Chapter 42 Lessons Learned

Chapter 42 Lessons Learned

"I never thought that the five of us could get together from five colleges, especially with two seniors among them. It's great. I suddenly feel that no matter what problems we encounter, we can solve them easily," Kavei said happily.

"That's true, but I don't want you to call me senior," Seno suddenly said.

Kawi said "Hmm?" in surprise, and just as he was about to ask, "Can I call you "senior"?", he heard Seno reply calmly:

"Because I am very happy with my height, and I don't want the 'senior' to be taller than me."

Kavi was completely stunned.

...

The atmosphere was a little awkward.

Harold held his forehead in pain. He was wrong, really, he shouldn't have let Senor in.

He missed Abatoi and Selema so much now.

Sino: "I forgot to mention that, in addition to elemental studies and geomancy, telling jokes is also one of my specialties. I think as a senior, I need to continue everyone's joy - what? Wasn't that funny? The funny part of this joke is 'senior' and 'senior is taller'..."

This was a joke he had carefully prepared. He had thought of it two days ago and had saved it for the first society event to share with other members.

"Is this the reason why you chose him, so that you can exchange jokes with each other in the society?" Elhaisen turned to Harold and said.

Kavi always told him about Haroldt's recent situation. He learned from Kavi a long time ago that Haroldt was going to take away the decision-making power of the last person, and he was happy to see it happen, but he did not deliberately inquire who the last person was.

Harold smiled bitterly and pressed his temple: "How is it possible."

I didn't realize that you, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, actually like to tell jokes, El Haisen.

Setale was very receptive. After walking with Seno for a long time, she had developed a certain resistance. When she first heard Seno suddenly utter a cold joke, she felt like a gust of cold wind blew past, and her smile froze on her face.

"...It's...quite funny," said Kavi with a stiff laugh.

"Really? As expected, I was right. Our society needs some entertainment programs," Seno nodded.

"...Ahem, now let me talk about our topic and the next research direction," Kavi coughed twice, put the document signed by everyone behind the other documents, and then put the top document on the table.

"What is this...? The ancient hieroglyphics of Sumeru?" Setale said as she looked at some animal and plant-like symbols drawn on the paper.

Kavi: "It is a kind of writing used in the Xumi Desert during the reign of the Red King. It is now called runic ancient writing. Some people also call it hieroglyphics, but this statement is not very accurate."

"Inaccurate?" Setale fell into deep thought as she looked at the paper full of words. She had only done some research on the ancient Xumi characters and was limited to mastering the results that scholars had already obtained.

However, scholars have not yet been able to fully decipher these characters, and the meanings of many characters are still unknown. Therefore, many ancient books in the desert area cannot be deciphered now.

"Alhaisen and I discovered this when we were reading some ancient books," Kavi pointed at a few words on the paper. "This, this, and this are probably not pictographic characters, but ideographic characters. They record not only the external image, but also the pronunciation. Moreover, the desert people of that period only recorded consonants and not vowels."

Kavi put another piece of paper on the table and said, "This is a passage I extracted from an ancient book. The parts marked in red are pictographic characters that we think are not problematic to translate, and the parts without red are ideographic characters.

We try to guess the meaning of these consonants and put vowels in front of them to translate the complete sentence.

Then the meaning of this sentence is 'I saw a mirage in the sea of ​​sand', not 'I entered the desert oasis' as translated in this book."

Harold nodded subconsciously. The setting of the Sumeru Desert area in the game was based on references to Arabia, Egypt and other countries. Some researchers had also tried to translate the text in the Red King's Mausoleum.

It is certain that the Egyptian hieroglyphics were used as reference when these characters were planned and designed. Most of the hieroglyphics are ideographic, mixed with a small amount of hieroglyphics. Therefore, the textual research party successfully deciphered the desert text based on the grammatical structure of the hieroglyphics.

Now what Kavi said is consistent with the translation method he used and the method used by modern linguists to study hieroglyphics, so Kavi and Elhaisen are definitely on the right track.

The current rainforest people always maintain an ambiguous attitude towards the Red King. Most of them will neither slander him nor study the things he left behind.

This research is extremely difficult. Learning several ancient characters and thinking and reasoning are almost hard requirements. In addition, researchers are required to read paper documents and compare records in different ancient books.

Today's scholars rely too much on the Void, and almost no one doubts the correctness of the knowledge recorded in the Void.

Since no one was doing research, naturally no one noticed the text translation and grammatical errors in the ancient books of that period, which led to these ancient books being misinterpreted for hundreds of years.

"Indeed, I have also had the honor of reading the translation of this ancient book, and there are many logical loopholes in it," Seno nodded, "Not only this book, the same situation appears in the translation of various ancient books related to medicine, literature, and astronomy."

"If we can correct these errors, we can decipher many important documents," Setale suppressed her inner excitement and forced herself to speak in a relatively calm voice.

She had originally come only for Harold, and the purpose of joining this society was just to find a legitimate reason to approach this scholar and ask him how to grow rice correctly in the desert.

But at this moment, she finally discovered what kind of society she had joined. Just from what Kavi had just said, she could glimpse the bright future of this society.

The most important thing is that they can really correct those translation errors, so that the ancient books from the desert area during the Red King period can be presented to the public in their original appearance.

Setale often read in history books about the desert people's admiration for the desert civilization of the Red King period, but none of the ancient books translated by Xumi scholars now can reflect the wisdom of the desert people of that period.

If there were no remains of the Red King's Mausoleum in the desert, the rainforest people today would deny even the Red King's mechanical technology. Some rainforest people, after reading a few translated books, mocked the desert people, saying that they have been uncivilized primitive people since the Red King's era, and that the language they use is vulgar and illogical.

But as long as they can complete the goal of this project, it would be like a slap in the face of those rainforest people.

"That's not all. This ancient book is written in another minority language of the desert area. It contains some grammatical and logical deficiencies. The translator of this book translated it too casually," Kavi frowned slightly and placed another piece of paper next to this one.

Kavi: "This document is in the same language as that one, but according to this translator's method, a lot of the content in this document is incomprehensible. I even went to find another document he translated, and his logic is completely contradictory."

"Perhaps in order to complete the translation work as quickly as possible, I wrote down my guesses without doing further research," said Harold.

This is not surprising, as many translators in his previous life had done the same. Because the salary for translating documents is based on the number of words translated, famous translators would outsource the tasks to their apprentices or some junior translators, and these tasks might be outsourced again by these people, resulting in many foreign books being translated into a mess.

This situation exists in the 21st century when foreign languages ​​can basically be deciphered. It will be even more common in Xumi where most people do not understand ancient characters.

Kavi nodded in agreement. He could understand that one had to rush the task in order to survive, but he felt it was a pity that many scholars later used the ancient books translated by this translator as reference material and learned wrong knowledge.

"Well, it is indeed a very good approach. I have joined related societies, and many of them are studying the Red King's mechanisms or some of his other inventions, but they have hardly produced any results.

The meaning of the modifiable text symbols is different from the logic. Starting from such a small point can bring huge benefits and eventually help scholars interpret important ancient books. Sure enough, I came to the right place," said Seno.

And if this project progresses smoothly, he might be able to find what he wants in some ancient books.

"Really? But these are actually just some guesses by Elhaisen and I. We have only interpreted and applied a small part of the text to the translation. We speculate the meaning of consonants based on the records in various ancient books, add vowels to guess the meaning of the characters, and then put them into the text... This is a huge project, and we need more theoretical support."

Sino: "It's amazing that two people can achieve this. Now with this society, we can all share the work. I believe your efforts will soon bear fruit."

...

The atmosphere was quite heated originally, but now it suddenly cooled down.

Harold: You can cool so well, are you the central air conditioner?

Sino: "Hmm? Didn't you understand? It means work and effectiveness..."

Harold: "I understand, Senior Seno, you don't need to explain!"

The others nodded quickly.

Kavi quickly collected the papers on the table and folded them again, then gave each person present a copy of the document.

Kavi: "It records some of the assumptions we made, and I also listed some references that can be used, including ancient books and ancient book translations, different translations, different documents with the same text, and the same document with different texts..."

The document was very thick, with nearly fifty pages, and everyone silently flipped through the document in their hands.

Finally, Setale broke the silence: "I have a question. Many of these books listed are only available in paper version. Can we find them?"

"This list is what we put together based on the existing catalog of the House of Wisdom and the books I own, so don't worry about that," said Elhaisen.

"The amazing collection of books is enough to support us in completing our research project," Seno couldn't help but look around at the bookshelves and expressed such emotion.

"Of course, language is only one aspect. This is another research direction of ours," Kavi spread a few more sheets of paper on the table, many of which had pictures on them.

Setare: “Desert architectural art?”

"It's actually about the study of building functionality, which is the most important factor in architecture," Kavi added in more professional terms.

"These are some of the designs used in the ancient ruins of the Chiwang civilization, including the load-bearing structure of the house, the transportation system, the water supply system and so on. If these designs are applied to buildings, they can be adapted to special terrains, and people in remote areas will have more solid houses, more convenient transportation, more stable water sources... Of course, these are just my guesses," said Kavi.

"There are also projects involving greening and using plants to control sand and dredge rivers, so my expertise can come in handy. I thought I could only do comparison and translation work this time," Harold said half-jokingly.

"I am also very interested in this direction. Architectural design is not my specialty, but I have taught myself some ancient characters. The work of translation, collecting information, and taking photos of ancient ruins in the desert can all be left to me. I am now an assistant to the sage, and the work is not heavy. The House of the Decrees sends people to investigate the ruins every year, and I can go with them," said Setale.

She knew that although Kawi was talking about "remote areas", the people in the desert areas would actually benefit the most. The architectural design techniques used in the Red King Ancient Ruins were naturally more suitable for the geographical environment of the desert, which was beyond doubt.

Sino: "I am also willing to take on more translation and proofreading work. I have learned several ancient scripts, and I have submitted my graduation application to the Faith Council. I am relatively free during the working day when the Faith Council completes the review. I am willing to spend a week on this project. I think it is valuable."

So Kavi circled the ancient books that the two were responsible for on their documents based on the languages ​​they mastered. He and Harold were more responsible for studying the functions of the buildings in the ancient ruins of the Red King, and Elhaisen was responsible for the remaining ancient books.

Kavi recorded each person's responsibility, as well as the bibliography and references used in his notebook, and then set goals for the first stage, specifically how many books each person needed to read and which documents each person needed to re-translate.

After assigning the tasks, Kavi and Elhaisen took out the books needed for the first stage and distributed them to everyone.

"The others can be borrowed at the Palace of Wisdom," said Kavi.

"Okay, I'll go borrow it today," said Setale.

Seno echoed the comment, and the two agreed to travel together again. The two desert people felt that they could have a good chat about the content of the society's activities.

After completing the basic preparations, it was only one o'clock in the afternoon and none of the five had eaten lunch, although Setale said that she could continue her research even on an empty stomach.

But Kavi felt that this was unnecessary, and that the work assigned to everyone at this stage could be done anywhere, and everyone's progress was zero, so there was no need to communicate and verify each other's research results.

Setale accepted this and decided to go to the Palace of Wisdom and start working immediately after lunch.

Finally, everyone said goodbye to each other and reminded each other not to forget the society activities at 7 o'clock tomorrow night.