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Local Authors => Brandon Sanderson => Topic started by: Harakeke on September 20, 2010, 06:52:19 AM

Title: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 20, 2010, 06:52:19 AM

Edit,TLDR: to skip right to the translation & summary, click here (http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Alethi_Script).



Whew!  I've finally decipered the Alethi scipt used in the Navani's Notebook illustrations.  It's a very beautiful writing system -- I particularly like the way it resembles visual representations of sound waves and incorporates the Vorin appreciation of symmetry.  The phonemes aren't quite the same as in English, which made it a frustratingly fun puzzle.

I've translated all of the first page so far, and parts of the second.  The results are quite shocking, though perhaps not unexpected.  It definitely explains why Syl has such a dislike for Shardplate.

Quote from: Navani's Notebook, Page One
The cut and type of the gem determines what kind of spren are attracted to it and can be imprisoned in it. There must be thousands of possible combinations.
Once a spren is captured and the gem infused with Stormlight the fabrial can be used in machines.

Pain Knife
The pain knife is used as a means of protection. Sharp blades pierce an attacker’s clothing and cause crippling pain.

cold gravity pain heat wind
(These are labels describing which spren are attracted to different gem cuts.)

Flamespren trapped in emerald

Removable outer covering to infuse fabrial with Stormlight

Fabrial

Retractable blades cause crippling pain.
Dial pushes blades to four set lengths.

I'm only partway done with Page 2, but it's getting late and the smaller font is giving me a headache -- so I'm going to take a break.
The gist of it seems to be that the bracelet is an Altering fabrial, based on the inclusion of the ten Polestones arranged in the Double Eye of the Almighty.  But -- the labels in the diagram in the lower left aren't gem names, numbers, or colors -- they're emotions!  An emotion augmenting/diminishing fabrial? 
Stay tuned...

Quote from: Navani's Notebook: Page Two
Examples of stormlight patterns

Patterns of stormlight filtered through the fabrial determine the power of the gem

Fabrials allow creation of things like the emotion bracelet made of ten fabrials working together

The pattern cannot be seen by the naked eye

Man betrayed by a close friend
Woman who has just been proposed to
Man who discovered his betrothed lies to him
Mother at wedding of only son

Anticipation
anger
disgust
sadness

love
hate

joy
trust
fear
surprise

The trick of the emotion fabrials is first learning to read it and second learning to tell if the bracelet is reading your emotions, your subject's emotions, or the emotions of the people in the next room over

Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Erunion on September 20, 2010, 07:24:14 AM
Hol-crap....  :o

Capturing spren? In Fabrials? That makes so much sense.

BTW, you have talent. Thank you for the translation.

Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on September 20, 2010, 08:14:38 AM
Harakeke you are a genius. What you have done is incredible, and I think that everyone on this forum will be thanking you from the bottom of our hearts.

I agree with you, this system of writing is both beautiful and interesting. Hats off to Brandon, Isaac and anyone else who had a role in designing this language. You have done an incredible job. Something that is mysterious and exciting that will get most fans going crazy.

I think its just amazing how a fabrial works. They reproduce the bonds created between knight radiant and spren so any average person can use it. But how do the spren feel about being imprisoned? A spren is suppose to be free, to ride the winds. Will there be an attack of the spren in a latter book? Spren slaughtering humans? Spren will definitely be playing a very large role in later books, thats for sure.

I understand the emotions being tied to spren. I see spren as being a physical representation of an idea. And as we know, thoughts, ideas and memories are defined and stored in our minds as emotions. When you think back on an event, you don't so much picture the event as you picture the emotions. The stronger the emotions the better the memory of the event. Following this logic, spren would thus be physical manifestations of emotions. That's why spren are attracted to certain emotions in people.

Harakeke, when you're finished translating the second page I would love to see how you cracked this language. It looks very interesting. Maybe there is something in those pages which will better help us understand the front and back covers.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: zebobes on September 20, 2010, 11:19:38 AM
Wow... that's incredible. How does the translation work? Are the words in English still, just in a different alphabet? I imagine that must be the case, because how else could you translate completely different words. Did you find any typos, out of curiosity? :-)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: rjl on September 20, 2010, 04:17:42 PM
I've translated all of the first page so far, and parts of the second.  The results are quite shocking, though perhaps not unexpected.  It definitely explains why Syl has such a dislike for Shardplate.
It was actaully Dalinor's shardblade that Syl disliked, not his shardplate (middle of page 981). And we haven't yet seen proof that shardplate uses/is any sort of fabrial.

Also, can we ask how sure you are on your translation?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on September 20, 2010, 10:04:19 PM
OK, I want to see your notes.

I told Brandon someone might have it within 10 days, but it lasted almost 3 weeks. Pretty good.

(Not that the decryption is that difficult. It just depended on when the right kind of person would sit down and try to crack it.)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: mycoltbug on September 20, 2010, 10:44:14 PM
That makes 2 of us and I'm sure all the rest.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: CtrlZed on September 20, 2010, 11:09:21 PM
I'm impressed.

@Stormblessed  Peter also had a huge impact on the creation of the script.  His insights were invaluable.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on September 20, 2010, 11:25:56 PM
Brandon says we'll have a blog post about it once fans completely decrypt it and post their explanations.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: ryos on September 20, 2010, 11:30:42 PM
Yes, do please post notes on your thought process. I love stories like that. :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: rjl on September 20, 2010, 11:51:20 PM
I guess we can take this as confirmation that Harakeke is dead on with the so far posted translation. Sorry for doubting you, epicness.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Cheese Ninja on September 20, 2010, 11:52:44 PM
Very impressive, wish I had a physical copy of the book to look at these pages, the computer version is a bit tiny.

Is it just me, or does this manner of writing seem a bit impractical? I mean, every line you make has to be duplicated across because of the top/bottom symmetry.  You could actually write twice as fast if you just wrote the top, and since the bottom is just its mirror image, you don't actually need to draw/write it.

One thing I'm a bit confused about throughout this book, in order to recharge gems, is there some technique besides leaving it out in a highstorm?  Like just transfering it from one stone to another using some sort of fabrial? 
There was this bit near the end where they mentioned repairing Dalinar's shardplate on the way back from the Tower:
Quote
For now, he wore Adolin’s. They had collected all of the infused gemstones among his twenty-six hundred men and used that Stormlight to recharge and reinforce his armor. It was still scarred with cracks. Healing as much damage as it had sustained would take days, but the Plate was in fighting shape again, if it came to that.
Did they just hold up all the gems a few at a time in the place that the gems fit into the shardplate?  How do the moneychangers do it if there's on highstorm?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 21, 2010, 01:19:10 AM
Updated the first post with the text of page two .

Here's a photo of my notes for those who are curious:
(http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww236/harakeke/DSC_1622-1.jpg)

I've been working on translating the text off and on for about a week, ever since I finished reading the book.  I literally turned the last page and thought to myself, "Okay, now I NEED to know what was on those sketch pages." I was actually surprised no one had cracked it yet -- the first thing I did was hit the forums, figuring someone had already worked it out.  I started to get excited when I realized that I had the chance to be the first person to decipher this "lost text".  ;D

The very first thing I did was to scan and print the pages, so I could scribble all over them without defacing the actual book. (sacrilege!)

