Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian Translator Created

DrJackson writes "A new online translator that can translate Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian and Egyptian hieroglyphics (1 of the 3 types anyway) has been developed. This is the first time I ever saw a translator for cuneiform. Something like this would be great for translating interesting historical records like the Amarna Letters."

Comments

bo-ring

[heptapod]

wake me when they can do pnakotic

Monty Python

[JoshWurzel]

Now I can finally find out what the capital of Assyria is! I hope its not "aaaarrrrhhhh"

Oh good!

[Chairboy]

I've been meaning to write a 'Hello world' Nam-shub...

Re:Uh...right.

[Rebelgecko]

As a technologist who also reads ancient Egyptian (from college) as well as Akkadian (== Assyrian & Babylonian, with slightly different scripts over the years) and Sumerian, I can fairly readily call shenanigans on this one. The sophistication of translation here is about as deep as the 'your name in hieroglyphs' stuff you find in museum stores and the horrid Dover reprints of Budge's books.

And don't even get me started on Sumerian. Professional Sumerologists still can't render half of the agglutinative morphemes that appear in Sumerian verbs. I definitely agree with you on translating difficulties. When your last sentence was translated into English, most of it came out as gibberish!

Re:I didn't think they'd cracked modern languages.

[Nazlfrag]

Bird bird eye feather snake bird squiggly, you insensitive clod!