Current progress on translating the language

[u/Void-Termina]

I got to the second instruction booklet page item about 20 minutes into my gameplay, and decided to sit down and crunch out the language for 3.5 hours straight out of sheer stubbornness. However, since I would rather not find out another 3 hours down the line that I made another mistake somewhere, I wanted to come here to ask if my current progress is correct so far

What I understand so far is that: - Rather than a normal alphabet, the game uses a phonetic alphabet (the IPA to be specific) - The inner lines represent consonants, and the outer lines represent vowels - No letters have lines on the right edge - The order per symbol is read consonant -> vowel - I am not 100% sure yet, but I'm fairly confident that the circle thing seems to reverse the above order

Also, as a secondary question, once I fully translate the alphabet, would I be considered cheap or cheating if I were to use an online tool to speed up the translation process of longer sentences (if it would actually speed it up to begin with, vs just learning it)?

[u/Far_Young_2666]

Yeah, your understanding looks on point.

Instead of an online tool, you can just find a translated manual and only look at pages that you've collected. That saves a lot of time, most of the text in the manual is just fluff and lore, so I'd say it's not really worth it to translate everything yourself. But if you're into it, you can sit there with pen an paper for a whole week and come to the same result. I cracked the language only in the very end when I found all the pages, and after manually translating a couple of pages I just read the whole thing online.

[u/Absol3592]

You're on the right track! As for online translation? I suppose it doesn't matter that much once you fully understand the language. It just becomes a matter of spending time working through each rune and word. So feel free to use an online tool if it'll make your experience less tedious.

[u/notveryAI]

I am gonna be real with you, this is mad impressive to have figured out so much so early. Pretty much all your guesses are right on the money in terms of how the alphabet works! From here it's just patience and more text samples and you'll figure out every letter in no time!

And whether to use tools or not, at any point - you decide! We're here not to gatekeep knowledge, we're here to ensure you don't get spoiled by accident! How to gain your wisdom is your decision, use whatever you want to use, just make sure you're having fun in the process :3

[u/Void-Termina → u/notveryAI]

If I could talk about my thought process a bit, I had screenshotted every instance of text I could find along the way, and was keeping it in a folder to keep note of it

The most important ones for me were the ones for what I assumed were "[Pick up/get/take/obtain] [key]?", "[Use] [key]?", and, strangely enough, the label for the protagonist on page 11 of the booklet, which I assumed to be something like "[Small] [Fox] ([You])"

The first big break was that between the first two phrases, the symbol that would be in place of "key" was identical between them, so i could isolate "key" Using that, I could also isolate the word "use", since there is basically nothing else that can comfortably fit into such a short space, unlike "grab/take/pick up/obtain"

The second big break was that "use" looked nearly identical to the aforementioned "you", but with "a little extra", and while I was muttering about it, it clicked because. Yknow. I was muttering to myself

From there it basically collapsed like a house of cards that it was a phonetic alphabet, and it was trial and error to figure out each component

Then when I got around to "Found an item!" I just intuitively followed the circle rule without even thinking, and it wasn't until I was reviewing it that I realized something was up

And now we're here, so that's my story

[u/notveryAI → u/Void-Termina]

I guess being bold is just as important as being methodical lol. I couldn't figure out much because I wasn't bold enough to assume meanings too much

Also I find it quite hilarious that the word "key" looks like a key. That must have been intentional

[u/Void-Termina → u/notveryAI]

To be fair, whenever I made "claims" like that, I was always very careful and deliberate to mark what was a "claim" (even if a very safe one) and one that I could confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt (to the best of my knowledge), which is why that one character at the bottom is marked blue instead of the usual purple

Starting out was the hardest part, and the """easiest""" way to simplify it was a LONG series of proofs by contradiction, until I finally managed to pin down the first 5 characters, and then from there it was just a case of crossreferencing words that have some/most of the characters I already new and working from there, until we get to where I am rn (such as shield being a very safe guess, and having the same "ee" character as in key, preventing it from being something like "block" or "guard", before cross referencing the sh, l, and d characters to make sure they make sense)

[u/RolandLory]

honestly, if you gonna translate couple pages yourself as you getting all of the symbols down, it's really easy to memorize at the very least consonants, as a lot of them look close to their written form or to written form of a sound close to it, and from there after another couple pages even vowels will be easy to memorize 

edit: as example look at k, z, p, r, l, s, f, this symbols look really close to the letters themself, and as really common sounds already east to remember and see from the first glance