Has anyone managed to translate the sentinel runes on Doom Eternal's artbook

[TheRedTide]

I'm pretty curious to find out what the Sentinel writings in the artbook mean, and knowing Id Software, I'm pretty certain they dropped a few hints here and there in these writings pointing to what direction the franchise could follow in the future.

[Hellektronic]

I'm not really sure their "language" translates, I think it's more just for show... and might not mean anything at all. I don't think the writing in 2016 was ever translated either.

 

In a lot of ways we really don't even know what the demonic rune symbols mean. I mean you could argue they mean something related to what they were called in 2016, like the rune of savagery being the pentagram, but... do they? Nobody really knows, lol.

[Quasar]

The best I was able to do was to isolate glyphs from various Semitic languages that seem to be the source of inspiration for Emerson Tung's design, but this didn't lead me anywhere as the phonetic values are just all over the place and not useful for building a conlang. If it is in fact a conlang, and not just effective gibberish, it tends to repeat the same few phrases over and over again in different contexts, so it's probably still not that meaningful. Probably would say things like "Night Sentinel" or "Rip and Tear".

[Quasar]

Here are my scribblings on the characters and some of their possible sources.

Spoiler

 

[igg]

I don't expect id Software to put any effort in establishing an actual language. Many of the English notes just contain the usual "lorem ipsum" sample text.

 

But you never know. Maybe one of there designers studied semitic languages in the past and has put in some easter eggs.

[Quasar]

2 hours ago, igg said:

I don't expect id Software to put any effort in establishing an actual language. Many of the English notes just contain the usual "lorem ipsum" sample text.

 

But you never know. Maybe one of there designers studied semitic languages in the past and has put in some easter eggs.

They did create two languages for the lyrics in the music, we know that much at least.

[Gez]

I'm reminded of the daedric and dwemer text in Morrowind. Like there's these old ruins with steam pipes running through them, and there's repeated glyphs on the pipes.

When it was deciphered, it turned out that it was just saying "Wormgod." which was the online nickname of the texture artist back then.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Elven_Alphabets

 

The funniest (and weirdest) example in Elder Scrolls is the Bible of the Deep Ones, part of a Cthulhu mythos-inspired sidequest with a village of cannibal mutant cultists. It looks very fancy and sinister with the daedric script; but if you actually translate it, it's just... the mangled newsletter of a Swedish Esperanto society! It's not lorem ipsum I guess.

[SYS]

 Some of the symbols could be close to Enochian alphabet:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian

 

Which in itself resembles mangled looking Hebrew. Amazing what John Dee and Edward Kelly came up with during Elizabethan DnD sessions. 

 

There's a whole bunch of symbols found in Cornelius Agrippa's Four Books of Occult Philosophy that might have a slight inspiration as well. 

 

[Man of Doom]

http://emersontung.com/doom-eternal

 

Quote

For DOOM Eternal I was tasked to come up with the fictional languages and alphabet used by the Maykr and Sentinel race.

 

The Sentinel language was influenced and inspired by Aramaic, Arabic and the elvish language from Tolkien stories.
Meanwhile, the Maykr writing was influenced by more ancient writings like those from the Mesopotamian and Babylonian eras, with some fusion of Chinese and Korean characters.Another influence to the look of the language was Greek star constellations.

Hopefully this should help.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Man of Doom

[AtimZarr1]

1 hour ago, Man of Doom said:

http://emersontung.com/doom-eternal

 

Hopefully this should help.

 

That's a pretty sweet link. Also some interesting early lore from that page too:

 

 

They also have an interesting drawing of Hayden:

 

 

Here is the language of Sentinels as well as Maykrs too:

 

 

[Gez]

The flavor text for the Hayden drawing is Lorem Ipsum.

[whatup876]

Seeing a lot of concept art still being revealed is why i wished the game had some concept art gallery feature or something.

I heard The Ancient Gods would have some illustrations for what happened between Eternal and 2016 and that could be a similar reason.

