Decoding the manual

[Herr Sten]

Even with the help of the guide, I can't wrap my head around this stuff. Is decoding the manual a viable task for a layman or is it an activity mostly meant for codebreaker nerds?

[Nibbie]

Probably not reasonable, no, not without a big time commitment at least. Being sound based rather than a simple text swap makes it much more difficult than most similar systems. However, it should be noted that there is only one thing to earn in the game that requires translation, one of the secret treasures. The ultimate reward for those treasures also requires translation, but that ends up being a more mysterious reward not reflected in the game.

[lordanthrax]

Pretty much agree it's an activity best suited for people who enjoy codebreaking. Past a certain point puzzles just annoy me and I'd rather get on with enjoying the reward than beating my head against a wall trying to earn it, life's full of enough struggle without adding it into my recreation too.

[Herr Sten]

Thanks for your answers :)

[Om nom nom]

Are you referring to figuring out what the manual is trying to tell you, or are you specifically referring to translating the language? I'm not sure which one you are referring to in your question here.

I beat the game, and did both endings, all on my own without having to look anything up. I actually loved what this game did with the manual. You have to use your brain do understand the manual without being able to read the actual language in the game.
A lot of understanding the manual is done through pictures and using your brain. I loved this. No other game has done this in this way. The manual is actually a huge part of this game and it all just "clicked" for me.

Now if you are actually referring to the language in the game with your question I will tell you that you don't actually need to translate the language at all to beat the game. The language isn't just gibberish though and you actually can translate the language to get a better understanding of the story. It is not until pretty much the very end of the game are you given enough to understand how the language works and how you can go about translating it, if you so choose to do so.

It would take a while to manually translate the entire manual. If you don't want to do all that work other people have already done it for you. There is a guide here with the translation, but better yet there is a website that didn't just translate the entire manual in text form, but rather translated the entire manual where you can look at all of the manual pages as if it was in English. I suggest you hold off on looking at it until you beat the game.

Are you referring to decoding the language of the manual, or did you mean you are having a lot of trouble figuring out anything with the manual. Don't worry too much about the language itself. If you mean everything with the manual then just know that a lot of it is done through pictures and you have to infer a lot.

[Herr Sten]

I meant decoding the language, which the two earlier posters understood. I also picked one out as a sufficient answer. Appreciate your input tho

[Om nom nom]

Originally posted by Herr Sten:

I meant decoding the language, which the two earlier posters understood. I also picked one out as a sufficient answer. Appreciate your input tho

Ah ok. Well when you get near the end of the game you should find a page that shows you how the language works and how you can go about on translating it. I think it's page 53, or 54. (I don't remember exactly without looking).
That's the HOW aspect of how the language works and gives you enough to go about translating it, IF you choose to do so.

If you want to translate it "manually" still in a way that is much faster than doing so with pen and paper (omg that would take ages) someone wrote a piece of code that will let you do so much faster on your computer. I'll drop the link in case you want to do it on your own:

Glyph Translating tool link: https://jsfiddle.net/therks/0wLxdj3q/

If you can't be bothered and would like to just see the entire manual already translated for you: https://tunic.wiki/books/instruction-booklet-translation
(Obviously this is a huge spoiler!)

Cheers!