Zelda lexicon expands, Gerudo language translated and fontified

The Hyrule Historia continues to divulge dark, long forgotten secrets of the Legend of Zelda mythos. Well, mostly timelines and fonts, but that's still pretty neat for everyone in the Joystiq chapter of the Hyrulian Historical Society. The latest gem to be unearthed (insert appropriate sound effect here) from the Historia's gushing fount of knowledge is a translation of the written language used by Ganondorf's people, the Gerudo, and a font to go with it.

Decoded by Sarinilli, the same topographical alchemist responsible for creating the Skyward Sword font, the Gerudo language is also an alternate representation of the 26 characters of the English language. Strangely, the only numerals in the Gerudo alphabet are 1 and 5, which can be used as an effective (if inefficient) alternative for the Roman numerals I and V.

Hypothetically, this new knowledge could be used to translate Gerudo texts found in Ocarina of Time, but that sounds like way too much work to us. To be honest, we only joined the Hyrulian Historical Society for the political connections. The Gerudo Typography font is available for free, non-commercial use at Sarinilli's DeviantArt profile.

Reader Comments (21)

It would be neat if someone actually put this all together and found out that Nintendo had actually been writing them all in messages form the whole history of the franchise.

And then I hope they find a secret message, carved into the Temple of Time's archway that reads "Join the Nintendo Fun Club today!"

@RedRaptor82

That sounds more like your schadenfreude acting up.

@RedRaptor82

Drink your Ovaltine!

@bnfjlifsda89sa
Do you sell rope, lamp oil, or BOMBS? Are they mine as long as I have enough Rupees?

I can't wait to bomb some dodongos!

Makes me remember the Zeldablog days.

@BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam

Come back when you're a little mmmm, richer.

This is what irks me about these things:

"Hypothetically, this new knowledge could be used to translate Gerudo texts..."

Wait, so this guy "decodes" the text, but the first thing he does is create a font? I would have translated the crap out of Ocarina of Time first. I bet if I try a translation, it will come out as a bunch of gibberish.

More likely, this "translation" is just a catalog of all the different characters this guy could find in Gerudo writing, then randomly assigned to English letters and numerals.

Speaking of which, I wonder if the Japanese version of the game has a different version of Gerudo... :rollseyes:

@(Unverified) what I do wonder is if n64 and 3DS versions of 00T may have different things. Maybe the lower rez on n64 made it so it was gibberish but higher rez texture makes it interesting.

The depth of the Zelda universe is still so enthralling to me. It seems we learn more every year.

Don't reply to spammers, don't downvote them. Just report the comment.

@tehtimeisnow

You have an Apple picture for your avatar. I mean, I love apple products too, but thats not the right avatar to have with your statement.

what if, in every Zelda game to date, they've been slowly spelling out "F*ck you! Join the Nintendo Fun Club!"

It could happen.

i think you mean 'effective' not 'affective'

@gevenstaines Yeah, I was confused by that as well...

@tehtimeisnow Yes because Wind Waker was totally a rehash of Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword is totally a rehash of Twilight Princess. You don't get a birthday this year.

@tehtimeisnow

This troll is so obvious and clueless he needs a banhammer.

Wheres Chuck Norris when you need him.

There is a separate Gerudo script?

Wait a second. Has anybody actually *tried* using these "translations" to decode any of the text in OOT or Skyward Sword to find out of it's legit? Seems to me that if it were this straightforward, someone would've figured all this out long ago.

Besides, all these games came out in Japanese first, and I believe the Hyrulian text is the same in Japanese and American versions of the games. If the characters really correspond to the English alphabet, does that mean the Japanese programmers have been putting English sentences on the signs and whatnot in the Zelda games all along? I guess it's possible, but that doesn't seem too likely to me.

@The Deuce I checked a "Sold Out" sign in Bedlee's Air Shop Ship, and sure the first row had 4 letters and the second row 3. And the "O"s were on correct places as well. However I also checked some different signs spread around skyloft, and all signs that leads to places have tge same texts, no matter what place they leads to.

@(Unverified)

The translation is featured in the Hyrule Historia book that just came out in japan under the Ocarina of Time section. In the game there was not enough of the language used to decipher the language.

@The Deuce

Certain Zelda game's languages are based off of Japanese while others are based off of English.
Ocarina of Time Hylian is based off Japanese
Ocarina of Time Gerudo is based off English
Wind Waker Hylian is based off Japanese
Twilight Princess Hylian is based off English
Skyward Sword Hylian is based off English.
All these "languages" are just replacement character sets of their respective real-world language. This is all legit, and Sarinilli is awesome for making these fonts.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Zelda lexicon expands, Gerudo language translated and fontified

Reader Comments (21)

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:00PM RedRaptor82 said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:07PM ShivanSwordsman said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:50PM GreenElf said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:06PM BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:09PM Mrguy you know that guy said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:13PM Azurist said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:22PM Mrguy you know that guy said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:43PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 9:38PM adv2k169 said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 8:59PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 9:24PM Raffi256 said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 10:10PM jph89 said

Posted: Jan 8th 2012 11:42PM JakeAuditore said

Posted: Jan 9th 2012 12:02AM gevenstaines said

Posted: Jan 9th 2012 2:04AM IRONSAM said

Posted: Jan 9th 2012 12:15AM Churrotastic said

Posted: Jan 9th 2012 2:19AM Foetoid said

Posted: Jan 9th 2012 8:15AM yoshi95 said

Posted: Jan 9th 2012 9:13AM The Deuce said

Posted: Jan 9th 2012 9:54AM yoshi95 said

Posted: Jan 11th 2012 10:34PM 8bitstitches said

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