[4thVariety]

An attempt to translate the asuran banners by hacking English.

http://wiki.guildwar...an_alphabet.jpg

I put both lines in writing and identified 12 different letters:



I have to assume this is written in English. If it translates to a cipher does not matter, from our perspective we just need to know which of the 12 signs means which letter is used, regardless of which scrambled ancient alphabet is used.

(1) English letter frequency leans towards e-t-a-o-i-n-s-h-r, so even before we take repetitive patterns into account, those are the letters we should have in our mind at all times.

(2) Letter position matters! Both sign 3 and sign 5 are our big candidates for the letter "e". A lot of vowels can stand at the end of a noun and in the middle of a noun, but "e" is different, it can stand at the end of a verb. But if the alpha shaped character "3" was our letter E, then we would have a problem, because...

(3) Grammar matters! Both lines have four distinct words, the second line maybe even has five. The word oder in English is Subject-Verb-Object. We need that later.

(4) Structure matters. One sign aside, both sentences are framed by the letters 1-2-3 and 2-3-5. If we combine both sentences and do not look at them individually, we get something very similar to the structure of a proverb or saying. "A friend in need, is a friend indeed" or something down that line. Very likely the banners have rhythm to them.

(5) Patterns matter. The sentence frame of 1-2-3 and 2-3-5 means that in the English language the likelihood of more than one sign being a vowel approaches zero. Which is an issue with letters #3 and #5. Since we need #3 or #5 for verb endings, one of them better be a vowel and another sing, or both #3 and #5 are vowels.

Sayings and proverbs have a way of not using downright homophones, but always ending up very close to one. With 2/3 of the letters being identical, we can say these word sound almost identical. Fitting two different vowels into tow three-letter words and still end up with a homophone is pretty difficult. If there only was a silent letter, such as an "e" at the ending of words maybe? The rope around either #3 or #5 being an "e" draws very close around the cipher's neck. Phonetically speaking, 1-2-3 and 2-3-5 are likely to rhyme and transcribe very similarly to IPA.

(6) Scrabble matters. There aren't that many three letter words in the English language. This is the full list. This is where I need help. Because I sure as hell do not want manually dig through the list in search for the 1-2-3 and 2-3-5 pattern alone. But this is the where we can mount the attack. Figure this out and the rest shall fall in place. I gave it two tries, found two potential candidates.


The first example I could come up with was "Age" and "Gem", being two valid words. Filling those letter then into the rest of the sentence, however, stranded me with "m" at the end of too many words ruining the chances to fit a verb into the sentence. The sing #3 would be the letter "e" in this version, but it would not take off really. At least in my mind, where not a lot of verbs end on the letter "m".


A better attempt was to assume "For" and "Ore", two words sharing the 1-2-3 and 2-3-5 pattern. The really nice thing about it is, how it manages to squeeze two vowels in there, while still sounding very similar. On top of that, the sign #5 turns into "e" opening up a lot of words in the middle of the sentence to become a verb, just like S-V-O demands. And words end on "e" just like a lot of verbs do.


My solution so far:

1st. Layer

FOR *E*R *R** ORE
* FOR *RE **E ORE

Not bad for only colliding a Scrabble word list? Half the sentence decoded by looking for a few similarly sounding three letter words with a certain letter pattern in a list on the Internet. Please someone program a tool to do it, so we can see where other potential solutions take us. I split the six-letter word in line two into two separate words. It consists of two syllables anyway and this allows for another second layer discovery.


2nd Layer (leaning out the window)
Again, Scrabble is your friend. *RE in the second line cannot be Ore, since that letter is taken, it cannot be Ere, since the letter is different. Which basically leaves "ire" as valid English three letter word. At the same time, this turns the "second syllable" into a three letter verb, which we need desperately to complete the sentence. Again, not that many three letter verbs in the English language. Especially since the "e" at the end is taken. I decided for the one that is dirt-common "use".