There were a few observations I made right off the bat:
There was enough of a pattern that these were probably words and not just pretty-looking soundwave sketches.
There seemed to be a mix of short lables and longer sentences.
Multiple lines tend to be left-justified, so I assumed the text was written left to right.
One particular sequence seemed to pop up all over the place.  It looked sort of like this:  <,,|
The tall I shape seemed to mark the start of a formal sentence

For a while, I puzzled over the Double Eye diagram in the lower right of page 2, trying to link it up with the illustration inside the front cover.  Turns out that was a blind alley -- but I was able to piece together various sources to positively identify half of the gems on the inside cover. Going clockwise from the upper right they are: Sapphire, Smokestone, Ruby, Diamond, Emerald.  This follows the sequence in the table in the Ars Arcanum, so presumably the sequence continues all the way around.  But I digress.

After exhausting any chance of a quick and easy correlation between the table of essences and the Double Eye diagram, I turned back to the "brute force" method.
To begin, I needed to determine how many graphemes the Alethi alphabet had so that I could construct a key.   (A grapheme is the smallest unit in written language -- i.e. letters in the English alphabet, Chinese characters, individual symbols in a Glyphward, etc. It generally, but not always, corresponds to a single sound, or "phoneme".)
I picked a couple of the lines and practiced copying them down to get a feel for the letters.  I noticed that the letters seemed to come in three heights, which I ingeniously labelled: 1, 2, and 3.  I also identified three basic shapes: left arrow, right arrow, diamond, hash, and fancy.  The hashes were particularity tricky to differentiate, because it was pretty clear that sometimes multiple hashes made up a single grapheme.

Once I had a notation system worked out, I drew up a key of possible letters and converted a chunk of sentence-looking script.  This yielded something like: 2L 113 3F 211 3L 2 1R 2L 3L etc.

I used this data to run a character frequency analysis, which is essentially counting how often each letter comes up.
Character frequency analysis is based on the fact that given a random chunk of text, some letters tend to be more common than others.  (For example, there are way more E's in this post than Z's).  Fortunately, there are online cryptography tools for doing this sort of thing, so I was able to feed in my typed notation and get a pretty chart. 
I did this mainly to verify that the text was in English and not Native Alethi or indecipherable gibberish.  I suspected it was English because of the lack of palindrome words and the fact that Shallan's pages were in English, but I didn't want to launch into a code-breaking session using all the wrong tricks.
Fortunately, the results of the distribution came out sufficiently close to English that I was encouraged to move forward. 

Given a large enough body of text, you can use character frequency analysis to crack any simple cipher via the mighty power of statistics.  I didn't feel like typing up all the notation that would require -- and it didn't have nearly the allure of poring over the beautiful illustrations themselves.  I also wasn't 100% confident that I had properly identified the hash graphemes, which would throw off all the statistics -- potentially making such an exercise a complete waste of time.

I did get one useful thing out of the frequency analysis, because it told me which Alethi graphemes were most common.  I highlighted those on my key, because they would probably end up corresponding to the English letters etaoin shrdlu.

Blank key in hand, I went hunting for small words.  Small words are great for codebreaking because they are simple and common -- words like the, is, and, etc.  They're an excellent place to start looking for patterns.
Right away, I focused on the sequence I had circled earlier: <,,| (3L 113)
The thing that caught my eye was that in addition to coming up often, it occasionally came at the start of a sentence, and it never came at the end of a sentence.  It seemed extremely likely that it was the word THE.  The tricky part was that the Alethi word had four symbols, which I had initially grouped into two graphemes.  I suspected that written Alethi might have a unique grapheme for the phoneme TH, because of the way palindromes like Alethela are formed.  I also noticed word further down the page that included the string of symbols I had decided was THE, along with a few extra letters.  Presumably it was something like THEIR or THERE, but I couldn't pin it down exactly because I was still trying to get my TH grapheme to work.

This threw me for a while, so I took a break and worked on the other page.
My second big break came from Page 2, where I noticed a couple of long words that all ended with the same symbol (3R).  The only thing this could really be was S.

Armed with my key consisting of TH, S, and E, I attacked the list of small words that I had copied.  I didn't make much headway, so I split the TH into separate T and H graphemes and gave that a try.  This helped me narrow down the possibilities.  "This letter is either I or A, and that's an N  or T.  But T is already taken... and so on."

The first word I actually translated (not just assumed the meaning of like THE) was "SPREN".    ;D
The rest of the line was still a mess: ?HRPESPREN LRAPPET ?N ?ERAR?R -- but that was the point at which I knew I was on the right track.  From there, everything swiftly fell into place.

It turns out that Alethi script is written partially phonetically, and the correspondence between English and Alethi phoneme/grapheme pairs is not 1:1.  For example, the English C is written as either K or S depending on its pronunciation. The text I've posted here has been cleaned up somewhat for the ease of reading, and is not an exact transliteration.   Sometimes it's hard to tell individual letters apart, because they share similar forms. The sequence RI, for instance looks very similar to LO.  It makes translation somewhat of an art, and ambiguous words need to be verified by context -- which made the shorter labels tougher to work out than the long sentences. 

((Note: the following speculative paragraph is... wrong, as is pointed out later in the thread. =P))
For instance, the English letter F is written in Alethi as PH, while  The similar-looking Alethi letters for T and D seem to be largely interchangeable, while the letter H can have two different forms depending on neighboring consonants. Several letters (j, l, v) are written as another consonant followed by a vowel.  For example, the word fabrial is technically spelled PHABRIARO

The Alethi alphabet is rather elegant in the way it organizes phonemes, and graphemes seem to be systematically derived from the sound properties of their corresponding phonemes, rather than simply being abstract symbols.  Each grapheme has two elements that describe its sound properties: shape and size. The different shapes correspond to the location in the mouth the sounds are produced: hashes are vowels, left and right arrows are various alveolar consonants, diamonds are bilabial consonants, and fancies are velar consonants.  Height relates to breath control - the amount of stress and voicing the sound recieves. The taller the line, the greater the stress.
Reading written Alethi script evokes speaking the word aloud in a much more direct fashion than English letters, with the sound rising and falling with the letters' curves.

I thoroughly enjoyed not only learning the intriguing revelations hidden on these secret pages -- but the entire process of deciphering them.  My sincere thanks to everyone involved with including them in the book.  This is the sort of attention to detail that makes a truly great work of art.  :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Inkthinker on September 21, 2010, 03:38:13 AM
I'm exceptionally impressed. Someone was bound to crack it, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it took longer than this.

Harakeke, did you find out it was an actual script before you tried to crack it? Or did you just try it out on your own? Either way, good job!
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 21, 2010, 04:55:37 AM
I'm exceptionally impressed. Someone was bound to crack it, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it took longer than this.

Harakeke, did you find out it was an actual script before you tried to crack it? Or did you just try it out on your own? Either way, good job!

