Stormlight Archive Translation Guide

[Harakeke]

Greetings, friend.

You may have noticed that many of the illustrations in the Stormlight Archives contain strange markings. I have determined that these markings are writing, and I have undertaken to decipher their messages. Crazy? Perhaps. But these markings are not simply decorative. They contain information about the Cosmere, hidden in plain sight.

In The Way of Kings, we are introduced to the Alethi script. This is the writing system used by female scribes and scholars in Alethkar, understand? It shows up in the labels of Navani’s Notebook:

 

Since the novel was first published in English, the labels were also “translated” into English, but Alethi letters were used to preserve the feel of the original diagrams. Each symbol stands for one letter – however Alethi has some letters that are not found in English (Th, Sh, Ch), and English has some letters that are not found in Alethi (C, Q, X, W).

In Words of Radiance, we learn more about the languages of Roshar.

Alethi script reappears, with greater variety. Navani’s Notebook again provides straightforward diagram labels directly transliterated from English into Alethi:

(Translation credit goes to cris34b:
http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6418-navanis-notebook-page-406-translation/?hl=navani)

Shallan’s sketchbook provides more cryptic text, friend. First spotted and translated by jcoop513, the text here is hidden, and is written phonetically so that each letter is an approximation of how it sounds when spoken aloud. Based on the context, this is most likely a page of Jasnah's notes that Shallan appropriated to use as sketchpaper. Note that the transliteration of Jasnah's writing is very different from that of Navani's.

Quote

Thu Statmint That Intregs Me Thou Is That Uv Keng Nohudan hch implis

Urithiru Kod Be Rechd If [__ __] [uv___ Md__] Sites If [_____ __] [Thaag]

War Pasibli Evadins Uv Thu Rods [__________] Be In Plas Umung Thu

Kengdums Uf Toda I Lav Sens Vitod [Th_________u] [s______] and Faond

Wut I Belev To Be Gatwas Ther But Thu [____ba] [_dgr] [A____] m

Uns An Hao To Work Them Is Likle To Dangerus To Aktuvat Them On Thu

Senter Of a Populatd Site As I [Ag_________du] Pland With Mi Unkl

I Hop To Find Them En Unpapulatid [_________]

 

Read aloud, the passage would be thus:

Quote

The statement that intrigues me though is that of King Nohadon which implies Urithiru could be reached by any of the main cities. If such a thing were possible, evidence of the roads would likely be in place among the Kingdoms of today. I have since visited the [_______] [______] and found what I believe to be gateways there, but the [_________] <third> [____] [____] [____] ones and how to work them is likely too dangerous to activate them in the center of a populated city as I [_____________] planned with my uncle. I hope to find them in unpopulated [__________]

Translation efforts are ongoing at http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6619-shallans-drawing-page-354-alethi-script-translation-spoilers/. KalynaAnne traced over the partially-obscured letters by hand and was able to reconstruct several missing words: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6487-thaylen-and-alethi-glyph-translation-glyph-key-revised-418/?p=233114

 

Alethi is not the only language spoken on Roshar. That would be crazy. The Map of the Southern Frostlands introduces us to the written language used in Thaylenah:

As with Alethi script, the Thaylen in this illustration is simply transliterated English, and can be deciphered using the following key:

 

Thaylen people are renown for smashing their consonants together when they speak, and this is reflected in their writing. Written Thaylen has no vowels and is written vertically, understand?

Both the Alethi and Thaylen pages include numerals. Just as many different nations on Earth employ Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) is quite possible that all Vorin peoples (indeed perhaps most inhabitants of Roshar!) use the same numerals, even if their written languages differ.
The numbers are written as follows:

 

---

---

And now we come to glyphs, friend.
Glyphs are written in syllables, with each syllable corresponding to a certain subcomponent of the glyph. Glyphs can be written three ways: a “standard” blocky form with syllables somewhat similar to Thaylen consonants, a “radial” form in which the glyph is warped to form a circular shape, and a “calligraphic” form in which the glyph can be warped into any shape.
Often, the shape of a calligraphic glyph is reminiscent of the word it contains. Extra lines that do not represent syllables can be added to enhance the effect. For instance, a bookseller might advertise the name of his shop with a glyph shaped to resemble a book, understand? Many men in Alethkar are illiterate, relying on their wives or sisters to read documents to them aloud, but most can recognize certain important glyphs based on their shape alone.

