Stormlight Archive Translation Guide

[illsmithyourbonds]

Yeah but glyphs aren't really designed for readability - they're supposed to look pretty which is precisely why there are screw you lines and symmetry, and these would make interpreting the glyphs easier, if we knew alethi or how glyphs were supposed to be written or literally anything about glyphs. (exaggeration, but you get my point)

Now the next stop in checking heraldishness would be seeing if the ninth one can be seen as Tanat or Talenelat. Can anyone see that?

 

Edit: Are they even in the correct order?

Edited March 19, 2014 by illsmithyourbonds

[Cardello]

Thought these may help in our quest. All relevant quotes about glyphs found in WOK. Will post WOR when done. 

 

Quotes from The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson.

Chapter # –  Location in Chapter (i.e. 1/50 beginning, 25/50 halfway, 50/50 end) – Quote.

 

Ch 2 – 15/46 - What was that glyphpair? “Sas morom,” Kaladin said. It was the highlords district where the man had originally been branded.

 

Ch 4 – 32/38 – Deep blue with white glyphs – khokh and linil, stylized and painted as a sword standing before a crown. House Kholin. The king’s house.

 

Ch 5 – 14/38 – “I know all the major, minor, and topical glyphs and can paint the calligraphically.”

 

Ch 6 – 17/67 – …a yellow glyphpair in the shape of a tower and a hammer on a field of deep green. That was the banner of Highprince Sadeas, ultimate ruler of Kaladin’s own home district…

 

Ch 8 – 28/65 - …each with a sign hanging out front bearing the glyphpair for book, and those glyphs were often styled into the shape of a book.

 

Ch 27 – 72/85 – Of course, you could draw most glyphs in complex ways that made it hard to read them, unless you knew exactly what to look for.

 

Ch 28 – 58/91 – Eventually, they reached his personal complex, marked by fluttering blue banners with the glyphpair khokh and linil, the former drawn in the shape of a crown, the second forming a tower. Dalinar’s mother had drawn the original design, the same his signet ring bore, though Elhokar used a sword and crown instead.

 

Ch 31 – 2/18 – Kal looked down at his folio. It contained drawings of dissected bodies, the muscles splayed and pulled out. The drawings were so detailed. Each had glyphpairs to designate every part…

 

Ch 33 – 51/56 – “Our very language is symmetrical. Look at the glyphs – each one can be folded in half perfectly. And the alphabet too. Fold any line of text down across itself and you’ll find symmetry. Surely you know the story, that both glyphs and letters came from the Dawnsingers?”

 

Ch 47 – 2/47 – In the near distance, Amaram’s standard was already flying, a burgundy field blazoned with a dark green glyphpair shaped like a whitespine with tusks upraised. Merem and khakh, honor and determination.

 

Ch 51 – 18/19 – The stormwarden stepped up to Kaladin, positioning the branding iron. The glyphs, reversed, read sas nahn. A slave’s brand.

 

Ch 60 – 5/40 – And Dalinar wondered how stormwardens could do their research without reading. They claimed they didn’t, but he’d seen their books filled with glyphs. Glyphs. They weren’t meant to be used in books; they were pictures. A man who had never seen one before could still understand what one meant, based on its shape. That made interpreting glyphs different from reading.

 

Ch 67 – 53/72 – …a banner flapping a quarter of the way down the incline. The stark black glyphpair read shesh lerel – Sheler’s company.

 

Ch 69 – 13/72 – It was only a single character, but a complex one. Thath. Justice.

[askthepaperclip]

First, this is an amazing thread, and you should all be commended.

2nd, I think the reason you are having trouble with the glyphs is that I highly doubt they can be read phonetically. I have three reasons for saying this:

1) it is said again and again that glyphs and writing are different. Just making the shapes for each phoneme different sites not make it a different system. Otherwise I think all the women would be sniggering behind their safe hand whenever a man said "it isn't reading, it is glyphs! "

2)I think glyphs are another example of the influence of Brandon's time in Asia. in general, Asian characters cannot be read phonetically, or even logically, with a few exceptions (like the Japanese character for bamboo; put two together, it means tree, put three together it means first). The fact that you are seeing tantalizing correlations is probably related to the fact that they share a common background, but are not one to one translatable.