Thank you.    ;D
I sort of figured it just *had* to be meaningful -- anything else wouldn't live up to the level of epicness the rest of the book contains!
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: ryos on September 21, 2010, 05:03:38 AM
My next question is, what do you do for a living? You sound like some of the linguistics researchers I work with at the BYU English Language Center. (I'm just a webmonkey, so most of their work goes over my head. My consolation is that my work goes over their heads, too. ;))
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: CtrlZed on September 21, 2010, 05:05:22 AM
Harakeke--

Thanks for the post. I loved reading about your translation process.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on September 21, 2010, 05:11:02 AM
I think its awesome. Not only creating the language, but also deciphering. Harakeke you are amazing. You make it sound so simple, yet I would have no idea where to start.

P.S. Sorry Peter, didn't mean to leave you out before. I think its definitely a work of art.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 21, 2010, 05:42:16 AM
My next question is, what do you do for a living? You sound like some of the linguistics researchers I work with at the BYU English Language Center. (I'm just a webmonkey, so most of their work goes over my head. My consolation is that my work goes over their heads, too. ;))
(http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww236/harakeke/DSC_6592.jpg)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on September 21, 2010, 05:48:59 AM
My next question is, what do you do for a living? You sound like some of the linguistics researchers I work with at the BYU English Language Center. (I'm just a webmonkey, so most of their work goes over my head. My consolation is that my work goes over their heads, too. ;))
(http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww236/harakeke/DSC_6592.jpg)

ROFL. You better watch out, or some Parshendi and Alethians might end up cutting out your gemheart.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on September 21, 2010, 06:24:22 AM
For instance, the English letter F is written in Alethi as PH...  The similar-looking Alethi letters for T and D seem to be largely interchangeable, while the letter H can have two different forms depending on neighboring consonants. Several letters (j, l, v) are written as another consonant followed by a vowel.  The sequence RI, for instance is nearly identical to LO.
For example, the word fabrial is technically spelled PHABRIARO.

Everything I've quoted above is...wrong. Wow! I'm very impressed that you've managed to come up with an accurate translation while completely misinterpreting one important aspect. :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 21, 2010, 06:40:18 AM
Rats!   :) Well, that's what I get for rushing ahead and translating without stopping to grasp the underlying mechanics of the key.  (I kind of suspected I was fudging some of the more difficult letters, and that there should be a more consistent and elegant rule to supersede my hodgepodge of exceptions.)
I'll have to do another pass and work out all the mechanics of the alphabet.   ;D
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Terrisman243 on September 21, 2010, 07:10:25 AM
This is quite possibly the most epic thing ever. I am amazed.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 21, 2010, 08:24:57 PM
Oh, of course!  This makes much more sense.
(http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww236/harakeke/scan0002-1.jpg)

I had overlooked two classes of grapheme: symbol-hash and symbol-double-hash.  Incorporating them into the key makes it much more systematic and eliminates all the clunky letter replacement rules.  (Though in my defense, the symbol-hash combinations do closely resemble a consonant-vowel sequence.)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: jcats on September 21, 2010, 09:59:54 PM
:o   oh my god... this is soo beautiful and amazing!!!  when i first saw those pages it said oh, so pretty, o, some kinda made-up language and skipped right over them.   to know they have an actual translation... i must copy this to a sticky note, laminate the note, and leave it in the book next to those pages... so epic...

peter, with so much work put into it, do you know if brandon is going to include it in the next book as well?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on September 21, 2010, 10:04:19 PM
It will definitely be used in future books.

[EDIT: Nice avatar, Harakeke.]
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on September 21, 2010, 10:14:04 PM
There is no W or X. Other than that and a hash mark size issue, you've got it. The hash marks are diacritics, by the way. The single diacritics on L, H, V, J in your picture are too tall.

Also, H may not quite sound like an H, but it's being used to represent H in English transliteration. There is another kind of H that doesn't appear on either of those pages for reasons you may figure out.

And the letter J is pronounced exactly like Y in modern Alethi. There may have been a sound change involved there. It's being used here as a J sound.

And you're missing something about the first symbol, the one you drew before the E.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Never on September 22, 2010, 09:05:45 PM
Is it just me, or does this manner of writing seem a bit impractical?

It's also impractical for a Middle Age monk who speaks and writes German to spend a year writing a Bible in Latin and illuminating it with detailed silverpoint drawings. Likewise, Chinese, with its million+ characters, is very impractical.

As I understand it, the preference for symmetry has a theological basis and the average person can't read or write. Instead, it's more the province of noblewomen and religious ardents. The guiding forces for the writing might not be practicality, but aesthetic and religious considerations.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on September 23, 2010, 02:20:22 AM
Is it just me, or does this manner of writing seem a bit impractical?

This is probably a special way of writing. Your everyday girl (men don't write unless their ardents) writes in a normal language like in Shallan's journal.  This writing is probably a more formal way of writing. Remember Jasnah holds prejudices against Shallan's way of writing, which may be shared by her mother (they do seem kind of close).
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Erunion on September 23, 2010, 05:56:49 AM
There are two writing styles, there are the basic glyphs which convey basic information, but don't seem capable of conveying complex ideas. Everyone with an education knows these (but not lower class/lower middle class).
The second type of writing is the type shown here, and only females and Ardents are cultural allowed to learn it, as it is considered an art form. (Note how in Shallan's 3rd or so chapter, she writes a letter to Jasnah and uses her brushpen as the letter is supposed to be "a work of art") It is a very artsy, pretty written language but is a complete written language capable of conveying complex ideas. Only the well-educated (Kaladin's mom knows it, ardents know it, noblewomen know it) learn it.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Cheese Ninja on September 23, 2010, 04:11:53 PM
The Alethi alphabet is rather elegant in the way it organizes phonemes, and graphemes seem to be systematically derived from the sound properties of their corresponding phonemes, rather than simply being abstract symbols.  Each grapheme has two elements that describe its sound properties: shape and size. The different shapes correspond to the location in the mouth the sounds are produced: hashes are vowels, left and right arrows are various alveolar consonants, diamonds are bilabial consonants, and fancies are velar consonants.  Height relates to breath control - the amount of stress and voicing the sound recieves. The taller the line, the greater the stress.
Reading written Alethi script evokes speaking the word aloud in a much more direct fashion than English letters, with the sound rising and falling with the letters' curves.

This is pretty awesome, I understand the general idea, even if I don't know the particular types of consonants.

The writing style is pretty, but I think for a personal research/observation journal, it would make more sense to use the shorthand (just top or bottom) instead of bothering with the mirroring.  Unless this isn't her personal research journal, and instead an official research paper that Navani is going to be getting peer reviewed.
Is it just me, or does this manner of writing seem a bit impractical?

This is probably a special way of writing. Your everyday girl (men don't write unless their ardents) writes in a normal language like in Shallan's journal.  This writing is probably a more formal way of writing. Remember Jasnah holds prejudices against Shallan's way of writing, which may be shared by her mother (they do seem kind of close).