So either these are two three letter words with one verb in line two, or one six letter verb. Else the sentence would not be complete. In any way, this hints at sign #5 being our elusive letter "e", which in turn makes the Ore far more likely. That is a lot of convenient dominoes falling in place here. I went with the ideo of having two three letter words in line two, so I end up with:

FOR *E*R *R*S ORE
* FOR IRE USE ORE

3rd Layer:
Sadly this version kills the idea of sign #10 being "I", which would make sense because there aren't that many single letter particles or words in English. Maybe this means #10 is a glyph for something such as "and". For me it is impossible to tell, without colliding more three letter words and trying to come up with a sentence that supports an "a" or "I" at that position. There are no other choices for single letter "words" in English. The letter "i" is already taken by #11 and the second words heavily leans towards meaning "gear", "dear" or "heir". Another Scrabble word list with four letter words is your friend here. In any event, the "a" is taken and does not make much sense in the first place.

That leaves one word a mystery and that is the verb of the first sentence. Thanks to "use" in the second line it serendipitously ends on the letter "s" which is once more perfect for an English language verb. Comparing the verb [*R*S] to the word list, shows that the first letter needs to be the vowel here, else there is not a valid word in the list. Options which word in the English language can even fit here is pretty slim. Four letter verb, vowel in front, ends in third person, therefore has three letter word stem, no o, no u, no e... I came up with ARMS, as in make ready to fire. Any other choice does not make that much sense, except you want to arf or arc ore, whatever that means.

Following the proverb idea, I end up with

FOR *E*R ARMS ORE
and FOR IRE USE ORE

If "F" and "A" were not already taken, I'd say this reads "for fear arms ore and for ire use ore", which makes some sense for a banner wrapped around a giant metal weapon, but this lacks some linguistic elegance if you know what I mean.

In any event, this shows you how far you can get in trying to decipher the two banners, by colliding word lists. Maybe you have more luck or can create a program to do it for you. I hope I could demonstrate how close you can get to solving this thing by attacking the linguistic structure at the point I described. Collide 2-3-5 with 1-2-3.

[Eanny]

impressive work

[Satrec Pylonag]

Quite impressive, but I would like to remind you that Mathew Medina, the language creator, said this:

Mathew Medina said:

There is a slight catch with this one (Amantis and Konig you guys are really quite close) and that is while the letters do translate to English characters, those characters will still look and sound like gibberish, because it IS gibberish. Well, at least it would be gibberish to us earthlings...and uhhh....things of this nature. I don't want to waste any more of your valuable time. ;-)

So the sentence will originally seem like gibberish to us. And it will probably require some messing around of words.

I do, however, like your brute force method of cracking the code. Which is one that is tedious but eventually should yield the result. I believe that it hasn't been tried before.:)

Here's the link to the rest of everyone's work: http://guildwars.inc...ad.php?t=485041

Edited by Satrec Pylonag, 23 June 2010 - 04:40 PM.

[4thVariety]

The text is already gibberish.There is no letter substitution necessary to crack it once we know which sing is supposed to be which letter. Why translate it to G-Z-K and then find out that G=O, Z=R and K=E? We can skip that step, since it does not add another layer of security to the text.

At the same time, for a written GW language, this is the most elegant so far. Each letter is reasonable precise. You can write the Latin alphabet in 42 strokes. That Phoenician-Tyrian ******* thing takes almost 60, the New-Ascalonian looks like a mess too. One letter is two strokes at best, that is what people boiled it down to 3000 years ago when they developed that sort of writing. You do not need eight strokes to finish one letter, that would somehow defeat the purpose.

[KQ]

Really, really nice. :) I just love your logic, mate.

I think how there's more work in the sequence: 11-3-5-12-9-5, since it seems to me as a one word.

But, for the sequence 4-5-6-3, here's what I've found for the possibilities from looking at the scrabble word list:

• BEAR
  
• DEAR
  
• FEAR
  
• HEAR
  
• HEIR (maybe?; it doesn't match with your I then)
  
• NEAR
  
• SEAR
  
• WEIR (maybe?)

So on the end, we could get:

[indent]For fear arms ore
and for ire use ore[/indent]

, if the sequence 11-3-5-12-9-5 is actually two words.

The letter #6 is deffinately an A then (judging by the logic so far), since for letter #4 there could be other possibilities (amongst the noted above).

