I Translated ALL 13 Sky Lore Tablets. You Can Read Them Now. || Zelda Lore

[@Drakenwild]

Since I did say in the title that you can, in fact, read them, all the translations in text form can be found here: docs.google.com/document/d/1XCrcEYYxb5OZvyjWZ1_-wgY4E9kY50DsM0Xwj8nILY4/edit?usp=sharing

[@frankwilliams2357]

I was never satisfied with Wotsworth’s seemingly paraphrased translations, though my own attempts were sorely lacking. Your analysis of not only the translation itself, but that of it’s grammar and word structure is brilliant and fascinating. Thank you for this effort as well as the translation document that you posted online. It honestly added to my appreciation of what is happening in this game.

[@Drakenwild]

Glad to be of service! ^^ Always liked grammar so this was a pleasure :D

[@WintrBorn]

Reading along, it reminds me of looking at texts in old and Middle English.

[@Drakenwild]

As far as I can tell having never taken Old or Middle English, this seems to be a weird combination of Ye Olde and German (with maybe a few extra odd things thrown in), so yeah.

[@whitneykelley3580]

@@DrakenwildI agree - definitely seeing a lot of similarities with German thrown in here.

[@Drakenwild]

@@whitneykelley3580 the moment I saw verbs commonly end with an -en I was like, okay

[@AtlasArtAnimation]

Yeah… it kinda does.

[@ArtemisWasHere]

More like weird Middle English and German Old English is *unrecognizable* and more so resembles Nordic languages

[@robinfox4440]

I was able to get the gist of the "incomprehensible" text, and it made me thankful I took that one paper about Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales.

[@Drakenwild]

Never heard of that, care to explain?

[@johnvalerio4041]

@@Drakenwild Chaucer was considered one of the first great English writers. He wrote in Medieval England, hundreds of years before Shakespeare. The Canterbury Tales was one of his last, and best respected, works. They're a collection of stories told by a band of travelers, from a variety of societal perspectives, often with biting social commentary. It's a little hard to get a handle of, but if you read it out loud, its a beautiful and funny text Ps, Wortsworth's character riffs off of Wordsworth a real life Romantic era English writer. The localizers had fun

[@officiallouise]

how incredibly impressive!! so many dedicated creators are already putting in the hard work to crack the lore of this amazing world and the game hasn't even been out very long. thank you so much, you should be so proud of your translation efforts :)

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you very much!!! :D

[@sledgen.]

Translating stuff in zelda is so interesting and something I don't see very often, so great video!

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed :D

[@adrianamurillo5810]

Here's timestamps for every tablet in case anyone needs a specific one 16:00 - Lookout landing tablet 16:22 - Account of a celebration 16:46 - The strong queen and the receptive king 17:13 - The harmonious couple 17:51 - A pilgrimage of light 18:40 - The researcher Mineru 19:21 - The foreign princess 20:00 - The free-spirited Zelda 20:35 - The latest trend 21:15 - An ancient ghost story 21:54 - For the hero's sake 22:58 - The day the land rose 23:42 - A parting resolve

[@robuxyyyyyyyyyy4708]

Maybe back then there was no definitive spelling like with English

[@Drakenwild]

That's one of the points I'm making. Writing system was young back then so rules of it might not have been very strict and definitive yet. Still, doesn't exclude the possibility of the chamberlain misspelling stuff due to lack of education or the words getting distorted over all the years they had to endure. The spelling issue is likely to be a combination of all of these factors.

[@budgetcoinhunter]

There absolutely wasn't. Even English (this text is based on middle English) itself was rife with spelling inconsistencies. Take the simple, common word "church". Spellings like 'kirke' and 'kirk' also happened, and even live on today, thanks to those inconsistencies. That said, the spelling does also account for the phonetic and grammar evolution that has occurred in the many years English has been spoken. It may be our native tongue, but it's well worth tracking down a documentary on how the English language developed.

