Hi, I'm working on a translation of a japanese-only game for GameBoy ("Slam Dunk: Gakeppuchi no Kesshu League"), and the hacking part isn't really the hard part. In fact I'm having troubles with understanding japanese language, even hough i tried diving into learning japanese.

Anyway I'm here asking for this: below there's the "character set" that I dumped from SlamDunk ROM, and I'd like to have some help assigning each japanese character its corresponding phonetic (because I'm having a lot of trouble comparing each character with a table found on-line, they look all similar to me).


So, if you'd like to help me here's the way: each character has two coordinates (green numbers), so (don't mind about the first row, with number and symbols, it's just part of the character_table)  for example the exclamation point is "0C", the blue dot is "6E", and so on.

The only characters to which I'm almost sure what phonetic correspond (but, again, I can probably be wrong) are:
17 = ku
22 = nu
49 = go

Also, characters "1F" and "2F" are printed above other characters (something similar to vocals in arabic language), so they're probably part of other phonetic, that couldn't be put together in a single tile. Am I right, maybe?

And, an elucidation whether the characters in that table are katakana, hiragana or whatever, would be gladly appreciated.

--
Thanks in advance for any help you could give, and for your time,
Sawakita

10 = a
11 = i
12 = u
13 = e
14 = o
15 = ka
16 = ki
17 = ku
18 = ke
19 = ko
1A = sa
1B = shi
1C = su
1D = se
1E = so

20 = ta
21 = chi
22 = tsu
23 = te
24 = to
25 = na
26 = ni
27 = nu
28 = ne
29 = no
2A = ha
2B = hi
2C = hu/fu
2D = he
2E = ho

30 = ma
31 = mi
32 = mu
33 = me
34 = mo
35 = ya
36 = yu
37 = yo
38 = ra
39 = ri
3A = ru
3B = re
3C = ro
3D = wa
3E = o/wo
3F = n

From 40 to 6F, it's pretty much the same, except it's now in katakana (before they were in hiragana). Note that 6E is NOT o/wo, that's just some blue dot thing there. 70 to 7F are just little a,i,e,o,tsu,ya,yu,yo,a,i,e,o,tsu,ya,yu,yo. 49 is katakana ko, not go.

コ != ゴ　(こ != ご)

You see that go has two little marks on top while ko has none? I'm not sure what they're called (dakuten? Seemingly 1F) but the denote muddied sounds on the k, s, t, and h sounds (the h's have another which is denoted with a circle, seemingly 2F).

Anything else I didn't mention are common marks (note that 5F is a Japanese period).

Edit: Thanks MontyMole. >_>; I need to learn to type faster...

Yeah. It may seem like an annoying extra step, but it pays to be at least able to read the kana. If nothing else, you can paste your dump into a machine translator and get some inkling of what's being said. Not so much with straight romaji.

The official abbreviation for Japanese seems to be JPN. You can use that instead of "jap".

A little side-story: I was quite surprised a character in Dunbine actually called Shou, the main character, a jap. Considering it is a Japanese cartoon, y'know...

あいうえおかきくけこさしすせそ
たちつてとなにぬねのはひふへほ
まみむめもやゆよらりるれろわをん
アイウエオカキクケコサシスセソ、
タチツテトナニヌネノハヒフヘホ
マミムメモヤユヨラリルレロワヲン
ぁぃぇぉっゃゅょァィェォッャュョ

You were missing the katakana "wo" in there.

Ah. I was wondering why there was a stray comma in there. ^_^;