I get the impression that Shallan's journal is in English (along with some of the other pictures in the series) just to make it easy for us to understand.  Any writing to convey information would really be done in the Alethi way in the series itself, regardless of how it's presented to us.  That said, do all the cultures in Stormlight Archive use this same alphabet,  even though their words and meanings are different?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 23, 2010, 06:42:04 PM
We take the idiosyncrasies of our own languages for granted because we learn them at such an early age, but many real world languages could be considered just as "impractical" as Alethi.

For example, Japanese words can be written in as many as 4 different ways depending on the setting, writing implement, and intended reader. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system
Even with English, you can have printing, cursive, shorthand, etc.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Inkthinker on September 23, 2010, 07:09:04 PM
Not to mention that the English language, especially American English, is (as the singer put it) ka-RAAAYY-zeeee... it's loaded with synonymic idiosyncrasies and pronunciation/definition tricks that you generally only pick up in context.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 23, 2010, 07:47:42 PM
Not to mention that the English language, especially American English, is (as the singer put it) ka-RAAAYY-zeeee... it's loaded with synonymic idiosyncrasies and pronunciation/definition tricks that you generally only pick up in context.
Exactly.  Even native English speakers have trouble keeping all the rules straight.  I mean, you hear ordinary words like ghoti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti) and ghoughpteighbteau spoken all the time, but they always get written down as something convoluted like fish and potato instead. (This is part of a nefarious Librarian scheme, I'm fairly certain.)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: douglas on September 23, 2010, 07:54:55 PM
I've seen a quote somewhere stating something like "English likes to hunt down other languages in dark alleys and go through their pockets for loose grammar." English is an unusually difficult language to learn for non-native speakers because it has a huge number of words, phrases, and special cases adopted from other languages, and many of these have exceptions to normal English grammatical rules because for that particular word/phrase/etc. the rules of the language it came from were adopted with it. As a result, English has an enormous number of exceptions to every rule, and really learning the language well requires learning both the rules and the gigantic list of exceptions.

From the perspective of designing a language from scratch, English has an extremely impractical and illogical language design. This hasn't done anything to stop it from becoming the dominant language in much (most?) of the world.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: JustinCarmony on September 23, 2010, 11:31:11 PM
Hrm, darn it. Now I want to write a tool to write English to Alethi.... Wouldn't be too hard....

Darn it, I can feel a silly weekend project coming up. Now if I only had time to do it... :P
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on September 24, 2010, 12:39:18 AM
We have a font. I doubt it can be released though.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: rjl on September 24, 2010, 12:51:19 AM
If this is Alethi script there is a question of why Shallan's notebooks had normal english writing unless it's meant to be two different styles of writing that they use.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on September 24, 2010, 01:46:54 AM
If this is Alethi script there is a question of why Shallan's notebooks had normal english writing unless it's meant to be two different styles of writing that they use.
Probably the same reason all the Nazis  in WWII movies speak English as well -- so that the audience can understand.  ;)
Shallan's pages are directly relevant to the plot, so they need to be readily understandable. There are also a couple pages by Navani in plain English.  The Shattered Plains battle map comes to mind.  Again, these are directly related to the story.
The Alethi script pages seem like much more of an Easter egg for the hardcore fans, just like the snippet of Dula language in that Interlude chapter.

Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: FollowYourMuse on September 24, 2010, 03:43:24 PM
We have a font. I doubt it can be released though.

Ok, well then I do not ned to create one.  cross that project off the list :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on September 24, 2010, 07:58:44 PM
The person who translated these books into English treated certain art pages different ways in order to tailor it to the English-speaking audience. The Navani pages are meant to give a flavor for what the writing looks like, yet still be something readers can figure out and understand.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Morsker on September 24, 2010, 09:26:52 PM
Someone translated Roshar-speak into English?! It must've been Hoid. :P
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: rjl on September 24, 2010, 09:32:42 PM
The person who translated these books into English treated certain art pages different ways in order to tailor it to the English-speaking audience. The Navani pages are meant to give a flavor for what the writing looks like, yet still be something readers can figure out and understand.
Cool, we can drop the theorising about different scripts then...
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Tasslehoof on September 25, 2010, 12:03:50 AM
Amazing, I wish I had the patience to sit down and something like this.  Many props to you :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Ari54 on September 25, 2010, 12:27:36 AM
Not to mention that the English language, especially American English, is (as the singer put it) ka-RAAAYY-zeeee... it's loaded with synonymic idiosyncrasies and pronunciation/definition tricks that you generally only pick up in context.

While English is a little worse than other languages because we steadfastly resist a comprehensive spelling reform, (I'm not talking about the vague and half-hearted attempts Americans well-meaningly implemented to clean up a little, that's not even a beginning) I think crazy is going a bit far. All languages have irregularities because that's just how languages evolve, because there's some interchange of words and they don't always get fully (or sometimes not even partially) naturalised, and finally because irregular words make the words themselves stand out, which can be pretty convenient for an irregular verb like "to be".

I've seen a quote somewhere stating something like "English likes to hunt down other languages in dark alleys and go through their pockets for loose grammar." English is an unusually difficult language to learn for non-native speakers because it has a huge number of words, phrases, and special cases adopted from other languages, and many of these have exceptions to normal English grammatical rules because for that particular word/phrase/etc. the rules of the language it came from were adopted with it. As a result, English has an enormous number of exceptions to every rule, and really learning the language well requires learning both the rules and the gigantic list of exceptions.

From the perspective of designing a language from scratch, English has an extremely impractical and illogical language design. This hasn't done anything to stop it from becoming the dominant language in much (most?) of the world.

Your quote is from Terry Pratchett. :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Terrisman243 on September 27, 2010, 05:53:16 AM
I wonder... Peter, what is the present plan for foreign languages for the Navani pages? Will they be in Roshar-English, or will they be in Roshar-French (or whatever the language is)?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on September 27, 2010, 07:11:08 AM
Probably Roshar-English just for convenience. Though I have thought about that a few times. I should ask Brandon.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Tasslehoof on September 29, 2010, 07:11:28 PM
Bump to the front page for awesomeness!
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Inkthinker on September 29, 2010, 08:35:18 PM
Not to mention that the English language, especially American English, is (as the singer put it) ka-RAAAYY-zeeee... it's loaded with synonymic idiosyncrasies and pronunciation/definition tricks that you generally only pick up in context.

While English is a little worse than other languages because we steadfastly resist a comprehensive spelling reform, (I'm not talking about the vague and half-hearted attempts Americans well-meaningly implemented to clean up a little, that's not even a beginning) I think crazy is going a bit far. All languages have irregularities because that's just how languages evolve, because there's some interchange of words and they don't always get fully (or sometimes not even partially) naturalised, and finally because irregular words make the words themselves stand out, which can be pretty convenient for an irregular verb like "to be".

Hey, it wasn't me what said it... blame Pete Seeger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lCO4vBjneE

 ;D

Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Salkara on September 29, 2010, 10:34:00 PM
Okay, so the stuff that was translated... does it mean that Shardblades are fabrials?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Inkthinker on September 30, 2010, 02:43:52 AM
Shardblades don't use appear to stormlight or spren as a power source the way that fabrials do, at least from what we know so far.

The half-shards do though, I think.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on September 30, 2010, 03:51:33 AM
The half-shards are just really strong fabrials, yeah.

