attempting to translate precursor symbols help anyone?

[Greenplot]

so ever since i found the mountain island or the teleporter in the floater island I have found a lot of purple artifacts the symbol represents a "U" which is what the PDA says. the purple artifacts serve as key cards and a probably the lowest level of them so i came to think they meant "level 1" or "1" or something like that But I need help with some of the other symbols and the order the artifacts go in Help anyone?

[bongerman85]

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

i knew because no one writes JFDQPHWDC on their security cards

that may not be what it actually says. the thing everyone is failing to realize here is that we can sit here and translate the symbols on the tablet but with almost no actual dictionary of words to understand phonetic rhythym speech patterns and actually word formation u have no hope.
its like trying to read a russian word even with the correct sounds u still dont know what it means.

its like just because someone can understand the keys on a keyboard doesnt mean they can operate one.

[Zemecon]

^^^ Actually, I've tried to say that, myself, several times, but it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. That was what the whole issue with the symbol translation image on the wiki was about. We found out it wasn't an official translation so now we are inventing the meanings for the symbols ourselves. Or atleast Greenspot is. I am just trying to help out.

[Greenplot]

Originally posted by bongerman85:

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

i knew because no one writes JFDQPHWDC on their security cards

that may not be what it actually says. the thing everyone is failing to realize here is that we can sit here and translate the symbols on the tablet but with almost no actual dictionary of words to understand phonetic rhythym speech patterns and actually word formation u have no hope.
its like trying to read a russian word even with the correct sounds u still dont know what it means.

its like just because someone can understand the keys on a keyboard doesnt mean they can operate one.

Oh yeah!

[Greenplot]

Originally posted by Salinité:

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

precursors may have not had mouths as it is stated they had a form of telepathy SO they probably just talked with their brains

Then you might as well toss verbal and even auditory communication out the window if that is the case. You would have no more work to do on the actual language itself.

There is still the script, though...I think you should look into logographic, pictographic and pictophonetic scripts, then, because telepathy is communicated in images - sounds don't have any meaning unless at one time the Precursors did have an auditory language.

For starters here, you could consider studying Chinese characters: http://mandarintools.com/

^^^ A lot of good resources in that site. Though a Chinese character dictionary would be helpful as well. You can buy hard copies of those.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logogram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictogram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideogram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification

^^^ Look through those pages to familiarize yourself with what image-orinted scripts are like, to give yourself some ideas. As I said earlier, the symbols on the Precursor tablets may represent entire words or concepts rather than individual sounds or numbers. They may stand for "Purple," "Blue," "Orange," etc. Something to think about.

EDIT: Added quote.

Also Though precursors may have made sounds with this telepathy As their langauge is heard multiple times through out the game suggesting their langauge had sound but they may have not made it with their mouths but with their brain

[Zemecon]

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

Also Though precursors may have made sounds with this telepathy As their langauge is heard multiple times through out the game suggesting their langauge had sound but they may have not made it with their mouths but with their brain

Actually, that was probably the Warpers. The Warpers are cyberkinetic so they use something more like radio transmission - which has a technological basis - rather than telepathy which has a strictly biological basis in the brain.

Current scientific and technological developments suggest that the EM signals which are responsible for sending telepathic information transmit images, not sound. Sounds by themselves have no meaning unless they imitate something in the speaker's environment and that isn't nearly enough to construct an actual language with, partly because the listener needs to have heard the same sound and then needs to be thinking of the same meaning in order to make sense of it. Images carry a lot more information that can be shared more easily, and that is likely where most of the concepts in spoken language came from. Most likely, if you were telepathic, you would be using images to communicate with.

Think about it: if you were to use verbal communication with someone who didn't know what it meant, how could they possibly translate it? With an image, even though speaker and listener use different auditory languages, they can still recognize the same thing(s) in that image, and translation becomes so much easier. Telepathy goes one step further; you no longer need to worry about representing images as anything else when the image itself can be shared instantaneously without having to put it down on paper or rock first.

[Greenplot]

Originally posted by Salinité:

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

Also Though precursors may have made sounds with this telepathy As their langauge is heard multiple times through out the game suggesting their langauge had sound but they may have not made it with their mouths but with their brain

Actually, that was probably the Warpers. The Warpers are cyberkinetic so they use something more like radio transmission - which has a technological basis - rather than telepathy which has a strictly biological basis in the brain.

