Successful translation ?

[ReneZ]

It is not my intention to go into a never-ending discussion about the recent Judaeo-Greek translation proposal by Geoffrey Caveney. However, there are a number of general points related to this that are worth bringing up, and do not specifically concern only this example.

It is important to keep in mind that any decryption or translation is not a process by itself, but it is an inverse of a process that has already taken place.
It is the act of reversing what the person did who wrote the text.

If one proposes a decryption (even when it is just simple substitution) it must be possible to describe the original encryption process reasonably accurately, and in some detail.
The reverse process may in some cases be more complicated.

It is not sufficient to:

1) Take a transcription file
2) apply some more or less arbitrary transformation of it
3) claim that this is the meaning (i.e. the plain text).

One has to describe how this plain text was converted into the text we see in the MS.
If one has the right solution, this will be possible.

If one is doing something very different, i.e. not the right solution, but just trying to squeeze meaning out of the transcription using the incorrect method, this will not be possible.

Also a detailed description of how the decryption is done may not be possible, or if it is attempted, may clearly show the weaknesses of the method.

In recent cases where some document was decrypted successfully, there was never any discussions whether it is correct or not. Take for example the Codex Copiale.

In the case of the Judaeo-Greek example, while we alternatively hear that it is consistent, or that it does not have to be consistent, this detailed description is not given.

The translation goes into two steps. The first is from Voynichese to "Greek written in Hebrew characters", and the second is from this to more standard Greek. In both steps changes are made.

In the first case, there is a many-to-many mapping of characters. In the second, parts of words are added/deleted and some more characters are modified.

What we need to see is:
- the Greek text that is proposed to be the plain text
- the method how this is represented using Hebrew characters
- the method how this new text is then mapped to the Voynich text

Both would normally involve a table.

We then need to see an explanation why the resulting text in the Voynich MS exhibits the typical word patters and the low entropy values.
This is true for any solution, of course.



One thing that this particular proposal covers is the appearance of Eva-f and Eva-p in top lines of paragraphs, which is typically overlooked in proposed solutions (because the would-be solver usually is not aware of this feature).