Stormlight Archive Translation Guide

[Harakeke]

Actually, the bridge 4 glyph does not say "bridge" in English. It uses the Alethi word. If you found "brj" in there, that's a coincidence.

 

Ah, good to know. I didn't like the placement of that J anyway.

I assume the same is true of "Freedom"?

 

The Alethi word for (any) bridge, or do they have a specific word that describes the bridges used on the Shattered Plains specifically?

 

This is my bridge. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

 

In lieu of being productive this morning, I attacked the kholin/tanat glyphs.

I think kholin is written in the negative (white) space, and tanat is written in the positive (black) space.  So they can sort of partially overlap. Alternately, I could just be wildly overreaching -- but anyways:

 

What I really ought to do is finish my key using the highprince glyphs before I go haring off on these sorts of speculative translations, but I felt like playing around with some of the more legible glyphs.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Harakeke

[Gaz]

I always find it cool that brandon puts so much effort in his books that even his maps mean something

[PeterAhlstrom]

Yeah, the glyphs are all in Alethi rather than transliterated English. Including Freedom.

[Trickonometry]

Harakeke, mind helping the rest of us out on the WoR Chapter 84 code? :-D

 

Edit: Just saw you've already contributed. Keep up the good work. :-D

Edited March 7, 2014 by Trickonometry

[Harakeke]

Making progress...  I think the key is starting to come together.

 

Looks like Alethi glyphs are syllable-based, with vowels denoted by how you rotate the letter. The a- syllables (aR, aS, etc.) seem to correspond closest to how the consonant is written in Thaylen.

 

Pretty sure my futzing with the tattoos earlier today was all wrong though. =P

Edited March 8, 2014 by Harakeke

[PorridgeBrick]

So how is 'Bridge' pronounced in Alethi?

[Harakeke]

So how is 'Bridge' pronounced in Alethi?

 

It looks like maybe... "ohosh" or "ohath"?

Edited March 8, 2014 by Harakeke

[FeatherWriter]

I can't begin to convey how excited I am to see real Alethi words. This is incredible. 

[shinintendo]

Do you mind to take a look at the surgebinders glyph picture and find which glyph represent the TruthWatchers? 

[Harakeke]

Do you mind to take a look at the surgebinders glyph picture and find which glyph represent the TruthWatchers? 

 

It's the green glyph in the lower middle, according to this updated diagram I found:

 

The glyph is heavily stylized, but could plausibly be pronounced "Vedeledev", which would make sense.

 

Edit: There also seems to be a forum topic dedicated to this topic: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6383-knights-radiant-orders-and-surge-combination-theories/ , so the folks there might know more. (I've been trying to avoid other discussion threads until I actually finish the book...)

Edited March 8, 2014 by Harakeke

[Pattern]

I think I got the numbers (posted in Ch.84 Code thread) from Thaylen script. Once again Frostland map was informative when looking at details, instead of skipping them...

 

The "south line" of the biggest compass rose ends on the bottom line on "_°". From this point, 4 readable symbols are ordered symmetrically (perhaps naming degrees east and west from 0-Meridian). Therefore I would propose

 

"°"=0

"-"=1

">"=2

"->"=3

"x"=4

 

and so on.

| on the right side denotes a "10", so °| is 10, -| 11, >| 12, and so on,

|| means 20 ,  so °||=20, -||=21, >||=22 and so on.

 

This looks like a mixture of Roman numbers and decimal system. A pity we don't have more numbers, I don't think Thaylen 92 would be a >|||||||||

 

Symbols have to be rotated I think, since thaylen script runs from top to bottom. Ok, here what I drew, could be that symbols have to be rotated by 180°.

 

Edited March 9, 2014 by Pattern

[Harakeke]

I think I got the numbers (posted in Ch.84 Code thread) from Thaylen script. Once again Frostland map was informative when looking at details, instead of skipping them...

 

The "south line" of the biggest compass rose ends on the bottom line on "_°". From this point, 4 readable symbols are ordered symmetrically (perhaps naming degrees east and west from 0-Meridian). Therefore I would propose

 

"°"=0

"-"=1

">"=2

"->"=3

"x"=4

 

and so on.

| on the right side denotes a "10", so °| is 10, -| 11, >| 12, and so on,

|| means 20 ,  so °||=20, -||=21, >||=22 and so on.

 

This looks like a mixture of Roman numbers and decimal system. A pity we don't have more numbers, I don't think Thaylen 92 would be a >|||||||||

 

Symbols have to be rotated I think, since thaylen script runs from top to bottom. Ok, here what I drew, could be that symbols have to be rotated by 180°.

 

Precisely.  Though you're right -- they should be rotated 180°. (See the numbering in Navani's archer tower diagram.)

Interestingly, the 0° marker on the Frostlands map doesn't correspond with the latitude on the southern hemisphere map (the Frostlands are around 65°S), but it DOES somewhat correspond somewhat with the lines in the endpaper maps.

[Krenn]

so it looks like you have 46 symbols so far, which represent 46+ grapheme sounds?  and theoretically, there could be a total of a hundred or so symbols, and we just haven't seen the rest of the symbols yet?


do you have a list of every message from Way of Kings and Words of Radiance spelled out, in the alethi grapheme sounds? and are all the messages in the same language/alphabet?


