Has anyone ever "deciphered" a paragraph?

[tavie]

I'm going to try to wrench this back towards, if not wholly, on topic...

I think if the Voynich is solvable, then it will be possible to convert a paragraph in a repeatable way.  I'm not sure if I'd agree that means the theory must be a one-way cipher without room for interpretation, though I can understand why.  You're right that no "solution" so far has been repeatable (except in the mind of the "solver"), but I'd attribute that to how all so far unfortunately approach their solutions, rather than a consequence of the text itself. 

One thing that seems clear is that the "true" Voynich solution - assuming it exists - is not going to be simple.  It would have been found already, since a succession of brilliant people have been working on it for decades.  It's not going to be something that a "fresh pair of eyes" suddenly spots, which unfortunately seems to be the mindset most people new to the manuscript have.

I imagine that if there's a solution out there, it's going to seem messy, complex, and appear to offer unattractive degrees of freedom.  But the important thing the solver will need to do - and none has bothered so far - is to translate not just a paragraph but pages and multiple ones in order to try to establish:

1. a clear correspondence between their translation and the images/content of the pages that is so strong and consistent that sceptics would be hard-pressed to ascribe it to coincidence or selective interpretation
   
2. clear and consistent grammatical rules in the original text, to the standard and extent that the apparent initial degrees of freedom are reduced, and the solver's interpretation no longer seems selective to those without an emotional investment in the theory.  These are more likely to emerge over the course of multiple pages, rather than just from a few lines. 
   

That may seem a big ask when we've yet to see even a proper paragraph by a repeatable method.  But, given the likely complexity of Voynichese, I don't think it's even possible to work out the system at play without working through a large chunk of the text, let alone ensure it is repeatable.  If it was as simple as someone stumbling on the initial foothold and then identifying the language, it would have been done already.  If a foothold is found, I can imagine it won't even be clear at the time that it is a foothold, and there will be painful crawling, sometimes back as well as forward, without knowing if one is anywhere near the top of the mountain.

So I doubt it is possible to work out the system enough to provide a letter to letter correspondence list without having developed it through translations of multiple pages.  I'm intensely sceptical of systems that are developed and then proposed on the foundation of a mere phrase or paragraph. 

And unfortunately that's what everyone does.  No one bothers to work their way through a quire with their system before proposing it as the next big theory/solution.  I think the excuse is usually that it's best left up to experts/native speakers.  But that's because they've run into difficulties extending the application of their system to a wider context, beyond the initial one or two words that seemed a perfect-but-coincidental match.  Or because extending the application of the system requires too much work, which itself implies the solver's brain is overburdened with the task of interpreting, filling in the massive gap left by their system which cannot produce repeatable results without the helpful brain. 

So, I think the issue is with the approach all those who have proposed solutions take, and I'd like to think that there is a viable - if complex - solution out there eventually to be dug up. 

Tldr; if I were world dictator, I'd ban anyone from submitting a solution unless they've done a rough translation of at least 20 pages from across the manuscript.  And I'd make a form for them to fill out answers to how their solution addresses each of the specific Voynichese mysteries.