Alethi glyphs are not simply transliterations of English, but represent words in the Alethi language. 
The esteemed jofwu has compiled images of all known glyphs in another thread.

Edit: The next bit is obsolete, as of Oathbringer. See p.519 for a key directly from the Calligrapher's Guild, courtesy of Nazh.
My efforts to decipher the Alethi glyphs are ongoing, friend, but I present here what I speculate thus far:

Please refer to the further pages in this thread for the latest developments in the 17th Shard's ongoing efforts to decipher these glyphs.

Original first post, for posterity:

 

Here's a translation of the Frostlands map on page 138:

 

 
It appears to be part of a nautical chart, since so much detail is given to marine features.  The latitude markers running along the edge are handy, because they give us a much fuller range of Vorin? numerals (0-28) than we've seen in other places (e.g. Kaladin's tattoos & Navani's notebook). Kaladin's tatoo illustration has a helpful breakdown of how the numerals are written from bottom to top, and the numbers on the map follow the same convention:












 

ones

tens

hundreds

thousands

 

I find it interesting that three different writing systems (Alethi women's script, Alethi men's glyphs, and Frostlands script) share the same number system, much like how many real languages use Arabic numerals. 
 
The Frostlands script itself is pretty neat. It's written vertically top-to-bottom, and the letters sort of squish together to interlock into a fairly uniform strip. The width and height of the letters can vary a bit in order to give the overall word a more pleasing appearance. Below is a quick key I made that clearly separates the letters. I do suspect there's a more elegant way to format it, though. My working key broke the letters into a grid arranged by basic shapes (e.g. L) and affixes (e.g. ` ı), but I've condensed it here for clarity.
 

 

 

 
Vowels don't seem to be written, only consonants. It's possible that the vowels are denoted subtly, in something like how the letters are arranged -- but I just worked out the words from the consonants. Which means that the places on the map marked "cave" could just as well say "cove", as far as I can tell.
 
The Frostlands script uses a different orthography than Alethi. For example, the English digraph "TH" is written as two letters: [T] [H] in Frostlands script, not a single letter [Th] as it would be in Alethi. However, the English "SH" does sometimes get its own letter in Frostlands script, as shown in the wordS "Sh_iPWR_eKS" (shipwrecks), and Sh_aTT_eR_eD  (shattered) but not in SH_aLL_oW (shallow). The sample of words is small and repetitive, so some letters may just be missing from the key because they didn't appear in the text. Others might just be rolled in with one of the other letters, for instance like how the hard C sound (English C and CK) is just written as K.
 
Several of the Frostlands letters correspond to two somewhat similar-sounding English letters: P/F, M/N, and V/W. So for example, the words "maim" and "nine" would be written exactly the same. 
 
There's a weird character that only shows up once, and only at the end of the word "W_iND?". Based on context, it's most likely S or Y (WINDS or WINDY). In this case, Y would be pronounced as a vowel, so I don't think it would be written. I think that multiple lines are written right to left, so Storm Winds makes more sense than Storm Windy. So I'm going with S, even though S already has its own Frostlands character. It could be that S is written differently when it comes at the end of a word.

 

 

 

Edited September 1, 2020 by Harakeke

[Argent he/him]

Aw, I was hoping to look into this during the weekend. Ohwell.

 

I was talking to a friend about the original translation of Navani's notebook and the Alethi script, and he brought up something I couldn't quite get an answer to - how does one go about translating something like this? In other words, how did you figure all this out?

[Swimmingly he/him]

From what I've heard, you get a count of all the characters. You figure out the likely letters based on the count. With that in mind, try to guess a word based on context, use the translated letters in other words, expand from context, etc.

Note that I have no experience in this at all.

[Harakeke]

This one was a lot easier to decipher than Alethi because there was more context to go on. Once I realized the scale and orientation of the map, everything came together really quickly. 

 

The first thing to do is to figure out what the letters are. I spent a while just copying the words to get a feel for how they were written, making a list of all the unique characters.

 

Once I was confident I knew what the letters looked like and how they could be arranged to form words, I started trying to crack the cipher. While trying to crack the Chapter 84 number code, I developed a handy spreadsheet that automates the find/replace process, so I recoded the Frostlands letters into number pairs plugged it in. Basically, I tell the spreadsheet : "Okay, I think symbol 11 is A", and it goes through and turns all the 11s into As. 

