kafujo / pokeyellow-inuktitut

pokeyellow, inuktitut, japanese layout, crysaudio

pokeyellow-inuktitut

This is a Work In Progress, Inuktitut version of Pokemon Yellow. It is far, far from finished. If you have corrections to the translation, or would like to help translate, PLEASE open up an "issue" and notify me, or contact me on Discord if you know who I am.

About the translation:

It is assumed that most people playing this are learners of an Eskimo-Aleut language, not necessarily native speakers of Inuktitut or even learners of Inuktitut itself. One reason why Inuktitut was chosen was that it is a decent middle ground between Alaskan Yupik and Greenlandic, and there are dictionaries online for it for players to use. Also for that reason, various care has been taken (or is planned to be taken) in the translation, for example:

• In areas like choosing between the two fossils, where in English you need to know the vocabulary difference between "dome" and "helix" to pick which one you want, pictures have been added.

• In areas where the English and Japanese text essentially mean the same thing, the English has been chosen because it normally has shorter sentences with simpler grammar than the Japanese (example: English has "I am a Professor", Japanese has "I am called Professor by everyone"). However where the Japanese clearly differs from the English, usually due to text constraints or censorship policies, the Japanese has been chosen. Translation errors (due to the English translator being unable to play the game before translating it) have also been, or are planned to be, fixed.

• If possible, eventually a second version will be released specifically for learners, which breaks up morphemes and/or includes line by line translations, gradually erasing the translations as you are expected to learn the common words after seeing them multiple times.

  About the enhancements:

After reading biographies about Satoshi Taijiri, who created Pokemon, as well as reading at The Cutting Room Floor and Bulbapedia which showcase what code existed in the game but got cut, various things became clear. Long story short, Taijiri envisioned a much more engaging game, where pokemon were more animated, there were more unique sprites onscreen, etc. But due to issues during the production phase he was unable to enact his ideas, sometimes not until much later pokemon generations. At times I have implemented what it seems like he would have wanted or originally planned, without changing the main game too much.

For coders looking to borrow my code, there have been or are planned to be some changes:

• The original Japanese layout for pokedex, trainer card, etc screens, and various other Japanese-only features or text, which were cut from the English release of the games (due to programming staff issues and censorship rules).
• Restored original Celadon color palette, restored rival text, the original female player advertised in early 90s game advertisement art that got cut from the game, and various other things which were programmed in or planned to be programmed in to Pokemon 1st gen but which were eventually cut from the game due to programming staff issues or funding issues.
• Code-wise, some edited stuff to accommodate agglutinative languages and languages with sound changes or vowel harmony etc in words, required for accurate language from screen to screen or sentence to sentence.