116v

[Jorge_Stolfi]

So, was [the Repairman] translating the text? Or trying to decipher it based on the similarity of the letters? Or was he actually tracing the erased outlines of the letters?

He was not translating it, because the assumption is that he did not know the Voynichese alphabet, much less the Voynichese language.  He was trying to reconstruct the erased text based on scattered bits of Voynichese characters that survived the wipe-out -- but he assumed (or hoped) that the text had been Latin script, and the language was German or Latin.  

Thus some of the "8"s and "ce" and "te" that he "reconstructed" probably were originally ds and Chs, and his "p"s were quite probably qs, etc.  And some of the crosses probably were bits of gallows.

But many letters must have been blank spots that he filled with guessed letters attempting to make some sense. 

For instance, he may have seen smudges that looked like "mc[blank]ia", and guessed that the original word was "maria".  And so on.

All the best, --stolfi

[Sorry but the EVA font seems to have disappeared from the menu.  Will fix the letters when it comes back...]