 

I alternated between jotting notes by hand and consulting the spreadsheet. The lack of vowels threw me for a while, but as I examined words with double-letter pairs, I quickly deciphered that one of the little buildings was labeled "TH_e SH_aLL_oW CR_yPTS". 

 

This was the same basic process I used to decipher the Alethi script last time.

 

The first thing I did was sort out all the possible Alethi graphemes (written letters) and give them labels. They come in three sizes: small, middle and long; and 6 shapes: left, right, hatch, swoosh, diamond, and fancy (plus the special "sentence start" symbol). I wrote them all out individually so I had a blank key to work with. The single line symbols: swoosh(vowels) and hatch (the second half of Th, Ch, etc.) were particularly tricky to decipher, because I lumped them all together at first.

 

I played around a bit at first with a numeric notation to try and quickly correlate the emotion bracelet labels with information from the Ars Arcana, thinking that maybe they were gemstone names. Things like 2D 113 2 1R = Ruby? , 2D 113 2 1R = Chach? etc. But that didn't work (turns out it actually says "fear"), so I had to brute-force it.

 

I went through the illustrations and copied out all the words that were only 2 or 3 letters long that repeated multiple times in the text. There are only so many words that are that short (the, is, of, etc.) so I played around with assigning English letters to the various Alethi graphemes, going back and forth between my key and the list of short words. I'd pick a short word and say, "Okay, let's assume this word is "AND". So then the first shape is an A, that one's an N, and that one's an D. Which means that this similar two-letter word must be AN. And then this one ends with the same letter, so it must be ON or IN." And so forth. In practice it wasn't nearly so elegant, and I did a lot of erasing. The vowels and the graphemes for Alethi letters that don't exist in English (such as "Th") threw me for a bit of a loop. I had this klugy system where all the -h graphemes were split in two, and F was written as PH.

But eventually I worked out a partial key based on the short words that was self-consistent (T, H, E, I, S, N), and could start attacking the longer words. 

 

The first word I was able to translate properly was "spren". When I got that, I knew I was on the right track! Things accelerated quickly from there, and once I could start to get information from a word's context, it was just a matter of filling in the blank spots in the key. e.g.: "Okay, this part here says "[long diamond]AIN KNIFE" Rain knife? Main knife? Pain knife! Yeah! So [long diamond] must be P!" And so forth.

Edited March 6, 2014 by harakeke

[Windrunner he/him]

Wow. I am truly impressed at your skills. If I had to make a bet, you just cracked Thaylen right here. It seems to me like this map would have come off the Wind's Pleasure or a similar ship. Combine that with the fact that we're not far from Thalath and I think it's pretty solid evidence. Great work!

 

If I may ask, where did you find this image online to work with?

[FeatherWriter she/her]

Ah, the Thaylen script not having vowels makes a lot of sense actually. Explains why they tend to mash a bunch of consonants together. Their alphabet literally does that, so they probably don't have tons of awareness of vowel sounds. Light, that's really cool.

 

Also, Harakeke, I think you might be magic. Just saying.

[Harakeke]

Ah, Thaylen!  I was hoping someone would know the proper name for it!  (I'd been calling it Frostish in my head!)

 

Asul helpfully posted the images here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6471-spoilers-interior-art/

 

If it's an issue I can blur out the picture and just leave the text.

Edited March 6, 2014 by harakeke

[Harakeke]

I just realized that this key can also be used to read Alethi glyphs. They're heavily stylized, but the basic forms are there!

 

edit: It works really well for Kaladin's Sas tattoo, but the more elaborate glyphs are trickier. Alethi may have more/different letters, and I bet the dots are represent vowels somehow. I have to head to work now, but I'll play around with this some more later.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Harakeke

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

Nice job, Harakeke.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Very very nice, Harakeke. We'd be lost without you.

 

EDIT: But yeah, that's definitely "Cove" there. The labels match up to the location of, well, coves on the map.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Windrunner he/him]

Ah, Thaylen!  I was hoping someone would know the proper name for it!  (I'd been calling it Frostish in my head!)

 

Asul helpfully posted the images here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6471-spoilers-interior-art/

 

If it's an issue I can blur out the picture and just leave the text.

