Calgary engineer believes he's cracked the mysterious Voynich Manuscript

[Ahmet Ardıç]

In Turkish, do the phrases "the baby pomegranate gunny candle" and "the foot stalk is plump, robust, cute" make sense as something one would naturally write and which a reader would easily understand? Because in direct translation they look like word salad. 

For me to say the manuscript has been solved, my basic criteria would be:

1) Other experts in the language (the medieval version) can use the method to translate a page independently and come up with roughly the same translation, allowing for reasonable variation because the manuscript is old and language is fluid. I.e. the results are repeatable.
2) The text makes grammatical sense without the translator having to explain that it makes sense if you kind of squint at it and give the author leeway for being poetic or being constricted by an acrostic.

Until you publish your full method and translation it isn't possible to say whether these criteria have been met. I would very much like them to be, because I want to read this damn manuscript (in modern English) before I die. 

I will say that when you publish your findings, people much more knowledgeable and clever than me are going to ask you much more informed and clever questions. I would suggest you don't accuse them of being emotional, racist, Euro-centric, or try to twist their words to say they must agree with you. Science, as you say, should be about the facts and the evidence.

Translations have to be evaluated in two ways.

• First you look at the translation and ask yourself, "Does this make sense?"
  
• Second you have to ask yourself, "Would they normally write it this way?"
  

For example, in English, you could say, "Keep you tomorrow health best," and everyone would understand it, but no one says it that way. They would normally say, "Take care," or "Be well," "Gesundheit," or "Watch out for your health," or a few other common phrases. No one would say, "Keep you tomorrow health best."

So... there is text that is understandable in a rough way. And there is text that is normal and conventional.

Some of the solutions proposed so far (in a variety of languages) have bits and pieces that seem understandable, but they are not normal phrases for the Middle Ages.


If it is understandable, but seems a bit odd AND the translation method has a lot of degrees of freedom, then you have to ask yourself if the degrees of freedom are resulting in a subjective "solution". Normally degrees of freedom make it easier to write something that is traditional and normal and yet, in the case of many VMS "solutions", this is not what happens. Even with all this freedom, translations are still grammatically odd or the grammar is nonexistent.

You said that: {In Turkish, do the phrases "the baby pomegranate gunny candle" make sense as something one would naturally write and which a reader would easily understand? Because in direct translation they look like word salad.} 

However, we are not even talking about a complete sentence or about a phrase. I was wrote that; "these three words together are an adjective". I did not write that "these three words (ÇNOR ÇULU ŞAMU) is a sentence or phrase". Because this is an adjective but not a sentences and/or phrase. 

So, you interpret these three words as if they were a complete and meaningful sentence or adjective which they are not. However, if you look at the page with these words, you will see that they are the continuing part. 

In brief, "The Baby pomegranate bag wax" (is not phrase or is not sentence too, but it is an adjective.

Thanks.