Current scientific and technological developments suggest that the EM signals which are responsible for sending telepathic information transmit images, not sound. Sounds by themselves have no meaning unless they imitate something in the speaker's environment and that isn't nearly enough to construct an actual language with, partly because the listener needs to have heard the same sound and then needs to be thinking of the same meaning in order to make sense of it. Images carry a lot more information that can be shared more easily, and that is likely where most of the concepts in spoken language came from. Most likely, if you were telepathic, you would be using images to communicate with.

Think about it: if you were to use verbal communication with someone who didn't know what it meant, how could they possibly translate it? With an image, even though speaker and listener use different auditory languages, they can still recognize the same thing(s) in that image, and translation becomes so much easier. Telepathy goes one step further; you no longer need to worry about representing images as anything else when the image itself can be shared instantaneously without having to put it down on paper or rock first.

Precursors probably Knew how their bodies worked and how to replicate them as i believe precursors my have cybernetically modified themselfs

[PreLife]

Ok, so the precursors DID have some form of verbal communication, because when you attempt to deactivate the Array, it sends a broadcast that the PDA translates. I doubt that this is the actual language that they used of they could speak telepathically. Also, the PDA already translates precursor documents. So my question for you is: Why? The game already translates for you.

[Zemecon]

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

Precursors probably Knew how their bodies worked and how to replicate them as i believe precursors my have cybernetically modified themselfs

Ehm, the Warpers are not cybernetic Precursors. The species used for the Warpers was most likely a creature that was native to Planet 4546B. At the most, they could have been modified Sea Emperor hatchlings, though that is a stretch considering the head looks different. At the least, they were some other species related to Sea Emperor and Sea Dragon but a lot smaller. We see some of the same similarities with the Cuddlefish - tentacles, forelimbs, a flat face, etc.

The species used for the Warper may also have been highly intelligent, hence the verbal communication we get in our radio transmittor from them, but - in addition to the resemblance to other Planet 4546B species - the Warpers have no actual way to manipulate objects, and that is a crucial thing for a sophonent race to have if it wants to create a civilization with advanced technology. Warpers have two scythe-like limbs that can cut and slice objects and other creatures, but that is it. They cannot walk on land, either, and the Precursors would have needed to be able to do that if they were to build the QEP and the two island portals. Even if they had found a way to manipulate objects with their tentacles, they would have needed all of their tentacles to prop them up and move around on land, which would still have been very difficult and tedious.

Two self-evident probabilities arise here, then: 1) The Precursors were not from Planet 4546B, and 2) they were atleast partially terrestrial, whereas the Warper is not.

And keep in mind the Precursors can still use radiowaves, and probably would have needed to if they were transmitting information from one facility to another. Radio is the language that devices use for each other so even if you used biologically-based EM communication to speak with others of your kind, you would still have needed to use radio for your technology. It would have been converted into something like binary code because of how easy it is to transmit a binary language, and that is something the PDA would have been able to pick up and translate.

So, really, it would have been the radiowaves being sent between facilities that would have provided the "Rosetta Stone" you would have needed to translate the Precursor language; EM waves cannot be used by machines to communicate and if a Precursor had spoken to you then wou would not have needed any translation - images would be sent to your brain and you would immediately understood them.

Assuming the Precursors were telepathic, your only real job here will be to decipher and come up with a written script for them. Of course they don't need to be. They can still use verbal communication. It is your language, after all.

EDIT: Added to response.

[Greenplot]

Originally posted by PrehistoricLife:

Ok, so the precursors DID have some form of verbal communication, because when you attempt to deactivate the Array, it sends a broadcast that the PDA translates. I doubt that this is the actual language that they used of they could speak telepathically. Also, the PDA already translates precursor documents. So my question for you is: Why? The game already translates for you.

for fun

[Greenplot]

Originally posted by Salinité:

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

Precursors probably Knew how their bodies worked and how to replicate them as i believe precursors my have cybernetically modified themselfs

Ehm, the Warpers are not cybernetic Precursors. The species used for the Warpers was most likely a creature that was native to Planet 4546B. At the most, they could have been modified Sea Emperor hatchlings, though that is a stretch considering the head looks different. At the least, they were some other species related to Sea Emperor and Sea Dragon but a lot smaller. We see some of the same similarities with the Cuddlefish - tentacles, forelimbs, a flat face, etc.

The species used for the Warper may also have been highly intelligent, hence the verbal communication we get in our radio transmittor from them, but - in addition to the resemblance to other Planet 4546B species - the Warpers have no actual way to manipulate objects, and that is a crucial thing for a sophonent race to have if it wants to create a civilization with advanced technology. Warpers have two scythe-like limbs that can cut and slice objects and other creatures, but that is it. They cannot walk on land, either, and the Precursors would have needed to be able to do that if they were to build the QEP and the two island portals. Even if they had found a way to manipulate objects with their tentacles, they would have needed all of their tentacles to prop them up and move around on land, which would still have been very difficult and tedious.