3) Navani's thath glyph is pretty damning. If it were phonetic, it would be one of the simplest glyphs: only one phoneme, mirrored. Yet is it described as complex. My guess is that the "meaningless" "screw you lines" are actually the decorations that turn writing into pictographs. So even if you could parse out the phonetic thath from amid the lines, you wouldn't necessarily be able to read the glyph. You would have the word, but not the meaning. Kind of like how in Chinese the same sound (say, "ma") can be represented by many different characters with many different meanings. (Even with the same tone). Just like asking a Chinese person what ma means is silly without giving them context, I'll bet asking an alethi what thath means will get you a puzzled look, unless you give them some context or show them the glyph. It is kind of like the difference between Chinese characters and pinyin. (Uh, I realize this example is breaking down as I get into it, but I need to get to work, so maybe focus more on my earlier points...lol)

[Cardello]

Here are the ones I thought were relevant in WoR.

 

Quotes from Words of Radiance, by Brandon Sanderson.

Chapter # –  Location in Chapter (i.e. 1/50 beginning, 25/50 halfway, 50/50 end) – Quote.

 

Ch 4 – 35/42 – “...And the meaning is vague. Death follows? Or is it 'follow death'? Or Sixty-Two Days of Death and Following? Glyphs are imprecise.”

 

Ch 40 – 4/22 – Through the carriage window Shallan saw that they were finally approaching a warcamp flying Sebarial’s banner. It bore the glyphs sebes and laial stylized into a skyeel, deep gold on a black field.

 

Ch 52 – 34/77 – She tried to work out the use of glyphs – there was no grammar to them that she could see. Glyphs weren’t meant to be used that way. They conveyed a single idea, not a string of thoughts. She read a few in a row. Origin…direction…uncertainty…The place of the center is uncertain? That was probably what it meant.

 

Ch 52 – 35/77 – Parshendi! She realized. That’s what those glyphs mean. Parap-shenesh-idi. Three glyphs individually meant three separate things – but together their sounds made the word “Parshendi.” …Amaram was using some glyphs phonetically.

 

Ch 55 – 60/61 – Amaram. He wore a strange cloak. Bright yellow-gold, with a black glyph on the back. Oath? Kaladin didn’t recognize the shape. It looked familiar though. The double eye, he realized. Symbol of…

 

 

To get all these quotes, I searched the ebooks of WoK and WoR for "glyph" and read the passage around the location it was found in the book. Than I quoted what I thought was helpful to our cause. There is a lot more information in the books that I missed, like the thing about H's making stuff symmetrical, but this is what my quick search has found. Hope it helps someone 

 

And wanted to point out that Kaladin thought the glyph double eye symbol on Amaram's cloak read as "oath". Thought that was interesting.

[Argent]

@Cardello, I don't know if those will be useful, but I've been hoping somebody would make a post or two like this. I intend to try to use them.

[Harakeke]

@illsmithyourbonds: Yes, from the tip of the sword to its hilt, which corresponds with the surgebinding chart going clockwise from the Windrunners.

 

First, this is an amazing thread, and you should all be commended.

2nd, I think the reason you are having trouble with the glyphs is that I highly doubt they can be read phonetically. I have three reasons for saying this:

1) it is said again and again that glyphs and writing are different. Just making the shapes for each phoneme different sites not make it a different system. Otherwise I think all the women would be sniggering behind their safe hand whenever a man said "it isn't reading, it is glyphs! "

2)I think glyphs are another example of the influence of Brandon's time in Asia. in general, Asian characters cannot be read phonetically, or even logically, with a few exceptions (like the Japanese character for bamboo; put two together, it means tree, put three together it means first). The fact that you are seeing tantalizing correlations is probably related to the fact that they share a common background, but are not one to one translatable.

