Language in a Pokemon journey fic
I do understand in the anime, pokemons "talk" to each other by voicing out their broken-down-their-name sound to each other (FYI, Real-Life animal never communicates to animal of other species through their physical voice, to be fair many animals don't even communicate with their own species via voice). There is also this TRio Meowth who can understands pokemon's voice, and often from time to time he act as a translator between the pokemons and human. And for Ash's Pikachu, we can see quite often it wanted to communicate with Ash, and the first thing it does is voice out a sound, instead of via body language like Real-Life animal. I'm not sure how many people had familiarity with the Pocket Monster manga (the slapstick gag one whom the author is Kousaku Anakubo), but in this manga pokemon can speaks normal human language like any human characters (bar the Pikachu possess by Red).
So if looking at the portrayal issue of pokemon communication depicted by official canon, it is 100% understandable people will get this illusion of pokemons speak an unique "language" of their own. Despite we hear them as simply just repetition of syllables of their name, there may be some kind of systematic semantics and grammars and glossaries hidden inside that makes PokeSpeak a linguistically comprehensible language specific to pokemons, if such linguistic system even existed.
But, whether that is true or false, the next concern of mine is rather the most important point. From the eyes of human being, whether it is the readers reading your fic or human characters in-universe (bar a few selective ones with special ability), is this so-called "PokeSpeak" comprehensible? Obviously, NO.
If it is incomprehensible, then whether "PokeSpeak" is a language or not becomes an utterly unimportant matter to concern about. Because at the end of the day, no one can understands it, so write out something that possibly not even the author him/herself could understand is just meaningless, and a waste of page space and energy to read through it.
There is a reason why within novels written by professional authors, you don't see any sentences written in foreign language, even there exists a foreigner characters clearly speaking foreign language in a scene. If this novel is written in English, and within the story there are German, French, Arabian, Thailander, Chinese, Japanese characters, should the author then write out the dialogues in German, French, Arabic, Thai, Traditional/Simplified Chinese, Japanese when each respective characters speak during their conversation? If you do so, this novel will simply be a linguistic monster comprehensible only by the hyper-multilinguists that is less than 1% of the world population. That's why it is a common practice that in any written story, foreign languages are all translated to the target language of the novel, because you don't expect every readers are multilinguists. I don't know German, so if I'm reading an English novel, and a German character speaks his/her dialogue in pure authentic German, I won't understand a damn thing of what that character had said.
Of course, the difference between the above listed languages and PokeSpeak is they are truly existed Real-Life languages with systematic approach hence learnable. But, from the viewpoint of a reader that doesn't understand the respective language, it doesn't make a difference. I don't know PokeSpeak, so if I'm reading an fanfic written in English, and a pokemon characters speaks its dialogue in Pikapikapiiiiiiiii~, I won't understand a damn thing of what it had said.
And hence, you either do an internal translation, meaning in the fic the respective sentence is written in comprehensible English but story-wise you clearly stated that character is speaking a foreign language; or the character is as ignorant as the reader, hence there is no need to write out fully what the character had just said, where then the focus shall goes to other things such as body languages and tone of voice and attitude and any other non-verbal expressions that helps one to guess what the pokemon was trying to tell.
Whether one treat the PokeSpeak as a foreign language with regulated linguistic system or animalistic sound without meaning, the essential problem is still the same: Reader doesn't understand it, and possibly not even the in-universe characters.
And because of this, I never ever quoted any "speeches" of any pokemon characters in my works in the same way as how dialogues should be written for human characters, because they are simply just existentially meaningless.
