to me it seems like somewhere along the way the save was read wrong somehow by pokesav probably the storage area? so that's why it's all funky like that.
All the silly plans my friend and I came up with assume that either a) we'll hold out until we die of old age / b) hold out long enough for the zombies to fully decompose and disappear
Chase is working on it, http://projectpokemon.org/forums/showthread.php?p=55294#post55294 he put up what he has there, he needs people with retail carts to test it for him, please do if you can and leave some feedback.
Copy your .sav file from your CycloDS and open it with pokesav. when you're done just save and move back your .sav to your CycloDS. (Before you make any changes with pokesav make a back up of your save first in the rare case that something goes wrong)
what everyone uses to translate it probably a resource hacker (Reshack/PE Explorer/etc) for GUI changes and a Hex Editor(UEdit/HxD/etc) for poke names/items/etc
A FC is tied to you by the game card and DS that you used to access the Wi-fi. If you connect to the Wi-fi with your game but using a different DS it'll assign you a new FC.
The way it works is each of them are patching the game script(text) on their own and then put it back into the game. So you can't merge both translations cause the last one you put in overwrites all the text.
Edit:
Attached my script file so that you can look through it maybe compare/merge into yours Poketch names/Poffins and other stuff I can't remember and the dialog parts you can ignore since I chose Magnius's wording over mine at parts. If you use it, awesome if not oh well.
it opens fine, you just seem to be running an outdated version of pokesav.
get the latest one for HG/SS from http://projectpokemon.org/editing/pokesav/pokesavdownload.php
sounds like you're opening applocale with some other language instead of Japanese. You can either use the character map/google translate or w/e for Japanese text and then just copy and paste it into the pokesav that's running with applocale
The ??? question has been asked many times, check the forums in the future but basically it is because you're not running it with applocale. As to why the codes don't work. Is because I'm guessing you're using a patched game (kazo/wataru or w/e) when you patch the game the Game ID changes so when you try the codes you're basically trying to use codes meant for *another* game.
To put it simply it's the names of pokemon in japanese that way they are 'legit' for people who will trade them to their region's game whenever it becomes available