I’m speaking very hypothetically here, but if we happened to recieve a voyager disc style message from another planet, which contained numbers and writing in their language, how does the process of translation begin?
It still blows my mind that at some point, two people from the same planet that spoke very different languages (chinese and engish for example), started the process of learning each others languages and worked out what each other were saying. So how would this work for a completely new, unknown language with completely new characters, digits and language features?
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probably similar to how we decipher old languages. look for patterns, syntax, order, etc. but you’re right, the ENTIRE system of communication may be different.
to be blunt, there are way too many “what if’s” for this to be an ELI5 discussion lol. for all we know, the aliens can beam our native language into our head using a laser pistol they power with space slug juice
the movie Arrival actually does a fantastic job of showing how it *might* play out with dramatic effect. minimal spoilers, but the aliens communicate in an incomprehensible language and every country deciphers it a little bit differently based on the methods they used to try to communicate
edit: they actually had phd’s in linguistics help with the language and translation parts of the movie
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