[@niru9981]

17:29 I would probably translate it to "In her wisdom she seems divine, that she could ever find him, and for his folly he seems the more human". It feels almost poetic, if a little comedic, to have the earthborn hylian seem like a goddess and for the zonai said to decend from gods to seem like a simple human.

[@Drakenwild]

Yeah, that one was a bit of a struggle ^^'

[@jacobweeks777]

This video is completely awesome! Just one thing though, at 18:40 I would translate that as "quaint Mineru" instead.

[@Drakenwild]

You're right, it makes far more sense! It was one of those words I got quite a bit stuck on ^^'

[@abdulnasirbushra6049]

This must have taken days and days! As funny as it sounds, you have inspired me to make my own research mini lab at home like Purah. Ive been researching a lot about business and muscles as they have been on my mind recently working out and all and I see how you make your videos even though it's from a game, it is so intriguing to watch and so interesting. I thank you!

[@Drakenwild]

And I thank you too, comments like these always brighten my day

[@nattibull]

Wonderful job! And fascinating video. I love your content. Keep it up! 💚

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you, so happy you enjoyed! :D

[@mil87_]

The -e suffix is an example of an irregular and obscure grammatical function linguistic scholars have coined as "lol what if we put some random E's on some words to make this sound more foreign"

[@Drakenwild]

Sounds like something French would do.

[@budgetcoinhunter]

@@Drakenwild You mean like, say, during the Norman Conquest of England? Gave English plenty of new words as the French influence left its mark. It's why English has such different nouns for food vs. the animal. beef from the cow, pork from the pig (swine), mutton from the sheep. English (Germanic origin) in the field, French on the plate. Just like who raised it and who ate it.

[@CaryFree]

Your work here is impressive! In the language I played the game in, the tablets were in modern French, and from what I remember, your translations and the one in the game said about the same thing! 👏👏

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you! That is great to hear! ^^ And yeah, I talked with some other creators while editing this video and learned from them that the English localization is the one that got the short end of the stick with being nigh unreadable. Meanwhile German and Japanese just got some archaisms to make the text sound old but otherwise they are completely legible to an average player.

[@CaryFree]

@@Drakenwild lol, they just thought: “what if we made it completely unreadable” and didn’t think twice about it :’)

[@Drakenwild]

@@CaryFree maybe they just wanted to be cool and made their own dialect xD

[@indigo0977]

I can see that is cool to write in a dialect, and honestly relatively realistic given real world language shifts over time. But if language drift over time is canon then Zelda should have had some real problems communicating verbally with anyone in the past. Same goes for any ghosts that were trapped in one spot without outside contact for millenia, though I'm not sure whether any that definity meet that criteria actually exist in the game.

[@KokiriTheory]

thank you for doing this work, it’s such a helpful translation and I loveee the deep dive on how the grammar works!! now I’m curious how the various localization teams made the text seem “ancient” in other languages… such an interesting process!!

[@Drakenwild]

From what I know, and there are French commenters somewhere in here to corroborate, all other languages made the original text completely legible and just sprinkled in some archaisms to make it feel old while reading. This seems to include original Japanese, where they basically just used an older set of symbols. To my knowledge, English is the only version where the tablets are in their own dialect, everywhere else Wortsworth doesn't translate them, he just provides an interpretation.

[@mylittlel0h]

Russian player here! As i remember, they just translated it. Like, in normal russian, no "ancient" or "old" looking text :((

[@safflinaaa2956]

Thank you so much for doing this! I was looking for a deciphered version all over the Internet and somebody in dc sent me the link. I wasn't satisfied with Wortzworth's interpretations and this is exactly what I longed to see! Also your drawing is really cute and I like your accent🥰

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you

[@DonutSwordsman]

how did zelda know that the champion would come from the sky?

[@Drakenwild]

I assume Fi told her when the Master Sword was called back into the past.

[@Basic_Blue1]

These were amazing translations, and made sense for the time and situation. I am sure I speak for everyone when I say thank you for all your work to bring us this story, and decipher this gibberish.

[@Drakenwild]

Glad to be of service!

