HFQ Offical Snippet #4

bigrunt wrote:Is Gorjah part of the same group as Aivah? or is there a third group in the mix?

..snip..

Remember that Owl found 212 discrepancies between Langhornes records and Pei's records concerning the assignments of the colonists in BSRA ch. 6. Four of those where Jeremiah Knowles with family.

Joat42 wrote:

6L6 wrote:I am suprised that after seven hundred years that the sisters have made no progress decypering the parts in epanol. Once Jean-François Champollion had the Rosetta Stone he was able to read Egyptian Hieroglyphs. In suggesting that Merlin give the sisters a dictionary they would know that the text was true and that Merlin was not trying to decieve them.

If you lack cultural context some things just don't make sense even if you speak the language and it gets even worse when you translate things.

For example, you read a journal and it notes that a person makes a quick trip to the Somerset House regarding marriages, what does that signify?

If you lack the cultural context you have no idea what the above note signifies. (Bonus points to people who understand the reference).

You are completely correct, the more you would lean on collequal and figurative writing, the less understandable it would be even if someone were to translate the literal language.

Add to that thousands of words (especially technical) that have no analogue in Safehold English - and the use of Acronyms which have started to prevade modern languages.

You could easily have a language that doesn't just have words that do not have direct translation, but have concepts and ideas which don't translate, hidden in other words.

I remember my first year of learning German, I acidentally used the word preservatives instead of preserves (speaking about prolonging food goods), but instead advocated using said food as contraceptives - which when my laughing teacher finally caught her breath and explained the idomatic translation to me, the whole class of 15 year olds broke up as well. In English, knocking a woman up gets her pregnant, in German you knock her down, In Spanish, I believe all it takes is to embarass her.

And if you don't know this - the meaning goes right over your head - just like that bottle of Jam.....

Grabthar's Hammer wrote:I wonder if some of the Espanol text reads:

"Hola, me llamo Seijin Khody, tú mataste a mi padre, prepárate a morir..."

Khody wrote in Spanish to prevent other people from easily discovering what he was recording. I really doubt he would have left behind such an obvious way to decode the message. It would be like leaving a codebook open right next to an encrypted message.

Besides, unless Khody's journal is the length of an entire encyclopedia, there wouldn't be enough text there to build a vocabulary and grammar database. It's not as if he was writing the entire journal bilingually; he was just hiding select thoughts.

Later in the series it becomes clear that Gorjah was working for Aivah.

bigrunt wrote:Is Gorjah part of the same group as Aivah? or is there a third group in the mix?

I was re-reading the series when one of the lines from "A Mighty Fortress" jumped out at me after Arch-Bishop Cahnyr’s escape through the mine
“The truth is, Your Eminence, that I have been basically ‘sitting around keeping an eye’ on you.” Gorjah shrugged. “I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I can as soon as I have permission to. For right now, though, just accept that someone else knew about you and your friends in the Temple. I don’t know who those others are, and I don’t know everything you’ve been up to. I do know, now, why you had me doing some of the research in the archbishopric’s records. Why you were looking for proof of corruption, or of directives from the Temple that were . . . less than appropriate for one of God’s vicars or archbishops to be issuing, shall we say. And I understand now why you’ve taken some of the stances you’ve taken, despite the fact that you knew they were going to be wildly unpopular with other members of the episcopate.

It's not clear how far inside he is, though.

DrakBibliophile wrote:Later in the series it becomes clear that Gorjah was working for Aivah.

bigrunt wrote:Is Gorjah part of the same group as Aivah? or is there a third group in the mix?

I was re-reading the series when one of the lines from "A Mighty Fortress" jumped out at me after Arch-Bishop Cahnyr’s escape through the mine
“The truth is, Your Eminence, that I have been basically ‘sitting around keeping an eye’ on you.” Gorjah shrugged. “I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I can as soon as I have permission to. For right now, though, just accept that someone else knew about you and your friends in the Temple. I don’t know who those others are, and I don’t know everything you’ve been up to. I do know, now, why you had me doing some of the research in the archbishopric’s records. Why you were looking for proof of corruption, or of directives from the Temple that were . . . less than appropriate for one of God’s vicars or archbishops to be issuing, shall we say. And I understand now why you’ve taken some of the stances you’ve taken, despite the fact that you knew they were going to be wildly unpopular with other members of the episcopate.

IMO he was not "part of a group". Aivah had made contact with him and he "worked" only for her.

jgnfld wrote:It's not clear how far inside he is, though.

DrakBibliophile wrote:Later in the series it becomes clear that Gorjah was working for Aivah.

Duckk wrote:

Grabthar's Hammer wrote:I wonder if some of the Espanol text reads:

"Hola, me llamo Seijin Khody, tú mataste a mi padre, prepárate a morir..."

