The Voynich Ninja

Dear community,

my name is Dr. Michael Hoffmann. I am a geneticist, and I am pretty sure that I have decoded Voynich. 21 pages are translated completely, and the first line of 120+ pages of the manuscript also. I started working on Voynich some weeks ago, because I am on sabbatical and I needed a project.

The text inside Voynich is latin, and for translation it requires I) a decipher chart (which is in the attachment) and II) knowledge of frameshifts (i.e. syntax movements). Since I am the only one today who can read that script I am searching for followers helping to translate the whole manuscript. You do need knowledge of latin, at least that what we call a "grosses latinum" in germany. A degree in science is essential to accept the frameshifts/syntax movements; although some pages do not follow that rule, which might be due to the fact that Voynich is written by at least four different authors, and all of them obtain a different style.

Inside Voynich, spoiler alert, you can find poems and also texts about finance, as well as thoughts of, at least at that time, strange things, and cooking recipes. At least two of the authors are female. On a cooking recipe I am actually working, and it is page 150 of the digital copy provided by the yale university. This recipe is entitled "the five wings". If you are interested in discussions about Voynich translation, please feel free to contact me.

And please find as an example attached translated page 92 of the digital copy provided by yale (latin and german). It is about the treatment of perotinitis (disease of the guts) with extracts of blue lotus. As in most cases the plant depicted on a page is decoration, on this page (and on some others that deal with medicine) it is not. I hope you can read the attachment, I had to minimize the original because of the 500 kb limit rule here.

I know that I ruined some myths here. However, with a scientific approach you can finish everything. Yeah.

I hope some of you find my post interesting,
with best regards
Dr. Michael Hoffmann

ps: because of the prefix I chose (book) I can state that I have published this story on amazon. I do not have send this story to science or nature simply because translation is not my work, it is a hobby.

No you haven't.

Under your system, the word cheol would transliterate to /aiiea/. What?
And qokeedy would be /adariimne/. Huh?

He says it's Latin. Two of the most common words are nonsense in the transliteration chart which he provides.

(03-07-2018, 09:00 PM)Dr. Michael Hoffmann Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Dear community,

my name is Dr. Michael Hoffmann. I am a geneticist, and I am pretty sure that I have decoded Voynich. 21 pages are translated completely, and the first line of 120+ pages of the manuscript also. I started working on Voynich some weeks ago, because I am on sabbatical and I needed a project.

The text inside Voynich is latin, and for translation it requires I) a decipher chart (which is in the attachment) and II) knowledge of frameshifts (i.e. syntax movements). Since I am the only one today who can read that script I am searching for followers helping to translate the whole manuscript. You do need knowledge of latin, at least that what we call a "grosses latinum" in germany.

Nonsense. If you can completely translate 21 pages in a few weeks, you do not need "followers" to do the work for you.

I am actually QUITE tired of people who announce that they have solved the VMS (without any firm evidence that their system is accurate) and then throw it out there for other people to do the work, with the idea that the "solver" gets the glory while other people make the effort (without any compensation). Frankly, I am amazed at how often this happens.

Quote:A degree in science is essential to accept the frameshifts/syntax movements; although some pages do not follow that rule, which might be due to the fact that Voynich is written by at least four different authors, and all of them obtain a different style.

Where is your scientific evidence that at least four different authors contributed and that they all used different styles? This is the kind of statement that can usually be statistically demonstrated, so show us. I will agree that there is more than one scribe (and Currier pointed out two different patterns in the structure of the text), but how can you determine there is more than one author?

Quote:Inside Voynich, spoiler alert, you can find poems and also texts about finance, as well as thoughts of, at least at that time, strange things, and cooking recipes. At least two of the authors are female. On a cooking recipe I am actually working, and it is page 150 of the digital copy provided by the yale university. This recipe is entitled "the five wings". If you are interested in discussions about Voynich translation, please feel free to contact me.

Certainly there might be poems. Some of the folios are formatted like poems. Many medieval manuscripts included poems. There might also be recipes. Even the earliest VMS researchers suggested parts of the manuscript might be recipes. Nothing new here.

Quote:And please find as an example attached translated page 92 of the digital copy provided by yale (latin and german). It is about the treatment of perotinitis (disease of the guts) with extracts of blue lotus. As in most cases the plant depicted on a page is decoration, on this page (and on some others that deal with medicine) it is not. I hope you can read the attachment, I had to minimize the original because of the 500 kb limit rule here.

The plant drawing does not resemble a blue lotus (or any kind of lotus) and I notice you covered up the parts of the plant that look even less like a lotus, but I will look at your translation this evening when I am done with work and let you know my impressions.

Hello Hoffman and welcome. 
I'm rather concerned by your use of 'syntax movements'. If these work the way I imagine they do  then we're going down the road of anagrams  and that never ends well  
Could you post an overview of your translation method and how these movements are assumed to work ?

Welcome on this forum Dr. Michael Hoffmann,

I read what you call the latin text (I don't understand a single word of german sorry).

I can assert than less than ten per cent of this text is latin.
It will be very difficult (or impossible) to find someone who can translate your text.

Better luck next time.

Your image is too small to see comfortably, so I have increased the size and increased the contrast so people on the forum can read it:



Here is a transcript of the first few sections so those who know Latin and German can evaluate your "translation" more easily.

I have also added a German-to-English translation for those on the forum who do not know German (please note, I am not a native German speaker):

1 - te an reo uni reret en
1 - Du bist doch wohl einer der glaubt, handeln zu können? Wohl an!  (Are you surely one who believes that you can handle this [take action upon this]? Well!)

2 - re ur in rea
2 - Innerhalb der Wunde der Betroffene brenne. (Within the wound, the victim [affected part] burns.)

3 - te ea in rere quin rea i
3 - Derselbe Betroffene vergehe, wenn nicht Du rechtzeitig handeln kannst. (This affected [person or part] will die/pass away/fade/recede, if you do not handle/respond [to the problem/injury] in time.)

4 - te ea a ore fi ea re quae ad re alet re leam re meum
4 - Ereigne Du dasjenige vor seinem Augen, welches wird nähren seine Wirklichkeit durch meine Salbe. (Ereigne [is this supposed to be a name?], before your eyes, this whose reality/situation becomes nourished through my salve/ointment.


I think that's enough. Your "Latin" transliteration looks like nonsense to me. "re ur in rea" isn't Latin and I don't see how you get from that to "Within the wound, the affected part burns," but I will leave it to those who are strong in Latin to give an opinion.

Welcome to the forum Dr Michael Hoffmann,
Like davidjackson, I suggest presenting your methodology in more detail. 
The forum members' reviews can be scathing, but we see a lot of proposed decipherments, none of which have been conclusive, and each time the authors were convinced that their "translation" was the correct one.
Sometimes the authors can't handle criticism of the pet project they've spent so much time on.
Just don't take it personally.

Also, everyone, this reminds me, it might be good to try and build what Koen Gh proposed in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread. Such a tool would spare us all a lot of time.

Quote:M. Hoffman: "A degree in science is essential to accept the frameshifts/syntax movements; although some pages do not follow that rule, which might be due to the fact that Voynich is written by at least four different authors, and all of them obtain a different style."

For those who are not familiar with this phrase, a frame shift (in genetics) refers to a mutation that alters an expected sequence. It can be either an insertion or deletion. If it occurs early in the sequencing process, the alteration may lead to greater discrepancies later in the sequence.

-----
So how do we interpret the concept of a frame shift, as it is used in genetics, in relation to the VMS?

• To begin with, M. Hoffmann has posted a chart for a substitution code in the bottom right corner that relates each VMS glyph to one, two or three letters in Latin.
  
• This substitution code has then been used to transliterate the Voynich glyphs into syllables like re ur in rea, which is then interpreted to the German phrase for "Within the wound, the affected [part] burns."
  

"re ur in rea" is clearly not Latin vocabulary or grammar (nor is the rest of the "translation"), so we have to assume that another step is involved, one that he terms a "frame shift", which would imply that letters have been inserted or deleted to create a translation.


This final and crucial step, where one goes from nonsense syllables to readable text, has not been illustrated. To enable others to understand and substantiate the method, the "frame shift" process needs to be demonstrated. Otherwise the solution is no different from anagram solutions, where liberties are taken with the letters to turn the text into something meaningful.