3) Navani's thath glyph is pretty damning. If it were phonetic, it would be one of the simplest glyphs: only one phoneme, mirrored. Yet is it described as complex. My guess is that the "meaningless" "screw you lines" are actually the decorations that turn writing into pictographs. So even if you could parse out the phonetic thath from amid the lines, you wouldn't necessarily be able to read the glyph. You would have the word, but not the meaning. Kind of like how in Chinese the same sound (say, "ma") can be represented by many different characters with many different meanings. (Even with the same tone). Just like asking a Chinese person what ma means is silly without giving them context, I'll bet asking an alethi what thath means will get you a puzzled look, unless you give them some context or show them the glyph. It is kind of like the difference between Chinese characters and pinyin. (Uh, I realize this example is breaking down as I get into it, but I need to get to work, so maybe focus more on my earlier points...lol)

I disagree.

It's been strongly implied that the glyphs are decipherable, given the information we have. If the glyphs were purely symbolic, there'd be no way to do that.

In the cases where we have both A) a clear picture of the glyph and B)knowledge of how it's pronounced, it is easy to spot the correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. The problem is that there are so few of these that there are many gaps in the key.

In-world evidence supports that "literate" glyph-writers/readers can compose new glyphs on the fly, and even string glyphs along phonetically. If they were totally arbitrary, that wouldn't be possible. Illiterate folks (from the lowest bridgeman to the son of a Highprince) can still recognize common glyphs by their shapes, even if they can't "read" them.

1) Glyphs are very different from writing -- see the first post where I have examples of both the women's script and glyphs. Even though the same phonemes can be written in both glyphs and women's script, they're fundamentally very different. Women's script uses completely different graphemes; is character-based, not syllable-based; and has rules for sentence structure.

2) That goes for any language you don't know the meaning of. I think that what you're seeing is the consequence of the lack of an Alethi<>English lexicon. Sounding out that the componants of a glyph read "-Sh" and "aSh" is meaningless, unless you also know that "shash" means "dangerous". The glyphs do have an Asian feel to them, but I think katakana might be a better parallel.

3) I think you're underestimating the devilishness of the screw you lines. Not only do you have to draw a bunch of meaningless gibberish around the actual letters, you have to do it with such precision and standardization that people who can't read the glyph still recognize its shape.
For example, using the speculative key, you could write "thath" as:
.:
I don't think your example with Chinese really matches what we've seen with how people speak/read Alethi. Each Alethi word seems to have a single meaning, regardless of how it's written.

The complexity in glyphs/glyphpairs arises from the contractions. For example:
khokh + linil > Kholin
shesh + lerel > Sheler
merem + khakh + "I'm a jerk and rules are beneath me" > Amaram

 

Edit: I wonder -- could the 10 fundamental glyphs be contractions of their associated surge glyphpairs? [adhesion] + [gravitation] > [windrunner]

 

Edit: Ehhhh, not really...

Edited March 19, 2014 by Harakeke

[Argent]

I actually wonder about Amaram's glyphpair. Shallan mentions three categories of glyphs - major, minor, and topical; she also says that she can paint them calligraphically. The fact that she doesn't even mention the radial way of painting glyphs - which seems far more complex than the calligraphic than the calligraphic is than the basic - leads me to believe that there might be other... things about writing glyphs she doesn't mention. For one reason or another.

 

For example, what if Amaram's glyph's are combined in a manner different from Kholin's? For Kholin, we take one half of each parent glyph and stitch them together. But half the reason this works is because when we do that the first glyph's half ends with a vowel and the second glyph's half begins with a consonant. Amaram's glyphs are not so nice, though. So what if the algorithm for producing his (and others like it) is "take the name of the first glyph and replace its vowels with the second one's vowel"? You'd start with merem + khakh, replace each e with a, and add an extra a in the beginning because the screw you lines have now evolved into screw you letters and glyphs are maybe not meant to be read phonetically.

 

Actually, we might be onto something here, with the screw you letters. If you are an Alethi, chances are you are pretty familiar with the most important people in your nation - the highprinces and the most powerful nobles. You know their names. So if you see "Maram" on a flag, you are going to instantly recognize that as "Amaram." Glyphs are not meant to be a fully fleshed out writing system - just something that's good enough. If you could say anything using glyphs, the women's script wouldn't be so dominant of a writing form. 