[@TheFridelitPlay]

Wow, I can't believe that this video is of such a good quality in terms of both the topic and editing, and you have less than a thousand subscribers. I've come here from recommendations, and I'm definitely going to stay. Keep up the good work!

[@Drakenwild]

I'm doing my best! xD Thank you and welcome ^^ Have a hot chocolate! ☕

[@wizcatcheslightning]

Nicely done here, Draken!

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you! :D

[@bunnybaker2289]

I wonder if we have seen the writer of these tablets in the flashbacks. They seem to have been around for important events

[@Drakenwild]

Not sure. The only non-royal Hylians I remember from these are the soldiers. I'd say the teahouse scene would be the best bet, if the handmaid was to be somewhere in the back.

[@GoodNeutralEvilChaos]

This feels so much better than the gibberish from the game. Thank you.

[@Drakenwild]

No problem! ^^

[@Boleniana]

I am SO glad you have subtitles for this; I mean subtitles are always good, but there's something with the audio here, where I can only hear the words if my volume is turned way up (which means that any other notification sounds are like a gunshot), so yeah. (I genuinely don't know if it's a deliberate choice on your end, or an issue with how the video is, or if my computer has just decided to be stupid on me in a weird way; that third option doesn't make SENSE, but my computer has done stuff which EQUALLY doesn't make sense, so I can never rule it out.)

[@Drakenwild]

Huh, that's really odd. I just checked and on my end the audio is fine. Frankly, if anything, I made background music quieter than usual in this one.

[@Drakenwild]

Come to think of it, I also did make everything quieter overall but it wasn't by THAT much, it's still within the usual volume range of videos on KZbin. What system volume do you normally listen at?

[@Boleniana]

@@Drakenwild When I'm listening to people talk on youtube, I generally have it at 20-24; here it was only easy to hear at 30 (and my volume only goes up to 40). Which isn't UNHEARD OF, on here, but it's still annoying for me. (Admittedly I do have issues in tracking any given audio signal when there's background noise, which there inevitably is because I don't like wearing headphones; but that applies to all videos.) And the other stuff I'd watched from you, those videos didn't have this issue.

[@Drakenwild]

@@Boleniana that is really weird. It shouldn't be this way. I tested it - admittedly on headphones - and it only started becoming harder to listen to at near zero volumes. Well, nothing I can do about it now but that is good to know, thank you for the feedback!

[@Zenith8896]

What brought me here is your collaboration Zelda videos with Moxie. Your accent is very epic, and I plan on binge watching all of your videos. Yo! 👋

[@Drakenwild]

Yo! Thank you and nice havin ya ^^ Have a hot chocolate☕

[@Zenith8896]

@@Drakenwild You have my gratitude for the hot chocolate. When you were talking about the exotic plants in The Depths with us you said that they could exist without photosynthesis. The "trees" (EverMeans) that attack you down in the chasms are plants as well?

[@Drakenwild]

@@Zenith8896 Compendium mentions that Evermeans are very specifically not trees but rather monsters indistinguishable from local trees. So no, they aren't plants, they just look plant-like.

[@Zenith8896]

@@Drakenwild Thank you so much Drakenwild. X3

[@Drakenwild]

@@Zenith8896 no worries! ^^

[@hylianevalink]

It seems to be an English only thing and it's a shame. In French they are all readable, the researcher only provides you his own interpretation/context because since the texts reads like a diary, it sometimes lacks a bit of context and he provides what he THINKS is the context (which isn't always 100% accurate but helps a little) I don't know why the English translators decided to do that

[@Drakenwild]

I don't know either, man. Localization team did us dirty. From what I heard from other creators, Japanese and German are also easily understood, they were just made to sound a bit archaic. And then the NoA team came and made their own dialect.

[@hylianevalink]

@@Drakenwild From what I've seen of the game in English and some stuff, they have changed and rewritten a LOT of stuff which is... Weird and a shame. If you're interested, I've subbed the French version of the Imprisoning War back to English because the way Mineru explains is better imo in French.

