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Nighthawk

I too would like to know hot to decipher this.

The text comes in as true Unicode, at least to GMail, which means that changing the font isn't enough for me. I've pasted it in to Word and tried to alter it, but it always remains the same.

And I sure as hell ain't going to do it by hand...

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 2:25 am

Almijisti · Decorated Joined: 19 Jul 2007 Posts: 227

Believe it or not, I used to study Sanskrit, but these are using Hindi versions of Devanagari and it's been 15 years since I read it. Anyway, the message Bix got from Mezin says:

Where is your leader?

Where is Van Mantra?

He claims to have new knowledge of Haas, why is he afraid to reveal it?

Perhaps he is afraid the world will discover what he truly is.

This site will give the straight transliteration from the Hindi-devanagari:

http://www.syvum.com/translation/hindi.html

Devanagari isn't meant for English, so you have to read the words phonetically once it's transliterated for it to make sense. As for the unicode business, that's way beyond my skills to figure out...here's the wiki for the curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari_transliteration

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 3:50 am

Nighthawk

Boy, they don't make translating these texts easy, do they?

I thought it was simple substitution, but the fact that it's semi-phoenetic is actually somewhat impressive.

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 10:07 am

Almijisti · Decorated Joined: 19 Jul 2007 Posts: 227

Actually, that's just due to the fact that devanagari is a syllabic script. To see the devanagari fonts in Mac, you'll have to allow unicode-8, but you may have to download something. It's surprising that you can't see it, Bix, unless your OS is old. I'm pretty sure Macs were able to handle unicode scripts before MS systems.

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 11:44 am

theonetruebix

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:48 pm

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waitress#2 · Entrenched Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 873

Devanagari Translator

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:57 pm

theonetruebix

It worked on the email just fine for me. Awesome.

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:59 pm

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waitress#2 · Entrenched Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 873

Reading Devanagari Email

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:12 pm

Nighthawk

Re: Devanagari Translator

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:33 pm

waitress#2 · Entrenched Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 873

Translator

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 2:17 pm

Nighthawk

Ah... you're not seeing the original sanskrit to begin with. What you pasted in to that box isn't being seen as Unicode.

I don't know what system requirements there are to see the sanskrit. Because of the programming I do, I have every language pack known to man installed on my laptop, so I can pretty much read anything that's out there.

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 2:21 pm

waitress#2 · Entrenched Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 873

Translator

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 3:46 pm

Almijisti · Decorated Joined: 19 Jul 2007 Posts: 227

That's right; if you can't see the correct characters in the first place, cutting and pasting into the Hindi-Devanagari to romanization won't work at all. You have to find a way to make our browser accept the unicode (I've read that unicode-8 should be sufficient; I'm surprised that foxfire and opera don't automatically support this).

If you can see the devanagari/hindi characters correctly, just copy and paste into the transliterator linked above; then you'll see what we're talking about by having to sound out what the result is.

Each devanagari character assumes a following 'a' sound, unless there's a diacritic or other character to indicate something else (either another consonant or a vowel), so the character for 'n', for example, is actually a 'na' sound; 'nk', for instance, would have an entirely new character made up of a combination of those two characters. The system for what these third characters looks like is not that complicated, but in small text, like these are, it can be difficult to make out, so it's best to use the transliterator just to be sure.

Note also that there is no 'w' per se, as 'v' is pronounced as 'w' in indic languages. Some english consonant and vowel combinations don't exist in indic languages, so the combined characters are difficult to make out since the program basically "guesses" what it should look like. that's why it's difficult to read even for people used to reading these characters.

All of the transliteration programs online are made to convert Hindi or Sanskrit itself, written in romanized, text to devanagari. There's no good way to transliterate english words to devanagari because the writing system wasn't meant to do that. Some people think that because the transliteration doesn't look like english means something in and of itself, but I am 100% certain there's nothing to read into that--it's simply an inherent limitation to transliterating the romanized alphabet to devanagari.

Fascinating, no?

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 3:52 pm

Almijisti · Decorated Joined: 19 Jul 2007 Posts: 227

Re: Translator

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 4:03 pm

Almijisti · Decorated Joined: 19 Jul 2007 Posts: 227

Re: Translator

**Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2007 4:18 pm