 

If I am right about all this, I have to wonder whether Aladar's glyphpair was similarly created. "L" and "R" are so similar, they could use the same line, and an unfamiliar reader could think his name is Aladal, perhaps composed of the glyphs ledel + khakh (or any other pair of the form [L][vowel][L][same vowel][L] + [consonant][A][consonant]). 

[ccstat]

I believe the "Compass Rose" glyph is pronounced "Urithiru" -- or is at least somehow associated with the lost city. I don't have a good reading of the sub-glyphs yet, but the first syllable is very plausibly "uR", followed by what I'd tentatively say are "iTh" and "iR".

I speculate that Urithiru is/was located where the "Compass Rose" glyph is on the map of Roshar's southern hemisphere.

[...]

What other bearing would be important enough for maritime cartographers to use as the basis of their maps? The seat of the Heralds!

[...]this would also explain why the ship in Kharbaranth harbor has a Compass Rose glyph on its sail.

 

Except we know where Urithiru is. More or less in the center of Roshar. Do you believe it was moved?

 

It is still plausible that the compass rose could read as "Urithiru," regardless of placement. Culturally it makes sense to assign the reference for navigation and direction to the seat of power that guides people and nations. Urithiru has become a metaphor, and using it as a "guiding star" on maps would not be surprising.

[Argent]

If this is the case, then the tradition of including the rose compass to specific locations on maps must be very old, because knowledge of Urithiru has been shaky for thousands of years. Shallan didn't even know about the city, and she was classically trained. Jasnah was pretty much the only person who believed the city was real. It seems unlikely that modern cartographers would be adding either the city's location or directions to it on so many of the maps they make.

[Harakeke]

Yeah, having now actually finished the book -- I realize most of my earlier speculation about Urithiru is off the mark. 

And it turns out that glyph pops up in all sorts of weird places -- not just relating to navigation. There's a whole thread about that somewhere.  Maybe one of Roshar's Shards took a cue from Ruin and is messing with written texts just to screw with us?

 

Edit: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/1640-isasik-shulin

Edited March 19, 2014 by Harakeke

[ccstat]

I guess I was assuming that the compass rose locations have nothing to do with Urithiru the city, only with lat/long lines. Then the mythology of Urithiru resulted in this stylized glyph used for the compass rose in some maps. (In others, it's still just the sun symbol, or whatever.)

 

Harakeke, where else is it showing up? Is it really the same one?

[illsmithyourbonds]

Okay so at school today I had a greater and more detailed look at the glyphs (I saved the images to my phone) and what's weird is that the 8th order (the last purple one) is quite conceivably Talenelat. Now it could still be Kelek/Kalak (I think they're using the Vorin names, as those are the symmetrical ones). And indeed, now I'm looking for it, on the simplified versions, it does appear to be Talenelat for the ninth one.

I will do a match up and see if I can see all of the heralds and then if so compare the rotations etc with yours and see if they're similar, and propose new ones.

 

Sidenote: I was drawing out more simplified, straigh-edged versions of them, and at one point the girl sitting next to me asked why I was drawing vaginas and insisted on referring to the glyphs as vagina-ish or vaginese. I found it a little humorous and it is believable that I was drawing vaginas if you saw how I simplified them.

 

Edit: I did not have to get very far to see that these are not the Heralds. It is probably mere coincidence that the last ones seem similar. But I also don't think that they are the two surges. I think it will have to be the alethi words for Windrunner, Skybreaker... Bondsmith. Do we know any of the names of the surges? This lack of glyphs with transliterations is really quite annoying, especially as we have so little experience in reading these it makes it quite difficult to interpret them.

Edited March 19, 2014 by illsmithyourbonds

[Argent]

We know neither the names of the Orders, nor those of the Surges (in Alethi). The Surges alone would've been very helpful, as they seem to be mostly composed of about three lines, and the endsheet paints them very clearly. No luck though. Best we can hope for is figure out the consonants in the names of some Surges and then pray those consonants look like they came from glyphs we have randomly seen throughout the books. 