It's been repeatedly mentioned that the writing is impractical because of the vertical symmetry.  I don't actually think this is true, after a second look at it, it seems to be written with lots of sweeping motions.  It kinda resembles our own cursive style in that sense, though it's a lot more precise than in english.  True, you could just write the top half as a shorthand, but I could easily see it written in longhand.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: schmiddynick on September 30, 2010, 02:29:34 PM
first off i just have to say major kudos goes to being able to translate that entire page... from scratch! thats just plain impressive. and i think that it wouldn't be that impractical to write out, in mean look at other languages such as japanese, russian, and similar alphabets/languages. to a plain old speaker of english it seems incredibly hard to write in those languages while to a native speaker its just natural.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Rew on September 30, 2010, 06:37:07 PM
Shardblades don't use appear to stormlight or spren as a power source the way that fabrials do, at least from what we know so far.

The half-shards do though, I think.

Their descriptions don't explicitly say, and only one is described as having a gem of any sort.

Chapter 51, part 3 (704)
Quote
“He took the Shardblade from the cloth, holding it in his hand.  The gemstone at its pommel let out a flash of white light.”

the questions that follow are:
1 do all Blades have gems?
2 Are these ordinary fabrial-type spren-cages?

I would think the answers are: 1-Not enough info, and 2- probably not, or the Alethi fabrial scientists would have figured it out (unless they contain a spren that the scientists are unfamiliar with...) 
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Lironah on October 02, 2010, 08:59:34 PM
It occurs to me to wonder if they're called shardblades because they're made from shards of the Blades in the prologue.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Salkara on October 02, 2010, 09:05:57 PM
It occurs to me to wonder if they're called shardblades because they're made from shards of the Blades in the prologue.

I doubt that because Kelek specifically compares his blade to a Shardblade. He says that his blade is more pure, but in any case, it means that Shardblades were around when the Dawnshards were.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: yakumo fujii on October 03, 2010, 11:13:04 AM
If this is Alethi script there is a question of why Shallan's notebooks had normal english writing unless it's meant to be two different styles of writing that they use.
Probably the same reason all the Nazis  in WWII movies speak English as well -- so that the audience can understand.  ;)
Shallan's pages are directly relevant to the plot, so they need to be readily understandable. There are also a couple pages by Navani in plain English.  The Shattered Plains battle map comes to mind.  Again, these are directly related to the story.
The Alethi script pages seem like much more of an Easter egg for the hardcore fans, just like the snippet of Dula language in that Interlude chapter.

Did they really have much relevance? As a kindle reader, I couldn't really read them at all due to their small size.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 04, 2010, 02:06:30 AM
Most of the illustrations where to help supplement your reading. Roshar is such an alien planet that those pictures really help clear things up. I for one am really happy they're in there.

Navani's notebook pages along with the chapter headings however seem to be somewhat more spoilerish. For those who can crack their codes, there are easter eggs in them that may foreshadow future events (I know how much Brandon likes foreshadowing things. I keeps these forums interesting).
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Inkthinker on October 04, 2010, 06:42:28 AM
I don't recall putting anything in Shallan's sketches that was spoilerish or foreshadowing in the way that this revelation about spren and spheres is. If you can't read the text in the illustrations, you're not missing anything vital... it's more like additional texture to the world being described.

Maybe in the next one he'll let me hide some spoilers.  ;D
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Kykeon on October 04, 2010, 07:45:33 AM
WHAAAA, why didn't I open this thread before?!  :'(
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on October 05, 2010, 06:44:47 AM
Navani's map of the Battle of the Tower sort of foreshadows the chapter immediately following.
"Hey... what's that third arrow there?  The one labeled Parshendi Army that's cutting right through Dalinar's Army..."
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on October 05, 2010, 07:11:41 AM
Um...that's actually a mistake. It's supposed to be on the next chapter... =\ When we noticed that, it was too late to fix.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on October 05, 2010, 07:32:45 AM
Haha -- that does make a lot more sense.  :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on October 05, 2010, 09:25:22 AM
If all of the Shardblades do have a gem in the pommel, then I have a theory!

I think that the Shardblades aren't fabrials, but are constructed in a similar manner.  The key diiference would be the type of spren.  We know that each of the Knights Radiant had a Shardblade, and that each Knight was bonded to a special spren.  Guys, I think the gems in the blades have honorspren in them, or the equivalent spren for other orders.  This is supported by Syl being repulsed by it.  She knows, if not consciously then instinctively, what it is.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 05, 2010, 09:43:56 AM
This is supported by Syl being repulsed by it.  She knows, if not consciously then instinctively, what it is.

But then why weren't the spren bonded to the original Knights Radiants repulsed by the swords. Prior to the fall of the Radiants (the Redreande?? I can't make out those letters on the history of man illustration) the shards were exclusive to the Knights Radiants.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: RicksterBLM on October 05, 2010, 02:29:02 PM
i think the shardblades have been "sullied" in some way since they're no longer for fighting the voidwalkers, they've been used to kill humans.  that might explain the repulsion
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: elsyan on October 05, 2010, 03:41:39 PM
i think the shardblades have been "sullied" in some way since they're no longer for fighting the voidwalkers, they've been used to kill humans.  that might explain the repulsion

I like this theory.  It fits with the very clear message that human kind destroyed iteslf, ruining the radiants until they could take no more and walked away.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on October 05, 2010, 05:39:20 PM
That's the twist, the spren they're bonded to are in the Shardblades.  If you think about it, we know that Szeth should be bonded to a spren but haven't seen it.  We also know he has a Shardblade.  How'd he get it?  Someone made it using his honorspren!  I can see two possibilities.  1) This is all part of being Truthless, the Shin can make the Blades, but they keep it very much a secret.  2) Szeth made it himself, which is why he's Truthless in the first place.  The Shin weren't able to take it from him, though, or don't want it because of how it came to be.

Secondary theory, this sort of stems from #1 above.  In one of the part 3 epigraphs (Jasnah's notes) it says they wanted to have Urithiru, the Radiants' HQ, in Alethela, but decided to move it farther west, "closer to Honor", I think it said.  This could maybe put it in Shinovar, and that's how the Shin know how to make Shards.  This could also support #2 above by having Szeth discover Urithiru and the knowledge hidden there to make a Blade.  This is based on the assumption that the Knights knew how to make their own Shardblades.  But it makes sense that Urithiru would be in Shinovar when you look at the Prologue and see how much he knows about Lashings and Stormlight and how it's connected to his religion.

Long, spur of the moment theories are my specialty.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Terrisman243 on October 06, 2010, 03:20:41 AM
One thing that supports this is that he says "my blade is cursed enough" when he thinks about taking Gavilar's blade.

Edit- took out curiosity about Gavilar's plate and sword
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on October 06, 2010, 07:48:20 AM
Finally got around to cleaning up my key.  I shrank the diacritics and took out the extraneous letters.
edit: Note that since Alethi has no W or X, the respective English transliterations are U and KS.