Not an issue at all! I just hadn't seen them online, so I was wondering

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

It's not that the glyphs use Thaylen graphemes. It's that they ultimately derive from the same source.

[banestar]

It's not that the glyphs use Thaylen graphemes. It's that they ultimately derive from the same source.

 

Mmm Dawnchant?

[Natans he/him]

Man you are awesome.

 

Do you work with this for living or you are just a genius with a hooby for crack fictional languages ?

[Swimmingly he/him]

Anybody want to do a comparative analysis of Thaylenese and the Steel alphabet to look for common modes?

[Harakeke]

Preliminary Alethi glyph translation key:

 

Still very much a work in progress.

Does anyone know if there are high-resolution copies of the WoK illustrations floating around somewhere? I'm noticing glyphs all over the place now, but most of them are very hard to make out the details on.

 

@Natans - Nope, I just do this for fun/procrastination! I have taken one or two linguistics classes though.

[Argent he/him]

I am going to start using those as a part of my recruitment campaign to get everyone to read Brandon.

 

That aside, I just want to take a break and give you - us - a perspective. We read a book (series) by a guy who (indirectly) created at least two alphabets for his fictional cultures which alphabets, as written languages tend to, were derived from a single parent / root alphabet (the Dawnchant, in all likelihood). Then we (and by we I mean Harakeke) figured out those alphabets were actual alphabets, not just squiggles on a page, deciphered them, and - because why the hell not - decided to create a translation key between them. 

 

Harakeke, I expect you to have a beta version of the Dawnchant itself by the week's end. You know, the one we haven't even seen yet.

[Azul he/him]

Harakeke I'm guessing you mean WoR illustrations but if you need WoK you can find those here http://brandonsanderson.com/the-way-of-kings-interior-illustrations-now-uploaded/

[Harakeke]

Harakeke I'm guessing you mean WoR illustrations but if you need WoK you can find those here http://brandonsanderson.com/the-way-of-kings-interior-illustrations-now-uploaded/

Thanks -- although those look like the same files I've seen on Isaac Stewart's website. They're certainly handy, but the fine detail of the glyphs gets lost in the pixelation. They've all got "webres" in the filename, which leads me to believe there are high-res versions somewhere...

 

What I was hoping for was more images along the lines of this: http://www.inkwing.com/freebies/wallpapers/roshar_map/map_roshar_2560x1600.jpg so that I could zoom in close on the glyphs.

[Windrunner he/him]

If there are high-res versions online, we don't have access to them. Those are the same ones we have on the wiki.

 

Are there any glyphs on the illustrations anyways, aside from the ones on the map of the Battle of the Tower?

 

EDIT:

And I guess the ones on the side of the warcamp map too.

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

I kind of hate you a little bit right now. Even with help, I couldn't figure this out.  However you do so, without a key, within a few days.  Meanie....

 

...now, are you willing to work on the second code in the top and bottom of the page?

 

 

*edit: Oh, that's how you did it.  You're really brilliant, you know that?  You've broken both of them now.  I have to say, I am impressed.  I still kind of hate you.

[Harakeke]

If there are high-res versions online, we don't have access to them. Those are the same ones we have on the wiki.

 

Are there any glyphs on the illustrations anyways, aside from the ones on the map of the Battle of the Tower?

 

EDIT:

And I guess the ones on the side of the warcamp map too.

Now that I'm consciously looking for them, I notice glyphs popping up all over the place:

 

Way of Kings

Surgebinding Chart

Voidbinding? Chart (warped versions of Surge glyphs)

Silver Kingdoms Era Map

Roshar map c. 1167

Map of Alethkar

Alethi Warcamps

Kharbranth

Map of the Battle of the Tower

The hair and flames surrounding the Voidbinding? chart and map of Shadesmar are suspiciously symmetrical. It wouldn't surprise me if they were heavily stylized glyphs.

 

The Alethi Codes of War also have a very suspicious pattern running along the sides. It doesn't appear to be Alethi or Thaylen though.

 

Words of Radiance

Bridge 4 Tattoos

Frostlands Map

Sword forms

Battle Map

 

Example of how to decipher a glyph (BRJ = Bridge): edit: incorrectly!  =P

Edited March 7, 2014 by Harakeke

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

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.

[FeatherWriter she/her]

Well then. That's cool!

[Argent he/him]

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