EDIT: I actually noticed you used #7 as an A, so my upper browsing isn't the thing... unless it isn't ARMS?

Edited by KQ, 23 June 2010 - 05:56 PM.

[chriskang]

* Why do you think that #4 is a single glyph and not a J-shaped glyph followed by a I-shaped one?

* Have you considered that the script might require a right-to-left reading?

[Ravious]

This has been done extensively on GW1 forums, but a cryptogram solver is basically what you are doing. Google that for some online ones. The problem, I feel is that either they are Tyrian words like asura, mursaat, charr, etc. or with a possible hint in the latest GW2 blog post a "mathemagical formula." Which is why it would be gibberish to us earthlings.

[KQ]

chriskang said:

* Why do you think that #4 is a single glyph and not a J-shaped glyph followed by a I-shaped one?

It seems to me as a syngle glyph, since the both strokes are really close to each other. You could as well say then how letter #1 is not a single glyph, imo.

Quote

* Have you considered that the script might require a right-to-left reading?

Ah, I was actually wondering the same... since the banner was I think made with the insight of Arabic letters? Or was it Hebrew... But then again, it is a banner which has it's meaning in English, no matter what kind of gibberish it is...

[Konig Des Todes]

King's: It actually was brought up that what 4th has set as #1 is in fact two letters, and following that, that letters may overlap each other, which we actually already see with #5 (for instance, what 4th has as #3 is in fact 2 letters as well).

Whether that is the case or not, the two strokes in #4 are not connected either way, so I'm inclined to think it is two letters. Closeness doesn't have a way because we have obviously different letters overlapping.

And I think Matt's blog post did give a hint: Mathematical formula, which means these may include numbers as well as letters.

[KQ]

Uh, if it would be so, then it's near as impossible to fully translate the meaning of it. Unless we get a sort of rosetta stone, or at least more lines.

[Gmr Leon]

I don't think it will involve numbers. However, I do think it may involve some of the few lines of insight we get into asuran technical/Eternal Alchemy talk:

[spoil][quote name='Before the Battle cutscene']Vekk: "Just stop yelling and look at my calculations!"
Gadd: "I don't need to look at your calculations. I know it will work."
Vekk: "Well, the rest of us don't share your confidence."
<Party leader>: "What's the problem now?"
Gadd: "This HACK is telling me I don't know how to format a crystal array!"
Vekk: "I'm TRYING to say that you run a greater risk putting the crystals in a serial pattern than in parallel."
Gadd: "You'll get twice the power this way."
Vekk: "That's too much power, too fast! You'd flood the enchantment buffers."
Gadd: "Don't lecture me! I was formatting crystals before you were born." [/QUOTE]

[quote name='Price of Victory cutscene']Vekk: "My father believed in the Eternal Alchemy. We are all part of a larger equation."
Vekk: "And so we commend Gadd's remains to that greater equation."
Vekk: "His ashes return to the universe, but his knowledge remains with us."[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Kerrsh']I believe I see the gears of the Eternal Alchemy spinning before me. I feel I can almost reach out and turn them with my hands.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Kerrsh']This is the Eternal Alchemy at work. Even your human gods cannot stand against its inevitability![/QUOTE]

[quote name='Kerrsh']Know this: if it takes until the sun sets on the final day of creation...until the wheels of the Eternal Alchemy seize up and tear apart the fabric of the universe...I shall decipher your secrets![/QUOTE]