[@Drakenwild]

@@hylianevalink oooh, awesome, I'll take a look ^^

[@cupkelpie4656]

That is a lot of work you put into this. Amazing!

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you! :D

[@TopherCadence]

Well this gave me chills

[@Drakenwild]

:D

[@johnvalerio4041]

Great work!

[@rexemondaforever2283]

This is incredible! Not only did you do a great job translating, but did nintendo even make this?

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you! But to be honest, I'm not sure I understand what you are asking.

[@rexemondaforever2283]

@@Drakenwild It seems I mistyped a little, I only meant I was surprised that there was this much effort put into it by nintendo that you had to do that much work to translate it.

[@Drakenwild]

@@rexemondaforever2283 apparently, though these tablets are really weird. As far as I know, they are only like this in English localization. People who played other language versions keep reporting that the text includes some archaisms to make it feel old-timey, sure, but it is otherwise understandable.

[@rexemondaforever2283]

@@Drakenwild That is interesting! Maybe it would be too difficult to give the tablets the same treatment in every language. Does the Japanese version also use older style but is still legible?

[@Drakenwild]

@@rexemondaforever2283 yes.

[@zaristophanes]

What an incredible unique accent you have, where are you from, also great video, this helps my understanding of the story :D

[@Drakenwild]

Why, thank you! I am Polish ^^

[@tknoodle]

This definitely looks like Middle English to me - compare Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Another factor to take into account for the variations is that this is in the context of a work of fiction: I wouldn't be surprised if a _team_ of staff were tasked to "write like it's middle English" and they brought about their own word variations. This would actually work well: English didn't receive official spelling rules until centuries later, and most writings were phonetic - the ecclesiastic scribes would do their best all across the country, and have different variations... some differing because different spellings would make sense, and some because of accounting for regional accents. So to take different staffers' attempts at writing "middle-english-y" would produce a similar amount of variation. I wouldn't even be surprised if Nintendo had hired a bunch of English History graduates (familiar with the grammar) and tasked them with a stele each 🙂 I would love to hear from a specialist on actual Middle English on this one...! All in all, well done on decoding it !

[@tknoodle]

There's a post somewhere about the Zonai writing btw (came across it on a FB page) where someone managed to link the anction Zonai pictograms with an ancient (though disputed in its historical existence) form of Japanese writing. So they definitely didn't only have a go at English... 🙂

[@Drakenwild]

That's very interesting, thanks for sharing! Regarding the Zonai glyphs though, the situation is unfortunate. From what I'm aware, the Zonai writing has been all but decoded at the time leaks happened and indeed, it was mapped to old Japanese. Then the game came out and people who worked on deciphering it were shocked to find out that the writing has been completely changed. As of right now, we do not know how to interpret these glyphs. It's entirely possible they're just gibberish now.

[@tknoodle]

@@Drakenwild Hopefully I am wrong, but the post I saw was from after-release... I am of a mind to go hunt for it now...

[@Drakenwild]

@@tknoodle it could have just been circulating? idk, I'm not a part of the effort to decode it, I know someone who is.

[@coryhafer7285]

Great work. I only wished you had left the position of the words instead of flipping them for modern English. There is a little more poetic rhythm to it in the order it is read. It also yields slightly more weight to a sentence. An example might be the difference between "you are welcome to come to the party." And "you are cordially invited to a festive event."

[@Drakenwild]

Then the issue isn't the position of words, which in your example remains the same, but rather the choice of more archaic vocabulary instead of the modern counterparts. In the lore tablets most words were seemingly based on modern English, so I actually didn't need to make too many vocabulary changes, I mostly corrected word order and very occassionally added words where they were missing. Also, thank you!

[@ShinySwalot]

Doing gods work

[@Drakenwild]

:D

[@ShinySwalot]

@@Drakenwild I do now more get what you said on discord hahahaha

[@Drakenwild]

@@ShinySwalot yep. xD I still don't have a German version of these for you to try out.

[@ShinySwalot]

@@Drakenwild boohoo :(

[@sofiem8936]

thank you for this :)

[@Drakenwild]

No problem :D

[@davidwave4]

I’m curious if the translations change at all in the Japanese version.