(http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww236/harakeke/Alethi-Script-1.png) (http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww236/harakeke/Alethi-Script.png?1286347950)

And for any other typography nerds out there, the font on the cover of the US edition is Ravenwood One (http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/aerotype/ravenwood/one/).
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Inkthinker on October 06, 2010, 07:57:01 AM
If spren are in the blades, how come every Shardblade wielder doesn't have superpowers?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 06, 2010, 09:36:20 AM
One thing that supports this is that he says "my blade is cursed enough" when he thinks about taking Gavilar's blade.

Edit- took out curiosity about Gavilar's plate and sword

The exact quote is:
Quote
The Blade Szeth already carried was curse enough.

I feel that the wording of this sentence, taking into account the context of the chapter and Szeth's view on shardblades is that all shardblades are a curse, and that his (while being special) is cursed for the reason that it is so easy to kill with it, not that he may of made it out of his trusted friend and companion [insert name] the honourspren.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on October 06, 2010, 08:46:50 PM
If spren are in the blades, how come every Shardblade wielder doesn't have superpowers?
Because the spren isn't theirs, it was bonded to the Knight that originally wielded it.
Quote
The Blade Szeth already carried was curse enough.
I feel that the wording of this sentence, taking into account the context of the chapter and Szeth's view on shardblades is that all shardblades are a curse, and that his (while being special) is cursed for the reason that it is so easy to kill with it, not that he may of made it out of his trusted friend and companion [insert name] the honourspren.
It could mean both.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on October 06, 2010, 10:53:24 PM
Actually you just use a U for a W. Not a UI.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on October 06, 2010, 11:33:58 PM
Wouldn't it make more sense to have it be UU?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: ryos on October 07, 2010, 02:00:04 AM
Quote
The Blade Szeth already carried was curse enough.
I feel that the wording of this sentence, taking into account the context of the chapter and Szeth's view on shardblades is that all shardblades are a curse, and that his (while being special) is cursed for the reason that it is so easy to kill with it, not that he may of made it out of his trusted friend and companion [insert name] the honourspren.

It could mean both.

Sorry if I sound unnecessarily argumentative, but that's a stretch. The sentence means that Szeth considers it a curse to wield a Shardblade. To extend that meaning to say "Shardblades are cursed" is putting words in his mouth. He doesn't say why he considers it a curse to bear a Shardblade, but I think it fairly obvious from his thoughts and feelings that it's because it enables him to kill so many people. He makes it clear that he wants someone to kill him, but the combination of his Surgebinding and Shardblade have so far made that impossible.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on October 07, 2010, 02:18:11 AM
How is that a stretch?  There's a lot of room for Shardblades to not be what we think they are.  Especially with Syl's only documented encounter with a Shardblade going the way it did.  I'm just proposing an idea that, to me, fits the information we have.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: ryos on October 07, 2010, 02:22:27 AM
How is that a stretch?  There's a lot of room for Shardblades to not be what we think they are.  Especially with Syl's only documented encounter with a Shardblade going the way it did.  I'm just proposing an idea that, to me, fits the information we have.

I wasn't disputing your theory so much as the statement that Szeth thinks his Blade is cursed. From where I'm sitting, that just isn't true.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on October 07, 2010, 02:40:26 AM
I never said he thinks it's cursed in a literal sense.  We know he hates the thing but we don't know how many reasons could be behind that.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on October 07, 2010, 03:19:17 AM
Wouldn't it make more sense to have it be UU?
I know you mean that as double U, but in English what W really is is a very short U sound. Putting two Us would make it seem like a long U sound.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on October 07, 2010, 03:30:56 AM
I know, that was me trying to be funny. :P
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Terrisman243 on October 07, 2010, 01:54:08 PM
How is that a stretch?  There's a lot of room for Shardblades to not be what we think they are.  Especially with Syl's only documented encounter with a Shardblade going the way it did.  I'm just proposing an idea that, to me, fits the information we have.

I wasn't disputing your theory so much as the statement that Szeth thinks his Blade is cursed. From where I'm sitting, that just isn't true.

WoK pg. 34
Quote
He left the King's shardblade; he had no use for it. The Blade Szeth already carried was curse enough.

So maybe the Blade isn't cursed, it's the fact that Szeth has to carry it that is the curse.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 07, 2010, 02:01:59 PM
WoK pg. 34
Quote
He left the King's shardblade; he had no use for it. The Blade Szeth already carried was curse enough.

So maybe the Blade isn't cursed, it's the fact that Szeth has to carry it that is the curse.

Szeth sees carrying the blade as a curse.

Edit: I wasn't sure here if you were implying the carrying the blade is Szeth's curse, or it is a curse to carry a blade. (They sound the same but they imply different things.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 07, 2010, 02:25:38 PM
Just checking out the translations of the second page from Navani's sketchbook. Emotion braclet? Reminds me of Lie To Me. I hope we see some interesting applications of this fabrial later in the series. Could be very powerful tool to use in the game of politics. I can just imagine its uses now  ;D mwhahahaha
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: schneb on October 07, 2010, 03:38:52 PM
Is it possible that the gems in shardblades have death spren trapped inside?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: ryos on October 07, 2010, 07:39:09 PM
Is it possible that the gems in shardblades have death spren trapped inside?

That would make them devilishly difficult and dangerous to make. Apparently, only those very near death can see deathspren. So you'd have to bring yourself to the brink of death every time you made a new Blade? Yikes. Well, it could be. Still, yikes.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Pechvarry on October 08, 2010, 03:44:33 AM
Is it possible that the gems in shardblades have death spren trapped inside?

That would make them devilishly difficult and dangerous to make. Apparently, only those very near death can see deathspren. So you'd have to bring yourself to the brink of death every time you made a new Blade? Yikes. Well, it could be. Still, yikes.

Or just kill someone else.  Like your father.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 08, 2010, 04:56:20 AM
Is it possible that the gems in shardblades have death spren trapped inside?

That would make them devilishly difficult and dangerous to make. Apparently, only those very near death can see deathspren. So you'd have to bring yourself to the brink of death every time you made a new Blade? Yikes. Well, it could be. Still, yikes.

Or just kill someone else.  Like your father.

Murder someone to make a sword that kills easily. Or maybe cause a massacre is needed to get a shardblade, considering how powerful it is. But I think having someone sacrifice themselves would be stronger again.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Fireborn on October 08, 2010, 07:16:41 AM
If you had the capability to cause a massacre without a Shardblade, I hardly think you'd need one.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 08, 2010, 07:19:19 AM
True, but people would still do it.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on October 08, 2010, 07:26:35 AM
I'm more inclined to think Shardblade creation has something directly to do with the Almighty's Shard of Adonalsium, and that the reason no one can make new Blades is that the Almighty is dead.

Shardblades are only able to physically cut materials that aren't linked to a living mind.  When interacting with living tissue, my guess is that they sever the physical object's connection to the cognitive/spiritual realm -- which is the sort of raw "laws of magi-physics" shenanigans which I'd place deeper than spren.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: CabbyHat on October 08, 2010, 07:29:31 AM
Shardblades are only able to physically cut materials that aren't linked to a living mind.  When interacting with living tissue, my guess is that they sever the physical object's connection to the cognitive/spiritual realm -- which is the sort of raw "laws of magi-physics" shenanigans which I'd place deeper than spren.

