1) How do people translate ancient languages which no one in the world speaks like Rosetta, Egyptian, etc
2) if we came across some text from an alien civilization, by text I mean any visual patterns made by the aliens which they used for sharing information among each other, how will we deciper it? How much alien text will we need to completely deciper it?
Thanks
In: Engineering
They find texts that are in multiple languages and can cross reference. This is how Egyptian hieroglyphes were translated via the Rosetta stone.
Otherwise they can compare to related languages, or find contextual hints as to the usage of certain languages, if available.
In the case of an Alien language, if there is absolutely no relationship between it and Earth language, no contextual hints to at least be able to tell SOME words…. it might be impossible.
Consider that we are only starting to SORT OF understand how whales communicate, and they are on this planet, readilly available to be studied.
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