[@Drakenwild]

From what I know, English is the only language in which these tablets are written in their own dialect. Everywhere else the text is easily understood and Wortsworth just gives you his interpretation of the events. Unfortunately I don't read of speak Japanese, so I'm not able to say much more than that. I know from other creators that in the tablet 11 there is a slight deviation when Mineru and Zelda are discussing the problem of Ganondorf's return, you can read that explanation in the editors note on screen.

[@Boleniana]

Okay so I'm only nine minutes in, and you mentioned not being able to figure out rules for -e; might it be on a non-grammatical level? Like, the English indefinite article "a" becomes "an" when it's in front of a vowel sound, for something based in spoken language (compare "an umbrella" with "a unicorn"). For something based in written language, is there any pattern of letters that are right next to it? When presented in-game, is it something that balances the line width, in which case it might be something that can be added to get a desired aesthetic effect. I should note that I've neither played the game nor watched a play of it (yes I watch analysis videos about stories I've never experienced, yes I know that's weird, yes I enjoy doing it this way), but I did study linguistics in uni.

[@Drakenwild]

I'm not sure to be honest. It seemed to appear at random but I may be missing something. It's not the only spelling inconsistency I found, so I came to the conclusion that it was done by developers to simulate damage to the text. Though if you'd like to take a look at it yourself, I've left a link to the doc with all the raw text and what I came up with for it in the pinned comment.

[@M2DaZi]

Beautiful rabbit hole ~

[@Drakenwild]

Goes very deep ~

[@M2DaZi]

There's an air of melancholy once the texts are finished. Honestly great job with this, I'm looking forward to following you down the next one ~

[@Drakenwild]

@@M2DaZi Looking at a script I have started working on, OH BOI, does that hole go

[@ismaelahmad5740]

What background music did you use during the translationz? Also, great video!

[@Drakenwild]

Forest Songs and Epilogue from Titan Souls. And thank you! :D

[@Gensei-Kihara]

great job!

[@Drakenwild]

Thanks! :D

[@Nerd2Ninja]

Sorry to throw a wrench at you, but is this text in the Japanese version of the game? What is the Japanese translated version?

[@Drakenwild]

From what I'm aware in Japanese these tablets are written in their older symbol system, which makes it feel old without actually making it difficult to read. From what I remember of the translations I've seen from Japanese, mine are generally pretty on point but I don't have them on hand.

[@Channeldyhb]

Don't understand why they wrote the text in ancient hyrulian and not Zelda's

[@Drakenwild]

There are a lot of choices they made about this that I don't understand

[@adamburgess311]

Susters

[@Tanookicatoon]

Do people really need help understanding middle english??

[@Drakenwild]

They do. And from what I can tell it's not 100% middle english anyway, some of it is pretend middle english.

[@Link-Link]

That's some serious dedication you got there, probably took a while to make. But wow, did it came out good! I really admire your dedication in those videos, the quality in them is outstanding!

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you! Suprisingly enough, editing took the most work ^^' Never really dealt with that much important text in a single video. But I really like how it turned out! :D

[@Chubby_Bub]

Thanks for this video. I attempted the same thing myself but have little actual knowledge of the linguistics. Your translations and effort are much better. Something I find interesting is that none of the other versions of the game, including the original Japanese, had this old-language gimmick. It's only English that chose to do this- which is fun, but it makes it so you only really get Wortsworth's interpretations while in other languages you get the original text and watch Wortsworth interpret it. It's also baffling to me the way the localizers did this, where some of the words and structures seem to be based on real Middle English, obscure and certainly researched, yet for the most part the text is nonsense based on modern English and as you have demonstrated, with little consistency. They very clearly wrote it in English first and then made it sound "old-fashioned", but the scattered real words that can't have been just by doing that (e.g. "eke", "hende", "thurghgon") makes it extremely confusing what their approach was. I feel like... it's like if someone poorly evoked French by parodying "Zis is how oui speaque le Frenche" but then occasionally used words or phrases only a fluent speaker would know.