 

Like preserving the history of a game and its development within the game itself.

[oCrapaCreeper]

On 9/7/2020 at 2:48 PM, Gez said:

The flavor text for the Hayden drawing is Lorem Ipsum.

The final text for this image is seen in the lorebook from the collector's edition. I don't have an image of the other page though, but I'm pretty sure it mentions how he is in service of the Slayer or something along those lines.

Spoiler

 

Edited September 9, 2020 by oCrapaCreeper

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

YCan anyone make an edited version of the makyr picture to show what symbols correspond to the alphabet, or is it already in alphabetical order? However, I do know this try to consider this information:

The sentinel language (Writing-Wise anyways) is based on 

1: Arabic.

2: Aramaic.

3: The tolken elvish language of tengwar.

 

But I've made a vebal connection.

"Kar en tuk hust en vital, Kar en Tuk, do tey exhunt" (pronounced Car ehn took, hoost en vee-tahl, car ehn Took, doo tay Ex-hoont) sounds kind of vaugely latin (as in the dead language NOT like the Spanish type latin) or am I the only one who thinks that?

 

NOTE: I've seen a way of pronouncing the sentinel phrase slightly differently in a reddit thread linked here

https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/gffpdm/spoken_demon_language/

Edited September 24, 2021 by XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX

[Quasar]

On 9/24/2021 at 6:31 PM, XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX said:

YCan anyone make an edited version of the makyr picture to show what symbols correspond to the alphabet, or is it already in alphabetical order? However, I do know this try to consider this information:

The sentinel language (Writing-Wise anyways) is based on 

1: Arabic.

2: Aramaic.

3: The tolken elvish language of tengwar.

 

But I've made a vebal connection.

"Kar en tuk hust en vital, Kar en Tuk, do tey exhunt" (pronounced Car ehn took, hoost en vee-tahl, car ehn Took, doo tay Ex-hoont) sounds kind of vaugely latin (as in the dead language NOT like the Spanish type latin) or am I the only one who thinks that?

 

NOTE: I've seen a way of pronouncing the sentinel phrase slightly differently in a reddit thread linked here

https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/gffpdm/spoken_demon_language/

Yeah many names/terms they have draw from Latin vocabulary. This starts with stuff from '16: "Argent", "Praetor". Continues in the Eternal Codex: The Sentinel word for "book", ligra, is similar to Latin liber; empyrean, referring to heaven. However there are almost equally as many references to terms of Semitic origin, and a few from Greek as well. I think either this is hinting that the Sentinel world is a sort of parallel to Earth, or that it influenced Earth in an ancient-aliens-style fashion (this is heavily implied otherwise by the Sentinel ruins found on Earth).

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

So your saying In the DOOM '16/Eternal cannon, It is completely possible that humans are  descendants of the Argenta people? Or at the very least influenced by their culture?

Other evidence for the Argenta/Human connection come in the form of sentinel armor. While their body and limb armor is based on 15th century Gothic plate, the helmets seen on the sentinels in flashbacks, the guards of sentinel prime, and the praetor suit toke ghosts all have helmets based on the 13-14 century Great Helm (other medieval armor connections can be made to the DOOM 2016 MultiPlayer Crusader armor category and the helmets in the Eternal official artbook sentinel concept artwork, I just haven't narrowed it down to anything specific yet.)

[Gez]

On samedi 25 septembre 2021 at 1:31 AM, XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX said:

"Kar en tuk hust en vital, Kar en Tuk, do tey exhunt" (pronounced Car ehn took, hoost en vee-tahl, car ehn Took, doo tay Ex-hoont) sounds kind of vaugely latin (as in the dead language NOT like the Spanish type latin) or am I the only one who thinks that?

while "vital" or "exhunt" certainly sound Latin, the whole "kar en tuk" thing is decidedly Germanic.