[quote name='Kerrsh']The stories of your god Kormir fascinate me most. To think that a mortal...a human, no less...could transcend into something greater. Was it all part of the Eternal Alchemy? Was there some hidden design that preordained it would happen that way? Or does a power exist that can go against the schemes of fate?[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Kerrsh']To the Asura, there are no gods. There is only Eternal Alchemy. It is the greater scheme of existence of which we are all a part. Your gods are pieces within this design, their manifestation mere facets in the geometric whole.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Kerrsh']I am beginning to understand. There are so many pieces, so many variables, no wonder I haven't seen this before. These ciphers were the strings on the harp of the Eternal Alchemy itself. If only I could pluck them with my fingers. We are nearly there, friend.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Glayvin']...is an interesting pattern in the ether weave. If it were shifted, like this...[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Glayvin']Your friend over there...the gloomy one...he says it is time. Time is not a thing, an object you can see or hear or create. It merely exists...or rather we exist within it. As I was explaining this to him in detail, he interrupted and mentioned something about a battle. Nasty things, battles. I wish to have no part, no part at all. That was not part of our arrangement. But you could help him. He is your friend. Besides I suddenly have an idea for a time machine.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Glayvin']So it ends, so it ends.... A curious thing happened here this day. That creature, the one you called an Unseen One, possesses such frightful power. It is removed from the pattern of the world, but for how long? And yet, I wonder...what might have been learned from it? Ah, well. There is knowledge yet to find and paths yet to walk.[/QUOTE][/spoil]

[Konig Des Todes]

King's Quest said:

Uh, if it would be so, then it's near as impossible to fully translate the meaning of it. Unless we get a sort of rosetta stone, or at least more lines.

That's been the general understanding for a while now. There's just too few words with too many possibilities; and I don't think forcing it will work.

The only thing we can really do is figure out where letters start and begin. Several people have tried to force various letters into certain spots, and have gotten a variety of different things - both that make little sense and that makes no sense, and all with different amount of letters.

The first thing we should do is the only thing we can really do. Separate the letters.

[chriskang]

4thVariety said:

or can create a program to do it for you.

I might be nerd enough to try that.

[4thVariety]

Reasons how I decided on what gets to be a letter:

#1: letter because the two swings are interconnected in two spots. letters are written NEXT to each other, not above each other.
#2: one swing with an added stroke to mark something; no variation presently though.
#3: technically two swings, but in a full letter system it might be differently pronounced in actual writing.
#4 one swing, one stroke, again, the stroke alone would not make sense, since all the other letters are generally swing based, and that would be a single stroke base one? Without marking? For the overall artsy approach this would be rather peasant.
#5 now that is a one stroke letter, with marking, makes sense. Very weird shaped marking, tryth to throw you off here and there.
#6 the lovechild of s and @
#7 the second stroke based one, now with two markings. *shock*
#8 a swing similar to #4, but with a distinct horizontal marking. If this was a real language developed by wise men 4000 years ago, then we could assume things, such as both being plosives, or one being a diphtong or digraph variation of the other. But knot knowing how deep the rabbit hole at ArenaNet is in that regard, I do not want to assume stuff like that. Makes you sound crazy.
#9: first two stroke letter, as long as there is not clear upside down L or T this thing might look like that, as more two stroke letters enter, this might be subject to change. This is a letter that suffers from how letters bleed into each other, but it really is there multiple times.
#10: two swings and one stroke. Considering we are only 10 letters deep, this level of complicated almost looks desperate. It is also the weak spot when colliding letters. Either a full alphabet exists and that is the reason why a 2+1 letter exist, or this is an indicator for the total randomness.
#11: stroke, swing in one movement, if that is not a letter, then what is?
#12: again, is this a variation of 11 in terms of the sound it depicts, or just an added loop for lack of ideas?

In all fairness, it is a rather artsy language with a lot of weirdness still going on. A lot of strokes that seem unnecessary (#4) or are downright weird in how they are pronounced (#12, #6). But looking at the banners it looks good, giving off the right vibe.

A real written language basically always tries not to use more than one clear stroke in combination with one clear swing. Not a nook here or a cranny there like Asuran or even New Krytan does atm. Because if you are going to chisel something into stone, you want to avoid minor details in your letter system. If everybody can write, then written language is something optimized for speedy writing, not painting hieroglyphs on a wall over the course of a month.

The jury is still out on this Asuran letter system. If it develops more into a ritualistic magical language written with great care, then we would expect a certain intricacy of strokes. The look then depends very much on the pen which is used. If this is more of a common Asura writing language for every day, then it certainly appears to have too much entropy going on and the letters are written too close together.

Again, without knowing what ArenaNet tried to express, it is impossible to derive any meaning from it.