Khody wrote in Spanish to prevent other people from easily discovering what he was recording. I really doubt he would have left behind such an obvious way to decode the message. It would be like leaving a codebook open right next to an encrypted message.

Besides, unless Khody's journal is the length of an entire encyclopedia, there wouldn't be enough text there to build a vocabulary and grammar database. It's not as if he was writing the entire journal bilingually; he was just hiding select thoughts.

The thought that Spanish would keep anyone but the base population from reading it is a stretch. At that time the remaining Church leadership had resources that could penetrate that simple 'code'. IMO it was left for someone in the Future to interpret and specifically to influence that individual. I think he knew about the Millenial return and wanted an opposing view or a different bias on the history to be available. The SSK were that conduit. Merlin must be licking his chops to get ahold of those documents. The Sword and Journals are probably not the only items in the SSK's pantry.

Joat42 wrote: If you lack cultural context some things just don't make sense even if you speak the language and it gets even worse when you translate things.

I was curious so I made a little test. I don't know any Spanish beyond a few counting words and how to say "yes" and "no", so I typed a few random sentences into Google Translate. In fact, I typed,

I saw George today. He told me that the vest pocket nuke Proctor used was the GBU34 he had put away for a rainy day. I don't know how he had gotten a hold of it, and I don't care. It seems strange to me that Langhorne would ever let Proctor within a mile of the archangels' office building.

Google Translate gave me,

Vi George hoy. Él me dijo que el arma nuclear bolsillo del chaleco Proctor utilizó fue el GBU34 él había guardado para un día lluvioso. No sé cómo había conseguido un asimiento de él, y no me importa. Parece extraño que Langhorne jamás dejar Proctor a un kilómetro del edificio de oficinas de los arcángeles.

Here are some of the things that jump out to me.

1. Most of the letters are the same ones that I, as an English speaker use. Some of them are the same except for having an accent mark. Some of the i's have an accent in place of the dot.

2. I recognise some words--particularly names. I think that George would still be spelled the same on safehold, just pronounced differently. The names Mr. Weber uses are his way of showing the pronunciation shift. Names from the writ and the testimonies would be spelled the same as they were when they were written, but pronounced differently in the same way as Yesua is spelled Jesus but pronounced Hey-soos.

3. The church is quite good at deciphering coded transmissions, and there are hints that they have a computer available to translate. None of the usual ciphers are going to work on this. However, some of the manual techniques are going to have some success. For example, "we" have lots of examples of the way Cohdy writes. This will show things like whether he frequently uses the word "I" or not. If he does then it would be reasonable to suggest that many of the Spanish words he uses mean "I". Other words, like "and" and "the" might be the same, although I understand that he can get into trouble with the word "the." Some words are not the same, but are strongly reminiscent, such as arcángeles. Other phrases aren't going to be much help, as "vest pocket nuke" doesn't suggest "el arma nuclear bolsillo del chaleco" to me.

A good time was enjoyed by all.

~Tonto

Tonto Silerheels wrote:In fact, I typed,

I saw George today. He told me that the vest pocket nuke Proctor used was the GBU34 he had put away for a rainy day. I don't know how he had gotten a hold of it, and I don't care. It seems strange to me that Langhorne would ever let Proctor within a mile of the archangels' office building.

Sending your Spanish translation back through Google Tranlate gives:

George saw today. He told me that the vest pocket nuke Proctor used was GBU34 he had saved for a rainy day. I do not know how he got a hold of him, and I do not care. It seems strange that Langhorne Proctor never leave one kilometer from the office building of the archangels.

And that is without any idiomatic usage in the original English. Presumably, Federation AIs would be a bit better at translations than Google, but manual decoding by someone who doesn't have the concept of multiple languages is going to fail miserably.

Weird Harold wrote:..snip..

Sending your Spanish translation back through Google Tranlate gives:

George saw today. He told me that the vest pocket nuke Proctor used was GBU34 he had saved for a rainy day. I do not know how he got a hold of him, and I do not care. It seems strange that Langhorne Proctor never leave one kilometer from the office building of the archangels.

And that is without any idiomatic usage in the original English. Presumably, Federation AIs would be a bit better at translations than Google, but manual decoding by someone who doesn't have the concept of multiple languages is going to fail miserably.

Same text using Bad Translator with random languages 8 steps:

"Today, I saw George. Rainy day vest pocket GBU34 uses a nuclear weapon was a Proctor. I do not know how he had gotten his hands, not interested. Strangely enough, that I would ever allow Langhorne Procter"

Reminds me of Philip K Dicks novel "Galactic Pot-Healer", where the protagonist passes time with his friends by using machine translations of book titles between different languages as a puzzle which the others have to guess what the original title was.