 

 

Wait I got it, Doomslayer is actually a woman named Karen Tuk. The whole plot of Eternal and Ancient Gods finally makes sense, we see her journey to go speak to Hell's manager to complain about what his employees have been doing.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Gez

[BerserkerNoir]

Seems an Aesthetic choice rather than a hidden Language of Sorts.

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

Yes, but it's still fun to speculate anyways. Besides we may get a translation by accident (as in the devs didn't intend 4 one, but we get one regardless)

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

I just realized something. Who's to say that their alphabet is in the same order as our alphabet. I mean there are 47 characters in total. Whose to say that the go A, B , C, D, and so on while including consonant pairs like TH or CH or ST for example. They might even have different names like Ålen, (A) Killox, (K) Baeltîx, (B) ørex, (O) Illœn, (I) Hillæn, (H) and Grailün (G). The numbers could also have unique names: Zéred(0)  ünled(1)  Nikdred(2)  dreid(3) 

Quædred(4)  Gøred(5)  Rœkiōn(6) Naniōn(7)  Øctiōn(8)  Cuajiōn(9)  and numbers are said as they are written: Just the digits names are said, for example 23 would be: Nikdreid, 45 would be quægø, and 69 would be rœcuaj. HOWEVER: Do note that these names are just ones I made up on the spot. I made the numbers by taking other languages and mixing them up with a suffix Quædred was taking the spanish wor for 4 Cuatro's pronunciation (Qua-tro) using this symbol "æ" for NO REASON OTHER THAN IT LOOKED COOL and adding the suffix "dred" at the end. TL:DR; the way the sentinel alphabet is structured MIGHT be nothing like A,B,C, And so on, and I made up nearly impossible to pronounce names with reckless and unnecessary symbol  spam for fuck u that's why and style points.

 

 THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT 

Edited October 5, 2021 by XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

On 10/3/2021 at 3:43 PM, XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX said:

Yes, but it's still fun to speculate anyways. Besides we may get a translation by accident (as in the devs didn't intend 4 one, but we get one regardless)

 

Yes, but it's still fun to speculate anyways. Besides we may get a translation by accident (as in the devs didn't intend 4 one, but we get one regardless)

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

how do I delete forum posts. I wanna Quote @BerserkerNoir with the post i quoted and reposted above, but u probably can C where that went

[dybbuk81]

I mean Mick Gordon hid pictures and symbols in the music, so, maybe. If no one has mentioned it, there's a whole galactic alphabet in the old keen games that was used a couple times later. There maybe? Does anything match? I'm too busy to take this a step further myself.

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

Y'know what else, the minecraft enchantment table language IS the Galactic Alphabet from Keen

[Eugene Krabs]

That'd be neat as hell if someone did

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

If someone did what Mr. Krabs? Translate the runes? Well about that... I found a video of someone trying to complete our mission, but he didn't come out victorious to say the least. 

 

 and here is a link to night owl, the guy mentioned in the beginning https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXdtTpWYaHpI7h45EvHV9RA

[Quasar]

To summarize the video, Emerson Tung revealed at a conference not very long ago that the Sentinel written language is not translatable and the phrases written in it are just constructed aesthetically, not with any linguistic intent behind them.

[whatup876]

Speaking of symbols that may or may not have meaning, does anyone remember a Facebook screenshot where Hugo said that the 4 symbols next to the Slayer mark had their own meanings?

[Quasar]

Just now, whatup876 said:

Speaking of symbols that may or may not have meaning, does anyone remember a Facebook screenshot where Hugo said that the 4 symbols next to the Slayer mark had their own meanings?

Yeah and supposedly this was going to factor into Eternal somehow. More BS I guess.

[XXx_D00MSL4Y3R_69_xXX]

Well we could still try to make up the rest of the language OURSELVES! We have an alphabet, we have a loose approximation of the phonetics (spoken half) of the language... We just have to get a little creative and finish what they started. This could be a GREAT project the Whole fandom could collab in. I honestly thimk we've got what it takes to even make it cannon if we pull it off, WHO'S WITH ME!