Sounds like the chapter 84 epigraph might be a substitution code, with two-number pairs representing a given alethi grapheme symbol.

if i had a list of all the alethi symbols in all the book messages, i could build an alethi frequency table, then try to decode the chapter 84 epigraph using the alethi alphabet instead of the english one... i think english substitution codes are a lost cause at this point.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Krenn

[Harakeke]

I made a nicer version of the Thaylen key and an illustration of the three styles of glyphs:

 

 

edit: K is backwards - will fix in next upload

Edited March 9, 2014 by Harakeke

[Windrunner]

Ooooh, that's a great resource. I clearly need to update the glyphs page, but I'll have to think carefully about how we want to incorporate Thaylen. You wouldn't mind if we use some of these on the wiki, would you?

 

Also, have you taken a look at Dalinar's or Kaladin's chapter icons? They both contain glyphs, but Kaladin's is only a partial.

[Pattern]

I made a nicer version of the Thaylen key and an illustration of the three styles of glyphs:

 

Glyph Key-01.pngGlyph Key-02.png

 

edit: K is backwards - will fix in next upload

L is also backwards

 

I have flipped the Thaylen numbers, after Harakeke confirmed my suspicion.

 

Edited March 9, 2014 by Pattern

[Harakeke]

Thanks Pattern!

 

Here's the fixed Thaylen key, along with two new keys for Vorin numerals and Alethi Glyphs.

 

File uploading seems borked, so here are the links:

http://imgur.com/ecGa6fX

http://imgur.com/oeG6fPO

http://imgur.com/dAVRpED

 

I'm calling them Vorin numerals because the same numbers are used alongside Thaylen, Alethi script, and Alethi glyphs.

 

The Alethi Glyph key is still in progress. In particular, I'm unhappy with *K, *N, *L, u*, and i*, but I've used up the glyphs that are easily readable. So it'll take some puzzling over the little tiny glyphs and nasty calligraphic glyphs to fill in the rest. I've spotted some symbols that may fill in the missing spaces, but I'm not sure which -- or even if they're just parsing errors.

 

@Windrunner: By all means! Especially since the forums keep going down. Though you might want to hold off on the Alethi one until we have it finalized.

 

The little caligraphic glyphs are particularly difficult to read, since the print resolution doesn't capture the details all that well.

 

I can make out what look like a K and an L in the Kaladin banner glyph, so I'd guess that it reads "KaL"

 

For Dalinar's glyphs, I'm just getting gibbersih, which either means that I'm not parsing them right, or that they are based off of monkey noises:

aKaKaK_?KaK_??_??_??

aShuHoN?VoNaRiK?LK

[PeterAhlstrom]

Glyphs can have extra lines added that are just decoration.

[WeiryWriter]

Ooh this is so cool!

 

The only thing I'll say is that I wouldn't call the numbers Thaylen numerals, they're glyphs I think.  (I also wouldn't refer to the woman's script and glyphs as being "Alethi" since they are used by other countries as well?)

 

On the Bridge four tattoo page we see number glyphs, the stylized version of year 1173 is just the glyphs for 3 and 7.

 

But man is this stuff awesome!  I can't believe that the glyphs are being deciphered.  I wonder if the fact that the both the symbols and the sounds the represent are symmetrical will have an impact?

[Harakeke]

Glyphs can have extra lines added that are just decoration.

 

No wonder most Alethi men are illiterate!  

 

 

Fixed a couple typos on the Thaylen key.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Harakeke

[Trickonometry]

With Peter's addendum, we don't necessarily need both S's included in the key, unless you wanted to add a note to the key saying that extra lines can be decoration. Please don't take this as any sort of criticism, I am still in awe of your glyph translating awesomeness! :-D

[Pattern]

Hmm, I think now all Thaylen symbols are a little bit jumbled - comes probably from deciphering glyphs, which contain every symbol in its Thaylen and its mirrored version.

Only L, H, P/F and of course V/W are in the form in which they occur in Frostlands Map.

Do you still have your hand written table? That was exactly the same as my handwritten table, which still lies on the stack of paper concerning chapter 84 code....

 

 

@ Trickonometry: Both symbols for S are quite distinct, there's probably more to that than just decoration.

[Harakeke]

Hmm, I think now all Thaylen symbols are a little bit jumbled - comes probably from deciphering glyphs, which contain every symbol in its Thaylen and its mirrored version.

Only L, H, P/F and of course V/W are in the form in which they occur in Frostlands Map.

Do you still have your hand written table? That was exactly the same as my handwritten table, which still lies on the stack of paper concerning chapter 84 code....

 

 

@ Trickonometry: Both symbols for S are quite distinct, there's probably more to that than just decoration.

You're right!  Been staring at those glyphs for too long...

 

 

Fiddled with the Alethi key some more:

Syllables in black are the ones I'm reasonably sure about. Grey are speculation based on rotation, and blue are Thaylen letters for reference. I put the Thaylen Sh in for Z.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Harakeke

[Harakeke]

Edited the first post with a thorough summary of translation efforts (across multiple threads) thus far.

[marianmi]

Is there any recognisable glyph in any of the herald blades / radiant order sign?