Edit:
For your viewing pleasure and to make a point about what I said, I quickly hammered together a peasant alphabet, which tries to avoid artsy swings. It is just optimized for easy understanding. You will automatically get that Latin letter vibe, because both alphabets try to be minimalist. You can also see, where some issues might arise and where certain swings might even get dropped. But beware, the more you do that, the closer you get to Latin. Hopefully you also get a feeling of why anything with too many curls or more than two strokes, really isn't what we consider a letter. Also notice how vowels share properties, how related sounds look related and how consonants which potentially double up are picked for ease of writing ll, or rr, etc. The more common a letter is on the English language, the easier it is to write. I hope this can demonstrate where one can push the limits of alphabets and which layers of analysis the GW alphabets do not allow.

Edited by 4thVariety, 23 June 2010 - 10:25 PM.

[dts720666]

Konig Des Todes said:

And I think Matt's blog post did give a hint: Mathematical formula, which means these may include numbers as well as letters.

And not just numbers, but a "formula" meaning addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc, and in combination with letters.

So, for example, maybe three Asuran symbols could be J-1, which would translate into one English letter: I.

If so, then the Asuran Banners are not phrases, but probably a single word on each. What appears to be a word is just a single letter.

Edited by dts720666, 31 August 2010 - 03:17 PM.

[Sarielle]

So, thread is a liiiiittle old (sorry) but I was struck by something when people had brought up mathematics.

The first symbol on the second line...people have been looking for a single-letter word, but what if it's a math symbol...like the one for the empty set? We're not necessarily any closer to translating, but I think it does support the theory that math is involved. :)

[Konig Des Todes]

It's not really a theory that math is involved. It was explicitly stated in Ghosts of Ascalon, which is canon lore, that the Asuran writing from before surfacing utilized math - and since Blimm used that language, I wouldn't doubt that the others would immediately after surfacing.

[Nocturnes]

Perhaps a numerological alphabet? The symbols on the banner look a lot like Sanskrit, or Arabic... I think we could really find out what the banner means if we brushed up on our history, since the Ascalonian alphabet was based on a Phonetician one.

[Grazel]

Just a question but what is the context of the banners? I mean where were they displayed? it might help with figuring out the meaning...

[Nocturnes]

So, we have that "ø" symbol.. It means "None" if I have that right, and after that symbol we get the 2-3-4 letter combination. Perhaps that means "None can"?

Edited by Nocturnes, 16 July 2011 - 09:33 PM.

[Gmr Leon]

Grazel said:

Just a question but what is the context of the banners? I mean where were they displayed? it might help with figuring out the meaning...

Riven Earth, around where Genius Operated Living Enchanted Manifestation takes place near the large moving structure. I think we determined it was a golem kiln, but I'm not sure. The writing also seems to be on the banner of the beacon that one of the asura gives you which you can use to summon a golem to your location both during and outside of the mission.

[Nocturnes]

Alright, I've put a bit of thought into this 'idea'. It may seem kind of patched together, but try and stay with me.

I believe that the Asuran alphabet includes typographic ligatures- When two letters are combined into one symbol by a common stroke or swing.

I also believe that the ligature occurs whenever two consonants are next to each other, and that leaves me to believe that the letters that are not connected to one another are vowels. This is seen in Devanagari script, and the Denvanagari numbers look VERY similar to the Asuran alphabet.

Any comments on this?

Edited by Nocturnes, 17 July 2011 - 03:14 AM.

[Muan]

If the asura use elements of mathematics in their language, I think its safe to assume it is not numbers we need to worry about but rather more complex concepts associated with higher math. If they intended to use mathematical concepts to communicate complex ideas, I doubt the Asura would limit themselves to concepts found in basic algebra and calculus. Is anyone out there a math major? An understanding of programming languages wouldn't hurt either. Deriving meaning from math is the essential point here. What sort of symbol would a mathematician or programmers use to make their verbal notes more accurate?

[iceblue]

Satrec Pylonag said:

Here's the link to the rest of everyone's work: http://guildwars.inc...ad.php?t=485041

Just wanted to add the old guru thread on the subject as well. Some posts are repeated on both sites.

http://www.guildwars...-t10342254.html