The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The discussions in this thread must be very interesting and informative, but they're so long that I'm completely lost. I'm eagerly awaiting your results, because I firmly believe that even if the original was in Chinese, our text would be a translation, not a transcription.

Well, from what I have seen so far, if it is a translation, it must be very close to literal, and into a monosyllabic language: mostly 1 hanzi = 1 syllable = ~1 Voynichese word (modulo missing and bogus spaces) = ~5 EVA letters (not counting spaces).  The locations of the "cribs" are too precise for it to be a free translation.

But I am not sure of that yet.

I have another very simple question: where is the link to your current research? The link in your profile on this forum doesn't lead to anything I'm interested in.

Shame on me, I should update my website at the university.  It is only ~30 years out of date...

But for the SBJ=SPS question, besides the TeX paper, I have You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that record my attempts to find the SPS parag that matches each individual SBJ recipe.  This index page lists those recipes that I have tried so far (39 of them, still 327 to go...).  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is generated mechanically from five files: the text of the recipe in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (the same for all recipes), and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (specific to each entry) that processes those four files and outputs an You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 

Currently I am extracting the hanzi version of each recipe from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. obtained from an edition of the Zhenghe Bencao (ZHB) encyclopedia printed in the 1700s.  Unfortunately that file does not clearly mark out the parts that are  quotes of the SBJ.  They would have been printed white-on-black in an edition available in 1400, but later editions dispensed with that clue and printed everything black-on-white.  Thus I must rely on the help of lalamos to identify the SBJ parts.  They have access to tons of scholarly papers and books about the SBJ, and probably some critical editions of it, so they should "know" which parts are original. But the lalamos often contradict themselves and each other, and it takes about one hour to get a text of the recipe that I can barely trust.  

The Mandarin pinyin file is not necessary; it is used only to make the html report more accessible to those (like me) who can't read Chinese characters but (unlike me) may understand spoken Mandarin.  The English translation is necessary to identify parts of the recipe that may have been omitted by the Author.  Some parts are consistently omitted (the [flavor], [another name],and [provenance] fields), but sometimes the recipe includes other bits that the author may or many not have skipped too.  Like the comment "amber is a divine substance" after the claim that chicken eggs can be turned into amber, or the qualifier "(for women)" before gynecological conditions or benefits.  When I notice such an item in the English text, I must tell my scripts to try to find a match both with and without that part, then check the results and try decide whether the part was or was not actually omitted.

The "good part of the SPS" file is the text of the Starred Parags section from line f103.1 to line f116r.30, thus excluding the "unstarred" block at the end; minus some parts where there were two or more parags lumped together and I could not decide where the division was.  In particular, it excludes three large blocks on f108r, f108v, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where the Scribe apparently ignored parag breaks and mashed 10-12 parags in a continuous block of text.  Thus it has onlt 243 parags instead of the 330 of the full transcription (and of the ~365 that presumably existed before the loss of the central bifolio).  The transcription is a new one that I made from scratch and checked against Rene's; it differs in many but small details.  That particular file has one parag per line, with no spaces [-,.], and with all weirdos and funny ligatures turned into '?'.

However be warned that those pages are still rough drafts, not fit for wide public distribution.  Some (with greenish background) use an incorrect hanzi text of the recipe from another SBJ file that had many small but sometimes critical differences from the ZHB version.  Others (bluish background) use the ZHB version for the matching, but the  "Discussion" section is still nonsensical or obsolete because it was written when I was still using the wrong version.  Thus do not bother to point out errors in those pages yet...

All the best, --stolfi