[@Drakenwild]

It's an extremely weird choice, yes. Just, the whole thing. They definitely could have made this text read as old time'y by borrowing influences from Middle and Old English without making it unreadable for most people. Octopath Traveler did something of that nature with dialogue of the hunter character. She spoke weird but could be understood no problem with minimal effort. I struggle to understand why they decided that yes, this is the way to do it and after going through all of the corporate processes they surely have in place for this stuff, everyone involved has decided yes, this is good, ship it. At this point, I feel like they'd be better off just pulling out all stops and doing it fully in Middle English. Would be equally incomprehensible to an average player but at least would be more cohesive and overall impressive. Also, tbf, having never taken old English courses I failed to realize that some of these are actual real words, I worked under the impression that the localization team took modern words and all the way through did what you described with the French example, except that they took it way too far. Honestly, that observation explains why many of the words looked like no modern word in particular.

[@tknoodle]

Interesting observation. Is that to say, the stele/tablets throughout the game actually carry different symbols/textual textures ? And thoseones did not do the Middle-English effect? Or did every game, incl Japanese, ship this Middle-specifically-English text ?

[@Chubby_Bub]

@@tknoodle The textures are meaningless, I mean that the actual game text when Wortsworth reads them to you is in the actual language you're playing in instead of a fake archaic version. It might be a bit formal, but entirely as understandable as the rest of the game. Only English chose to have him read it _in_ Ancient Hyrulean.

[@isupposeiexist]

As someone who studied English and old english texts, I was able to get most of it just reading, but I am glad there are people out there fighting the good fight of understanding and bringing it to the masses!

[@Drakenwild]

Thanks! :D

[@Lasanga95]

Yes I could also mostly understand the gist of it. I have read a book about runes before and in that book there were parts where you could atempt to translete old norse scentences,it felt a bit similar with the old hyrulean. I wish link could learn old hyrulean so he can read the tablets hi self like in a Link to the past.

[@Gyashonav]

The text on Ganon's weapons is in Old Hylian (oot, I tried double checking this but couldn't find enough info to see if it's from oot or ww). I find it odd that it's in this and not Gerudo though but the text (old hylian) does translate to Japanese.

[@Drakenwild]

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

[@epicgamernoisesintensifies6238]

0:31 I had very little problems translating the majority of the words of the text, not all of them but enough to get a basic to moderate level of detail on what they were saying. Don’t know why others have such trouble with it.

[@Drakenwild]

Honestly, without sitting down to go through all of these in detail, I've had issues, too.

[@dallindespain5082]

I think it makes a lot of sense that the language has such inconsistent rules as it is likely a fusion of zonai and native hylian.

[@DominicRobinson-ju7st]

i love how she roasted the ecomenme

[@tomfool5460]

Very nice video! I can see the amount of effort you put into this video and how much passion you have for this game. Thank you and keep going strong!

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you for the kind words! :D

[@layzpotato]

many times in zelda games Hyrule is referred to as she or her, this is most likely because goddess Hylia is a goddess rather then a god so she is most likely a woman and its believed that goddess hylia watches over Hyrule and protects it

[@Drakenwild]

Didn't know that, thanks for sharing!

[@balladofthegoddess]

I appreciate the captions being done!!! Thank you!!!

[@Drakenwild]

Happy to help! ^^

[@Zenith8896]

@Drakenwild I'm in the process of collecting these transcripts in Tears of the Kingdom. In the translations, does it mention who is praising Queen Sonia and King Rauru?

[@Drakenwild]

Not sure what you mean? Sky Tablets are written by a servant but I feel like you're talking about something else and I'm just blanking.

[@Zenith8896]

@@Drakenwild Oh sorry for the confusion. You totally answered my question. ^0^ The servant was speaking. Gotcha.

[@Drakenwild]

@@Zenith8896 glad to have helped!

[@Csalters12]

Great work 👏 👍

[@Drakenwild]

Thank you!