Hm - does it ever mention whether shardblades will cut through animals' flesh while they're alive?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 08, 2010, 07:31:16 AM
Hm - does it ever mention whether shardblades will cut through animals' flesh while they're alive?

They can't cut through a Chasmfiend's exoskeleton until it's dead.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: CabbyHat on October 08, 2010, 07:32:59 AM
Hm - does it ever mention whether shardblades will cut through animals' flesh while they're alive?

They can't cut through a Chasmfiend's exoskeleton until it's dead.

Oh, right, of course.

Although... are we really sure chasmfiends are just dumb animals?  :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 08, 2010, 07:36:04 AM
Hm - does it ever mention whether shardblades will cut through animals' flesh while they're alive?

They can't cut through a Chasmfiend's exoskeleton until it's dead.

Oh, right, of course.

Although... are we really sure chasmfiends are just dumb animals?  :)

They are currently into the habit of getting themselves killed, by one army. If they were smart they would fight back.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: CabbyHat on October 08, 2010, 07:39:11 AM
Hm - does it ever mention whether shardblades will cut through animals' flesh while they're alive?

They can't cut through a Chasmfiend's exoskeleton until it's dead.

Oh, right, of course.

Although... are we really sure chasmfiends are just dumb animals?  :)

They are currently into the habit of getting themselves killed, by one army. If they were smart they would fight back.

Like the Parshendi do? Perhaps by attacking and nearly killing the king? (Sorry, ignore me, I'm just being difficult now. I'm just a big fan of the "chasmfiends are thunderclasts" theory, which means there's probably more to them than meets the eye. Feel free to dismiss my comments as the rantings of an uneducated noob, however.)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 08, 2010, 07:46:40 AM
Hm - does it ever mention whether shardblades will cut through animals' flesh while they're alive?

They can't cut through a Chasmfiend's exoskeleton until it's dead.

Oh, right, of course.

Although... are we really sure chasmfiends are just dumb animals?  :)

They are currently into the habit of getting themselves killed, by one army. If they were smart they would fight back.

Like the Parshendi do? Perhaps by attacking and nearly killing the king? (Sorry, ignore me, I'm just being difficult now. I'm just a big fan of the "chasmfiends are thunderclasts" theory, which means there's probably more to them than meets the eye. Feel free to dismiss my comments as the rantings of an uneducated noob, however.)

I have my own theory on Thunderclasts, but I like your theory. Post it here - http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=7945.0 - so we can get some discussion out of it.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Cheese Ninja on October 08, 2010, 04:24:18 PM
Hm - does it ever mention whether shardblades will cut through animals' flesh while they're alive?

They can't cut through a Chasmfiend's exoskeleton until it's dead.

The exoskeleton doesn't really count as being alive.  It's classified the same way as human nails and hair.  A shardblade can cut through it.  This comes up a few times in the book.  It's a big part of Dalinar/Elhokar/Adolin's fight against the chasmfiend.  Dalinar and Adolin were chopping through legs to limit its mobility and get it off balance.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Pechvarry on October 08, 2010, 06:35:12 PM
they were deadening limbs just like Szeth talks about in the prologue, not cutting them off.  If it passes through your arm, it will hang limply for the rest of your life.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Cheese Ninja on October 08, 2010, 06:40:05 PM
True, I slightly misremembered things, but here's the quotes:
Quote
The Blade sheared the thick chitin with barely a tug of resistance. As always, it didn’t cut living flesh, though it killed the leg as surely as if it had been cut free. The large limb slipped, falling numb and useless.
Quote
He got close and swung at the beast’s torso, cutting free a piece of chitin—like a person’s hair or nails, it could be cut by a Blade. Then Elhokar slammed his weapon into the monster’s breast, seeking its heart.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Inkthinker on October 09, 2010, 02:27:03 AM
As I saw it, the chitin is cut but the flesh beneath is only "deadened". So a cut limb on a creature with an exoskeleton would look like a cut in the shell, but it would still be held together by the underlying muscle. It might separate slightly, but it would not amputate, at least not until the creature was fully dead.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: ccstat on October 09, 2010, 08:09:34 AM
Re: notebook page 2 and the emotion bracelet.
Do you think Navani has one of these? I don't remember any descriptions of jewelry, but in the picture it is on her safehand, which would be hidden from all viewpoint characters except herself. It may be a (small) part of why she is such an effective politician.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: ccstat on October 09, 2010, 08:15:46 AM
Also, did the fabrial makers tie the double eye of emotions on the bracelet to the more fundamental double-eye of the almighty on the front flap? That is, can we assume that "joy" is linked to Jes/sapphire/protecting etc. from ars arcanum, and likewise for the others?
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Stormblessed on October 09, 2010, 09:49:18 AM
Also, did the fabrial makers tie the double eye of emotions on the bracelet to the more fundamental double-eye of the almighty on the front flap? That is, can we assume that "joy" is linked to Jes/sapphire/protecting etc. from ars arcanum, and likewise for the others?

I see no apparent connection between the two, but I think there is some connection, we just don't have enough information yet. It's too much of a coincidence that the emotion bracelet is designed to look like the double eye of the almighty.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: EvilNuff on October 11, 2010, 05:10:05 AM
From the notebook we see that fabrials appear to require a spren to be trapped in a gem...what if something similar is required for shardblades?  Specifically I am thinking about Szeth's honorspren...what if is spren is imprisoned in his shardblade?

On an unrelated note, I think the spheres in shadesmar are all spren...
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: kain243 on October 11, 2010, 02:48:09 PM
AWESOME THREAD!  It would be very cool to see the notbook pages translated in "key form".   I love the key you made, its very pretty!
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Harakeke on October 11, 2010, 09:07:57 PM
I posted some scans of the Navani pages with English-translation overlays on the Stormlight Archive Wiki (http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Alethi_Script#Navani.27s_Notebook_Translation). 
(I'd consider this to fall under the comment/scholarship provisions of fair use -- but if it causes copyright problems, let me know and I'll remove them.)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: jkincaid on October 12, 2010, 05:23:15 AM
Ok I can't read through 8 pages to find out what all the discussion was here, however, I just had to say holy crap someone actually took the time to read through it all and translate it.  Wow, that's awesome.   ;)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Troubadour on January 24, 2011, 10:13:27 PM
Oh, Lord. Apologies for the necropost, but there needs to be a tutorial on how to write in Alethi now. This thread is pure gold.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Melriken on January 24, 2011, 11:19:26 PM
Oh, Lord. Apologies for the necropost, but there needs to be a tutorial on how to write in Alethi now. This thread is pure gold.
What do you mean? how to form the characters with a pen? Because it is English, just with a different letter set.

as posted earlier:
(http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww236/harakeke/Alethi-Script.png?1286347950)

If you are wondering how to form the letters with a Pen, I would suggest:
the vowels start at the front, move to the top, then the bottom
The 'Left Point' letters start at the top, move down/left then down/right then up
The 'Right Point' letters start at the top, move down/right then down/left then up
The 'Diamond' letters start at the top, move down/left then down/right then jump back to the top and move down/right then down/left
And of course the 'Fancy' letters  at the top, move down/left then down/right then up

If you want to do it with a Calligraphy pen instead of a Felt Tip or Ball Point Pen you will need to alter the strokes, any time I said to go up, instead jump to the top and make a downward stroke, also you will need to alter your grip between the top and bottom halves of the 'fancy' character.  I wouldn't suggest using a Calligraphy Pen for this letter set.

Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Argent on January 25, 2011, 05:15:59 AM
Excellently done. Once again I am more than a little impressed by both the depth of Brandon's worldbuilding, and the dedication of his fans. And here I thought he couldn't have surprised me any more in the novels I have read multiple times already...
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on January 26, 2011, 05:50:37 PM
Actually, if you're writing it, all of the letters start in the middle. You draw the center line with your pen and never lift it up. Letters are written from left center to top to bottom to left center to right center, except for SZNShH, which is written from left center to right center to top to bottom to right center.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Melriken on January 27, 2011, 07:18:16 PM
Actually, if you're writing it, all of the letters start in the middle. You draw the center line with your pen and never lift it up. Letters are written from left center to top to bottom to left center to right center, except for SZNShH, which is written from left center to right center to top to bottom to right center.
How would the Vowels work under that?

stroke up and slightly right
double stroke down
stroke up (right on top of an existing line)
slight stroke left (to finish the centerline)
stroke right to reach next character and be carefule to re-trace the existing center line?

The Hash modifiers have similar problems of being careful to re-trace existing lines without being visible.

I can see 'school' teaching you to write with one continuous line as you suggest, but I can't see anyone actually doing it in real writing that way. Writing would look way better if you didn't force a single line as you can get ends (like the bottom of a vowel) to taper off to a point (as seen in the examples we have) and the center line will be much straighter and better looking.  Considering that Writing is considered an art form I really doubt that people actually practice it the way you describe (writing in cursive, all one motion).  It just has too many sharp points and too few rounded edges.

Edit: Yes I understand that you helped make the language, I am not trying to say you are wrong, just discuss the language.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Argent on January 28, 2011, 12:22:35 AM
Going back to one of the questions regarding the font... We know you have it and don't plan on releasing it, but how do you feel about a fan-made version? It will likely use scanned images with slight modifications to look better.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on January 28, 2011, 12:41:46 AM
There is no existing center line when you start. And the part where you say "slight stroke left (to finish the centerline)" is not done; Harakeke's image is wrong. The upstroke on the vowels is not technically part of the letter forms; it's just this particular person's handwriting. There's just as likely to be an upstroke at the end of writing a vowel, but it's best to avoid either one to maintain symmetry and to avoid confusion with the other letters.

Some people may produce letter forms that are more rounded or loopy, but this is considered bad penmanship.

Also, there's no prohibition on fonts except they shouldn't be commercial.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: CabbyHat on January 28, 2011, 01:22:28 AM
Actually, if you're writing it, all of the letters start in the middle. You draw the center line with your pen and never lift it up. Letters are written from left center to top to bottom to left center to right center, except for SZNShH, which is written from left center to right center to top to bottom to right center.
How would the Vowels work under that?

stroke up and slightly right
double stroke down
stroke up (right on top of an existing line)
slight stroke left (to finish the centerline)
stroke right to reach next character and be carefule to re-trace the existing center line?

The Hash modifiers have similar problems of being careful to re-trace existing lines without being visible.

I can see 'school' teaching you to write with one continuous line as you suggest, but I can't see anyone actually doing it in real writing that way. Writing would look way better if you didn't force a single line as you can get ends (like the bottom of a vowel) to taper off to a point (as seen in the examples we have) and the center line will be much straighter and better looking.  Considering that Writing is considered an art form I really doubt that people actually practice it the way you describe (writing in cursive, all one motion).  It just has too many sharp points and too few rounded edges.

Edit: Yes I understand that you helped make the language, I am not trying to say you are wrong, just discuss the language.
Too many sharp points to be artistic? I disagree. I see the Alethi as having a very different aesthetic from us, based far more heavily on symmetry and with other differences. Who's to say their art couldn't feature more dramatic points and angles? That's one of the things I find most fascinating about creating other cultures and worlds; they simply don't have to adhere to a lot of things that we take as a given. :)
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Melriken on January 28, 2011, 01:41:26 AM
Too many sharp points to be artistic?
No, Too many sharp points to be written as a single continuous line without lifting the pen, and it is more the Vowels that have that problem (changes in direction aren't a problem, it is the re-tracing over previous lines that starts causing issue where you break the artistic quality of the piece because of failure to exactly re-trace your previous stroke).
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: CabbyHat on January 28, 2011, 06:22:52 AM
Too many sharp points to be artistic?
No, Too many sharp points to be written as a single continuous line without lifting the pen, and it is more the Vowels that have that problem (changes in direction aren't a problem, it is the re-tracing over previous lines that starts causing issue where you break the artistic quality of the piece because of failure to exactly re-trace your previous stroke).
And that's what makes writing an art form! Something doesn't stop being an art just because it's difficult.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Melriken on January 28, 2011, 09:03:55 AM
Too many sharp points to be artistic?
No, Too many sharp points to be written as a single continuous line without lifting the pen, and it is more the Vowels that have that problem (changes in direction aren't a problem, it is the re-tracing over previous lines that starts causing issue where you break the artistic quality of the piece because of failure to exactly re-trace your previous stroke).
And that's what makes writing an art form! Something doesn't stop being an art just because it's difficult.
So there are two ways to do something.  Both yield identical results such that once the thing is done you can't tell how it was done.

Way A takes 20 minutes and requires extreme effort.
Way B takes 3 minutes and requires almost no effort.

Way A is considered the 'correct' way, but literally has NO practical difference other then taking 17 minutes longer (it isn't safer, less accident prone, or in any way actually better).

In a real world application, given 100 people want to accomplish the task and no one will ever know which way they choose to accomplish it.  How many people do you think will choose way A and how many will choose way B?

My point is that 90+ people will do it Way B.

To ask the question another way.

You go to the store and buy 20 cans of soup for your brother (or sister or wife or husband or son or etc).  As you check out the sales attendant tells you that when you unload your car the correct way is to pick on one can with your right hand and carry it into the house, then go back for the next can, and to carefully carry only one can at a time, and always in your right hand into the house making sure to lock your car and close all the doors (while your car is in the closed garage).

Would you (A) follow the attendant's advice or (B) leave the cans in the paper bag and carry them all in in one trip, then unload them once you are in the house.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on January 30, 2011, 07:06:11 AM
You've exaggerating and overstating the difficulty and time required to write according to the prescribed manner.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: dhalagirl on January 30, 2011, 09:05:30 AM
In my opinion this is why women do all of the writing.  We understand the importance of doing it the right way.  Or in this case the left to right way.
Title: Re: WOK: Navani's Notebook Translation *MAJOR SPOILERS*
Post by: Creative_Vortx on February 01, 2011, 12:27:09 AM
Beautiful. Can't wait to see more of this used in the future. Now i'll be able to read it! Woohoo.