HFQ Offical Snippet #4

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.

Well David Weber has said that few on Earth (at the time of Project Ark) were very sane.

Joat42 wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:It was suggested that the role of the seijin was invented for members of the crew who didn't want to be called Angels.

While David Weber has said that many seijins were "mortals" given high-tech tricks, it is possible that Kohdy was one of the crew who didn't want to be called an Angel but at first supported Langhorne thus preferred to be called a seijin.

Of course, David Weber may surprise me.

Well, being a Seijin is good if you don't want to overawe the locals being an angel.

My guess is that Kohdy is one of the original crew that decided he wasn't going to play angel with the rest of them and went out among the people getting his hands dirty.

Then they edited him out of the testimonials out of spite. Thinking on how they did that a number on Schueler with the abomination that is the Test, I'm beginning to think that the surviving crew wasn't all that rational in the end. Which also makes me wonder what else they may have done or prepared for.

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).

Lazalarlives wrote:Yep, that's my new theory and I'm sticking with it until it gets proven wrong - Kohdy was this timeline's Harkness.

Just my two cents.
Dave

I like that theory! You found a supporter in me for sure.

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.

The stone of Rosetta only worked because it has the same text in three languages written on it. This isn't the case in the diary. Kohdy wrote about different things in Spanish than in English. I suppose they understand single words but not more. Especially if he talked about Federation tech.

Sorry but the Rosetta Stone contained the same "message" in three methods of writing thus Champollion could compare the Hieroglyph message to the other ones in order to decrypted it.

Kohdy wasn't writing the same thing in Spanish and in Safehold English.

The Sisters have no way of knowing what Spanish words correspond with Safehold English words.

It is almost impossible to translate from a language you don't know into a language that you do know without a "cheat sheet".

The Rosetta Stone was a "cheat sheet" for Champollion.

The sisters lack a Rosetta Stone.

Oh, their job would be made even worse by the fact that Safehold only has one language, especially when it comes to a written language.

It is surprising to me that the sisters know that this "secret" writing is Spanish but it is very possible that Kohdy may no secret (in the Safehold English parts) that he was writing in español/Spanish.

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.

And even if you have these referents, it still might not make sense. There are substantial amounts of Etruscan around which we still cannot read, although we have deciphered some individual words. Linear A has not yet been cracked, and I don't even want to [i]think[i] about things like the Voynich manuscript!

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.

They have not one single bit of experience with translation nor even the knowledge that there even is a thing called translation between languages. That would make for a pretty rocky start to the translation problem.

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.

He knew Coptic a mix of Ancient Egyptian and Greek and knew the phonetic value of the hieroglyphs. After the death of the last archangel no one knows Spanish or any other earth language. Other than some few hints from English there is no help, and the hints may be false friends, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend

Poker

I wonder if some of the Espanol text reads:

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

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.