[askthepaperclip]

@harakeke: I wasn't trying to say the glyphs were not decipherable, nor to imply that you are wasting your time in doing so (if that is what you thought, you seemed a little offended), because you are clearly awesome at this and are making progress. :-) I was merely expressing doubt that the glyphs could be read phonetically, even if you spoke perfect alethi (ie, knew that shash means dangerous).

More evidence: Shallan seemed shocked/scandalized that Amaram was stringing glyphs together phonetically. If she was used to reading glyphs phonetically, I don't think this would have been at all surprising to her.

Again, that is not to say that some glyphs, such as the fundamental ones, would not be based on some common phonetic symbols, because they likely share a common ancestor and hey, you have to start somewhere, but the phonetic system must break down at some point, else Shallan would not have been so surprised.

My completely uneducated guess for how they might work is as follows: let's try to write a glyph for "monkey." You the glyphs for "man" "hairy" and "small" and pile them up. Even if you could read those components phonetically (maybe representing some basic building blocks of glyphs), reading out "manhairysmall" phonetically does not sound like the word for monkey. Rather, the joint concepts of the words give the impression of a monkey. Not a great example, but I hope you can understand my meaning. Alternatively, maybe it is phonetic, but backwards. Maybe kholin kinda sounds like the alethi words for tower and sword put together, so to write the glyph for kholin you draw a picture of a tower and a sword on top of each other. That way you see the pictures, say what you see, and get the sound of the meaning of the glyph. (Remember bend+ knee+ feet= benefit from that old I love Lucy episode?? Lol) The point is, glyphs are supposed to be legible to relatively illiterate people; if random symbols represent sounds and you add those together to make words, I would now consider you literate.

I am sure you are correct that there is a logic and structure to the formation of glyphs, and you are obviously on to something with the similarities between thayln script and glyphs. I'm just trying to help by suggesting some non phonetic ways that they could be structured, which will hopefully spark your genius and save you some time and frustration :-)

[illsmithyourbonds]

@askthepaperclip I think that men can still speak Alethi and can therefore read a glyph phonetically and understand what it means, but for the illiterate who can't even read that, then glyphs can be stylised to be more similar to what they represent.

 

I think Shallan's confusion at reading Amaram's glyphs was more because he may have been writing glyphs that represent (to give anglicised examples): sand + her + son to represent Sanderson, and still be writing them like those words like sand shaped like sand etc or like man + key for monkey and still shaped like a person and a key? I'm not sure if that makes sense, but sometimes you can compose large words from smaller ones that sound similar. Or even like instead of mixing the Khokh and Linil glyphs to make Kholin, he might have been doing (Kho) on one side and (lin) on the other. There are plenty of ways of writing phonetic alphabets too phonetically. English is fairly phonetic, (on the same kind of level that glyphs could be) and yet if you don't know how to write things then you might just write sections that you do know that sound similar, such as (in)+(sin)+(dent) instead of incident.

 

 

 

Also: in regards to Alethi glyphs, how do we know that vowels are represented at all? Could it be that they literally rotate and reflect lines however the storm they want, and the extra lines are just EVEN MORE screw you lines?

[ccstat]

Also: in regards to Alethi glyphs, how do we know that vowels are represented at all? Could it be that they literally rotate and reflect lines however the storm they want, and the extra lines are just EVEN MORE screw you lines?

To an extent, at least, this seems likely to me given the ketek from Navani's journal. It could be that the whole thing is written as a single large glyph, and that's where the reflection comes from, but since the whole idea is that words are repeated, I assume that each glyph appears twice. Therefore, it seems to me that horizontal reflection has no bearing on a glyph's reading.

[Harakeke]

 

LEXIE

Are the symbols going to be further explained throughout the series?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yeah, you want me to- let me open this up *opens WoK* what she’s talking about are the symbols right here, this does relate to the magic and to the Knights Radiant. I will eventually explain what it is but for right now it’s just there to be interesting and to look at. It should be telling that one of them ended up on the front of the book, this is actually the same symbol as one of these, just done in a slightly different style. This is what we call in the books the glyphs, the writing system, they actually can be read phonetically, but they are also partially art.

