Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Could a Universal Translator be used to decipher encryption?

+0
−0

This question:Why would a language be untranslatable by universal (machine) translator? inspired me to consider, if one possessed a universal translator, is it reasonable to consider that it could be used to translated an encrypted message? Of course, it could be expected that if a UT could be used for decryption, that those encrypting would devise a way to thwart the UT, but could the UT be used to decrypt more primitive forms of encryption, such as an enigma machine generated encrypted message?

Edit: The question was asked as to how it would work. How I perceive it, it would have a complete understanding programmatically of how we communicate, in all forms, with updates when we find new ways of communication that hadn't been conceived before.

Edit #2: How it would work when encountering a language previously unknown is internally, it would look for similarities to known languages and if it finds a similar language, it would apply the rules of that language, until those rules fail, then seek another language that has a more successful rate of translating, and use that, repeating this testing until it finds one that best matches. In the event no known language matches satisfactorily, it would then apply rules of language structure...common words and phrases, until it finds a structure that works and use that. I am not a linguist, so I do not know if there are other tests. If there are, then they would apply, all programmatically. If all tests fail, then it would request additional information or wait until additional data was received...such as further conversation, or a chart of common words.

But, that is not what I am looking for. What I am looking for is, using whatever programmatic format, can a UT identify code?

One more point about changing encryption. It could be possible that a language changes pronunciation in a similar manner. That is, whatever encryption you envision could be the natural language of somewhere.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/61963. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »