I checked Go Nintendo out, and saw the article to which you’re probably referring. Yeah, it does appear to contain much of the exact same content… until you notice that Go Nintendo’s post actually quotes and links to ZeldaPower’s article. I think you owe someone an apology.
Scottus0 - 10.22.06 5:33 pm
Now this would be a cool language to speak. Screw Klingon.
retro - 10.22.06 5:56 pm
OMG. Not only is this old, but other sites have posted about it as well! Well, by golly, I guess we shouldn’t have bothered!
Nick - 10.22.06 6:33 pm
i’m sorry for being so critical.
spire - 10.22.06 7:38 pm
Yeah, I saw something about this on ign a couple of years ago (not knocking you for posting it now, there’s still plenty of people who had never heard of this
)
What’s cool is that the “Modern Hylian” as they refer to it, ie the text in all the newer Zelda games, is really just a stylised version of Japanese Katakana, so anyone who’s learnt Japanese at some point should be able to read it.
I actually did try translating some of the text from the Gods in WW once, but there was a lot of it, so I kind of gave up
Jono - 10.22.06 9:07 pm
I’ve seen it before so this post is useless to everyone else in the entire world. For ever.
Oh, wait, I hadn’t.
ThatGuy - 10.23.06 12:51 am
Yeah, I tried to translate the ‘text of the Gods’ myself, but I couldn’t come up with anything that made sense…I guess it was because it correlated to the original Japanese but not English text.
9th Sage - 10.23.06 8:50 am
Nice post.
kiddkalen - 10.23.06 10:11 am
its easy to impose it. I mean that it goes in letters, then from that to Japanese Hiragana. One just has to substitute the symbols with Hiragana characters. the bothered not to change to Spaces between words and particles. In short, Its simple if you know the japanese alphabet. But its just my opinion.
EOM - 10.23.06 10:29 am
forgot to read the next link, sorry
EOM - 10.23.06 10:31 am
if memory serves me correctly after beating wind waker and playing through it again all the hylian language being spoken in the game is then translated and able to be read.
datguyjr - 10.23.06 5:32 pm
does everyone have twilight princess fever?
mike - 10.24.06 1:14 am
Yeah, this is REALLY old, guys. Not saying you shouldn’t have posted it, but don’t pretend like it’s new. ;P
JDavis - 10.24.06 11:54 am
Omniglot is such a great site if you have any interest in the written form. I’m writing a sci fi novel that has its own alphabet, and I go to Omniglot every couple of days to get inspiration from real writing systems and the fictional ones people send in.
amanaplan - 10.24.06 12:05 pm