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Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - Printable Version

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Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - stellar - 29-02-2016

I went ahead and published a book titled, "Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation".  I discuss my project in this video and at the end provide and easy Voynich decoding game.  Have a look and if you buy the book present your feedback here.  Thank you!



RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - Anton - 29-02-2016

Hi stellar,

The "Discussions" subforum has a special purpose and is not intended for this sort of threads. Please read the subforum rules before posting.

Thread moved into "Voynich Talk".

RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - Koen G - 02-03-2016

Tommy

I've seen your method before, if I understand it correctly, every Voynich word is an anagram of a Latin word, right?

As others may have pointed out to you, there are a number of serious problems with this approach. I'll boil it down to this:

  • The decoding process is extremely difficult. What information is worth encoding in such a way? It must be important, right? You won't go though the trouble of this procedure just to encode and decode nursery rhymes. 
  • The procedure is not lossless. Take the English word SPARE. Its anagrams are:
    • apers, apres, asper, pares, parse, pears, prase, presa, rapes, reaps, spare, spear
Let's be fair and drop the most uncommon words from the list. That leaves us with SPARE, PARSE, PEARS, RAPES, REAPS, SPEAR. Six different common English words.
To spare someone is totally different than to spear them. I'd even say the two are mutually exclusive Smile
Throw some possible raping, reaping and pears into the mix, and your reader will be very; very confused.

If you allow one letter to be altered (dropped, added, switched), the possibilities to decode a full sentence become infinite.

So my question is: how do you explain the very time consuming, high security encoding on the one hand, and the extremely high risk of the message being mutilated on the other?

RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - -JKP- - 02-03-2016

(02-03-2016, 08:45 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
    • apers, apres, asper, pares, parse, pears, prase, presa, rapes, reaps, spare, spear
Let's be fair and drop the most uncommon words from the list. That leaves us with SPARE, PARSE, PEARS, RAPES, REAPS, SPEAR. Six different common English words.
To spare someone is totally different than to spear them. I'd even say the two are mutually exclusive Smile
Throw some possible raping, reaping and pears into the mix, and your reader will be very; very confused.

If you allow one letter to be altered (dropped, added, switched), the possibilities to decode a full sentence become infinite.

So my question is: how do you explain the very time consuming, high security encoding on the one hand, and the extremely high risk of the message being mutilated on the other?

I agree with all the above and would also ask Stellar the question, "Why doesn't your method work with the other words on the page?" You cherry-picked a few that could be anagramed into submission and ignored or disregarded the rest which means the likelihood of the method being correct is very low.

RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - ReneZ - 02-03-2016

As I hinted at Stephen Bax's  site, while anagramming would be a very bad idea of our Voynich author, this doesn't exclude that he made the unfortunate choice of putting this very bad idea into effect.
It would make the 'inversion' nearly impossible and we'd be really stuck. (Which happens to be where we are ....)

That it happened at the character level inside words, and the text is plain Latin, is very clearly excluded by the collective Voynich MS word properties, as I am sure many people here are fully aware.

RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - Anton - 02-03-2016

(02-03-2016, 11:08 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I hinted at Stephen Bax's  site, while anagramming would be a very bad idea of our Voynich author, this doesn't exclude that he made the unfortunate choice of putting this very bad idea into effect.

I think this is so unlikely, that we may safely rule this out.

The above considerations raise a simple but important point that is sometimes forgotten by those who claim decipherment of the VMS - namely, besides proposing the encryption mechanism , the decryption mechanism shall be demonstrated as well, such that it allows for unambigous reconstruction of the underlay plain text from the overlay cipher text. Indeed, it makes no sense to encrypt something in such a way that you cannot decrypt it afterwards.

RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - ReneZ - 03-03-2016

I also consider the likelihood that there is any anagramming involved very small, but I wouldn't rule it out.
I actually consider the likelihood that the text is meaningless greater than that of 'encoding by anagramming'.

RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - -JKP- - 03-03-2016

(03-03-2016, 11:07 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I also consider the likelihood that there is any anagramming involved very small, but I wouldn't rule it out.
I actually consider the likelihood that the text is meaningless greater than that of 'encoding by anagramming'.

I wouldn't rule it out, either. Anagraming was not an uncommon encryption method at the time, but it tended to be consistent, not by-convenience-to-make-a-word-the-eager-codebreaker-knows-style anagraming. It was like pig-Latin, applied more-or-less the same way to each word or conceptual grouping.

RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - Emma May Smith - 04-03-2016

(02-03-2016, 11:08 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I hinted at Stephen Bax's  site, while anagramming would be a very bad idea of our Voynich author, this doesn't exclude that he made the unfortunate choice of putting this very bad idea into effect.
It would make the 'inversion' nearly impossible and we'd be really stuck. (Which happens to be where we are ....)

New theory: The Feckless Encipherer. The writer of the Voynich Manuscript sought to encipher his work but didn't understand how ciphers worked. Thus he invented a one-way cipher which neither he, nor anybody else, could ever hope to undo. It explains everything!

RE: Voynich Manuscript Latin Translation - -JKP- - 04-03-2016

(04-03-2016, 09:35 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(02-03-2016, 11:08 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I hinted at Stephen Bax's  site, while anagramming would be a very bad idea of our Voynich author, this doesn't exclude that he made the unfortunate choice of putting this very bad idea into effect.
It would make the 'inversion' nearly impossible and we'd be really stuck. (Which happens to be where we are ....)

New theory: The Feckless Encipherer. The writer of the Voynich Manuscript sought to encipher his work but didn't understand how ciphers worked. Thus he invented a one-way cipher which neither he, nor anybody else, could ever hope to undo. It explains everything!

If it were a short manuscript, this might be worth considering.

But a manuscript that probably took years? Most cipherers would discover it was a one-way system and likely adjust it rather than continuing on for hundreds of pages. I'm not ruling out the possibility, but the likelihood seems low.