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Krk edited this page Feb 7, 2025 · 13 revisions

Welcome to the Pokémon Emerald Latin Wiki!

This project aims to provide a Latin translation of Pokémon Emerald, both as a personal language-learning exercise and as a resource for others studying Latin. While I am still in the process of learning the language, I believe that an imperfect translation is better than none at all. Contributions—whether through translations or corrections—are welcome.

Philosophy

Video games offer an engaging and effective environment for language acquisition due to factors such as:

Intrinsic motivation – Players are naturally motivated to progress.
Language immersion – The game world reinforces language exposure.
Simple language – Short sentences reduce the barrier to entry.
Clear feedback - Visuals, action results, and game context aid comprehension.
Active engagement – Understanding instructions is necessary for gameplay.

While I do not expect to fully complete this project, I also have no plans to abandon it.

Translation Conventions

This translation follows a Vulgate Latin style—positioned between Classical and Medieval Latin.

Challenges

Several unresolved issues remain in the project:

  • Gendered Text Adaptation – Ideally, text should adjust based on the gender of the player character and Pokémon. Currently, the translation defaults to masculine for the player and feminine for the rival.

  • Decompilation Project Updates – The decompilation project may introduce updates that alter text line numbers, potentially breaking the translation. While a more robust solution is desirable, the current approach is based on the version from March 2024. Future solutions may involve leveraging Git to track line changes across versions.

  • Name declension - The names of people, locations, items, moves, and other entities should ideally be declined according to their grammatical context in Latin. However, implementing this would likely require a significant rewrite of both the text files and the string construction code. While it may be feasible to address this for battle-related strings (due to their limited scope), applying this system universally across all contexts will present a considerable challenge.

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