The inspiration for these that I gave to the artist was the Arabic writing, where people actually, often take words and will do them as designs and these beautiful works of art, changing the words, and that’s what happened with the-you probably can’t see that very well- the embossing on this but that’s what happens with the writing system on this world and so the glyphs will usually will write them in the shape of something and that’s one of the glyphs written in the shape of a sword. So that will be explained eventually, it is something for the entire series, every book will have the same end pages like this so slowly over time you will understand that and I haven’t said anything at all about the one in the back, and I don’t intend to for quite a while.

 

 

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=763#7

[askthepaperclip]

OOOO WoB SLAM!!!

 

Well played, well played. I cede!  Upvote for you!

[cem]

We know neither the names of the Orders, nor those of the Surges (in Alethi). The Surges alone would've been very helpful, as they seem to be mostly composed of about three lines, and the endsheet paints them very clearly. No luck though. Best we can hope for is figure out the consonants in the names of some Surges and then pray those consonants look like they came from glyphs we have randomly seen throughout the books. 

When you say "name of the order," do you mean the glyphs on the KR chart?

 

If so, we actually know what the Windrunner glyph is supposed to sound like from Brandon's store: it's "jeseh." Which is the Alethi word for "one" (Jes) converted into a palindrome (or pseudo-palindrome, I suppose). The glyphs are ridiculously stylish of course, but I can at least make out the "s" here on the lower right using Harakeke's chart; so you guys could figure out how "je" is supposed to be drawn from there?

 

Anyway, assuming the same holds for the rest of the glyphs, which I don't see why it wouldn't, then rest of the glyphs would probably numbers too.

 

Do I make sense?

[Argent]

That's actually exactly what I was looking for - except it probably won't help us one bit because 90% of the glyph is style and screw-youness. One of the lines is an extra. But knowing that this glyph is jeseh we might be able to make some semi-educated guesses about the rest. the Willshapers' glyph doesn't look too complicated. and neither does the Truthwatchers'. We'll see. 

[illsmithyourbonds]

This would readily explain how easy Ishi was for me to read in the glyphs, and Tanat. I think this makes a lot more sense. It may even be (abbreviated) Heralds' names - Jeseh is short for Jezerezeh, Tanat is short for Talenelat, and since h is what I am going to call a pseudo letter, being mostly shown by an extra screw you line or a little rotation or a diacritic (will find Shallan's quote eventually) and actually looks like any other apart from this, we may be able to work this notation out from the first glyph and it's common forms.

 

Have we as translators of varying capabilities decided that the rotation of the letters is irrelevent, or are we going to say aS is Sa backwards? Can we find evidence of iSh being Shi backwards?

[Argent]

Not consistently, I think, but Harakeke is the one who likes to play with vowels. I've been focusing on the consonants alone.

And I don't know if we can use the Heralds' names to figure out the glyphs. Jeseh and tanat work (first + last syllable of the full Vorin name, ignoring the 'Elin suffix), but that's only two out of 10...

Edited March 20, 2014 by Argent

[cem]

We don't need to figure them out, we already know them.

 

1. Jeseh
2. Nan
3. Chach
4. Vev
5. Palah
6. Shash
7. Betab
8. Kak
9. Tanat
10. Ishi (I assume this would be drawn as shish)

[Argent]

Hmm, no, I don't think this is right. Even if the site lists the pendant as jeseh, looking at all of those, there are just far too many lines for all of them to be screw you lines. Maybe if we ignore the the part in the middle that looks like a Blade in most glyphs... I think I would like to confirm it with Brandon this Saturday.

[Mysty]

...being mostly shown by an extra screw you line or a little rotation or a diacritic (will find Shallan's quote eventually)...

You mean this quote?

The h sound can befor any letter. We write it as the symmetrical letter, to make the word balance, but add a diacritical mark to indicate it sounds like an h so the word is easier to say.

Page 548, WoR hardback

I have been thinking about this line. H isn't the only letter in the woman's script that has diacritical marks. Does that mean other letters can be considered symetrical for each other? R and L? D and TH? G and CH? Edited March 21, 2014 by Mysty