Two self-evident probabilities arise here, then: 1) The Precursors were not from Planet 4546B, and 2) they were atleast partially terrestrial, whereas the Warper is not.

And keep in mind the Precursors can still use radiowaves, and probably would have needed to if they were transmitting information from one facility to another. Radio is the language that devices use for each other so even if you used biologically-based EM communication to speak with others of your kind, you would still have needed to use radio for your technology. It would have been converted into something like binary code because of how easy it is to transmit a binary language, and that is something the PDA would have been able to pick up and translate.

So, really, it would have been the radiowaves being sent between facilities that would have provided the "Rosetta Stone" you would have needed to translate the Precursor language; EM waves cannot be used by machines to communicate and if a Precursor had spoken to you then wou would not have needed any translation - images would be sent to your brain and you would immediately understood them.

Assuming the Precursors were telepathic, your only real job here will be to decipher and come up with a written script for them. Of course they don't need to be. They can still use verbal communication. It is your language, after all.

EDIT: Added to response.

Two things why are cuddlefish eggs always pretty much in precursor caches and secondly have you ever wondered that they may have just made their arms scythes for warpers (mind blown)

[Zemecon]

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

Two things why are cuddlefish eggs always pretty much in precursor caches

Most likely? It is just a coincidence for gameplay purposes. I think you know by now that a few things in Subnautica have been fudged for gameplay purposes.

Optimistically, though, it is possible the Precursors were planning to do something with Cuddlefish as well. We know they had many creature specimens - dead or alive at the time - in enclosures for studying.

Even more of a stretch: Maybe cuddlefish are the juvenile forms of whatever creature was used to make the Warpers. The reason why they can breed in their current form could be a biological phenomenon known as Neoteny[en.wikipedia.org] where a species with a juvenile and adult form, like most amphibians and many arthropods, gains the ability to breed in its juvenile or larval form. There are enough similarities between the Warper and the Cuddlefish to suggest this may very likely be the case.

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

and secondly have you ever wondered that they may have just made their arms scythes for warpers (mind blown)

Or ^mind blown* the Warper creature was used because it had those arm scythes...

In all seriousness, though, if you are going to look for a biological candidate for your cybernetic killing machine, you don't look for a benign creature and give it a weapon like arm scythes when you can find a creature that has everything you need in one body. And both the tentacles and the arm scythes bear resemblance to the Sea Emperor's anatomy, which we know is native to Planet 4546B, so most likely the Warper was made with only one creature.

[Greenplot]

im gonna stop talking about warpers now

Originally posted by Salinité:

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

Two things why are cuddlefish eggs always pretty much in precursor caches

Most likely? It is just a coincidence for gameplay purposes. I think you know by now that a few things in Subnautica have been fudged for gameplay purposes.

Optimistically, though, it is possible the Precursors were planning to do something with Cuddlefish as well. We know they had many creature specimens - dead or alive at the time - in enclosures for studying.

Even more of a stretch: Maybe cuddlefish are the juvenile forms of whatever creature was used to make the Warpers. The reason why they can breed in their current form could be a biological phenomenon known as Neoteny[en.wikipedia.org] where a species with a juvenile and adult form, like most amphibians and many arthropods, gains the ability to breed in its juvenile or larval form. There are enough similarities between the Warper and the Cuddlefish to suggest this may very likely be the case.

Originally posted by Greenplot112:

and secondly have you ever wondered that they may have just made their arms scythes for warpers (mind blown)

Or ^mind blown* the Warper creature was used because it had those arm scythes...

In all seriousness, though, if you are going to look for a biological candidate for your cybernetic killing machine, you don't look for a benign creature and give it a weapon like arm scythes when you can find a creature that has everything you need in one body. And both the tentacles and the arm scythes bear resemblance to the Sea Emperor's anatomy, which we know is native to Planet 4546B, so most likely the Warper was made with only one creature.

[Zemecon]

How is that script coming along? Are you sticking with one based on telepathy or do you want to go back to a verbal/auditory language?

[Greenplot]

Originally posted by Salinité:

How is that script coming along? Are you sticking with one based on telepathy or do you want to go back to a verbal/auditory language?

both

[Zemecon]

How? In what way? And are you going with a pictographic script or a phonetic script?