Language system

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-10 16:37:34

Since we are going to have several languages in game, and I was recently asked if some of the place-names were Dark elven style (and to which i gave my propositions) and started to think.

How does it work?

If we have analgorithm that cryptes the words to look like some other language, like,

Honour = H + o + n + o + u + r = Z + a + l + a + g + t = Zalagt

only, it would be easy to learn which letter stands for which in original text, so maybe solution like this would be better:

Honour = Ho + nou + r = Za + fal + m = Zafalm

So there'd be character strings that would have to be identified first and then be replaced by other strings.

First the algorithm finds the longest string that has been defined, like Honour has "nou", and then finds next, "Ho", but does not find string "ur", since it is already part of other (longer) string. Then it simply replaces all the odd letters, like 'r'.

The new strings should be determined by characteristics of the target language. In some oher language it could go like this:

Honour = Ho + nou + r = Ae' + le me + th = Ae'le meth

The problem is, that there will enetually be some character combinations that do not belong to that particular language, so if something like this occurs:

Battle = B + at + le = Gi + eq + gfe = Gieqgfe

There should be some method to get rid of these. Maybe just remove this bad char string, or replace it with some other. Problem is the time needed to translate large amounts of text, but maybe we'll see how fast this algorthm actually is..

To this system can be implemented simple 'conjugation' of words. This works with small trick:

Battle = B + at + le = Th + aln + ezin = Thalnezin
Battles = B + at + le + s = Th + aln + ezin + el = Thalnezinel
A battle = "A " + b + at + le = Th + aln + ezin + ra = Thalnezinra
The battle = "The " + b + at + le = Th + aln + ezin + eas = Thalnezineas

The algorithm identifies strings "A " and "The " and addeds their counterword to the end of the next word. Tricks like this give impression that languages are close to real ones.

Or even more, just expand the predefined words -list:

For battle = Thalnezinge
To battle = Thalnezinrol
In Battle = Thalnezina

Or if the language structure is different, make it simply follow the original algorithm:

Battle = Gragraf
For battle = Igra gragraf
To battle = Ol gragraf
In battle = Oed gragraf

The problem appears when someone uses place-names or predetermined words, like the famous halnefalh. There should be included a dictionary that identifies the names and does not translate them.

And also, when people start trying to cheat in language system, they'll try to test if there's a counterpart for all simple letters. And if they find that there is, they can start to write like this: I a m a n e w b i e . So translation system does not recognize the words and translates it letter by letter. (And in that situation, it's easy to 'decrypt' the message)

Therefore there should be limitation to minimal length of the word (If it's not predefined like word "A "). So if a single letter occurs, it should not be printed to screen (Or be replaced by "You hear someone muttering")

---
If (when) someone has better ideas, tell me.

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-10-02 18:48:05
In-Reply-To: 2000

This thing has been discussed way too much already without any conclusive results, so I am trying to clear this up now with a more comprehensive, and perhaps clearer, explanation.

Whenever a person speaks, the words are divided into pseudo-syllables. For this we use a set of rules of our own design, such as:

- Each syllable is at most 3 letters long
- If the syllable starts with a vowel, every vowel and the last consonant after the syllable are included into the syllable
- If the syllable starts with a consonant, every consonant and the last vowel after the syllable are included into the syllable

For example, the word "psychoacoustic" would consist of the syllables "psy", "cho", "ac", "ous", "ti", "c"

For each language in the game, we have a "scramble table" that associates each syllable's starting letter with a number of scrambling patterns that are 1-3 letters in length. These scramble patterns are designed in such a way that orcish would sound harsh and brutal, and elven would be poetic with lots of long vowels.

For example:

The Orcish Scramble Table
-------------------------
A - rar, ur, ri, ra, ur
B - phu, hup, ph, bag, bur
...

Each time you start a conversation with somebody*, you perform a skillcheck in the language spoken, opposed by the difficulty of the language as some languages are easier than others, and use the result of the skillcheck, an integer number usually between 1 and a little over 100, as a percentage possibility for deciphering each letter the guy speaks. Then, for each letter, a random number between 0 and 99 is compared with the percentage possibility. If the random number is less than the percentage possibility, the letter comes out right. If not, it is scrambled in such a way that a random scramble pattern that is associated with the letter is applied in its place.

For example, Urgwort the Orc comes to you and says "Abba". The syllables are "ab" and "ba". You perform a skillcheck in orcish and get 32, which implies that we know elementary orcish. For 'a', the starting letter of the first syllable, we throw a random number of 11, so it comes out right. For the next letter, 'b', we throw a number of 88, which means it's scrambled, and we randomly select the scramble pattern "phu".

Urgwort the Orc says "Abphu"

* = As I was writing this, I understood that a skillcheck cannot be performed for each sentence a person says in a foreign language, because this could be abused to no end by spamming stuff on the screen. What we need to do is enable a delay of, say, 30 minutes RL-time that determines when you can gain more exp for the skill.

From: Atratus
Date: 2002-10-01 01:02:23
In-Reply-To: 2000

Encryption based in ASCII characters summing, multypliying and replacing could be decyphered in the blink of an eye by people who knows about encryption. I know this because my brother is one of these people. A person like this could crack the code and make a short program to decipher phrases in a given language automactically, just inputing the string. Such players would be in advantage.

If you are ready to take this idea ahead, use one of those 128 bit encryption codes based in factoration of a number in primes (or something like that). The resulting string would be a bunch of incomensurable shuffle of carachters, so, in practice, DON'T display messages in other languages. I appreciate the effort you made to conceive the system, but computers break what we cannot with our minds.

Just a curiosity: with a perfect Turing Machine (an idealization of our binary code computers) the cracking of one of these 128 bit codes would require the energy of the UNIVERSE to be done. Such decryption would be easy for a quantum computer, though.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-10-18 11:40:25
In-Reply-To: 2000

I have now constructed a simple algorithm for generating 'translated' text. The program is written in java, but it is not available as applet.

It generates words convincing enough to sound some pseudo language.

Next step is to rewrite it with more efective code and translate it to C/C++.

The basic idea is same as represented here, in my first post. The translation is not random, but cretes every time you say an exactly same word, exactly same text.

To create different languages you need only to write 200-300 different syllables charactetistic to that specific language, list them to text files and program takes care of the rest.

And one thing I want to remind here; we don't need to create the elvish, orcish etc languages only, but the human languages as well. Naturally elves hear human languages different than english.

From: Atratus
Date: 2002-10-02 03:16:09
In-Reply-To: 2000

My idea of language learning:

You should have levels of understanding in each language, from ground zero to fluent. A message heard in a language you're in ground zero should be totally ommited, displaying only an "(Unidentified words in elven)", for instance.

Learning a language is through books or listening others speak.

As you gain new levels of understanding, more and more words should appear as you hear foreign messages: "You ... ... the castle."

To SPEAK, you should be able to switch between languages. If you know that the guy you're trying to talk to knows bananas about your native language, which we shall call A, and only understands his native language B, and you know some 50% of B, you switch to language B. You type in your message "You should go to the palace" and he will read "You should go to the .......".

To LISTEN, one doesn't need switches.

Which words should be ommited. A simple first approximation: count the characters of a word and make it more PROBABLE to omit the longer words. In English, it works well: the shorter, monosyllabic words, are pronouns, conjunctions and simple nouns: you, yes, no, the, on, to, car, horse, axe, pay, see, run. Bigger words are derived from Latin, Greek and French and are definitely more specific: absense, approximation, monosyllabic, velocity, message, aqueduct, et cetera.

But, then again, cheating is easy. If you want the other guy to understand:

We sho uld go to the bla ck for est to ni ght.

If not:

Weeeeee shoooulde gooo tooo thhhhhe... etc.

So, perhaps the word omission should be random, being the random seed in the phrase itself.

Inferno, the problems seem to rise like water as we dig further. Everybody should either have a babel fish in their ear or understand nothing.

From: Yendor
Date: 2002-09-23 13:56:09
In-Reply-To: 2000

What I think is that there shouldn't be any other simulation of other languages than random-seed scrambling - something that makes interpreting the original text impossible. When the skill increases, the more words you'll start to understand, from shorter to longer spells.
I don't want that players would be able to recognize common patterns on some languages they're bound to not understand.
What I really don't want to happen is that players that are playing the N:th character, still recongnize what someone says in a language that the newly created character wouldn't know.

Also, what I'd like to point out, is that learning a new language by simply only listening to it, is not easy. It will take years. If you were to commute with that language, it will take considerably less time and if taught, even faster.

From: gxest
Date: 2002-09-10 19:15:55
In-Reply-To: 2000

My opinion in short: we shouldn't simulate languages, if someone speaks in a language you don't know, you simply don't see the message, the text might appear to you as [spoken in dwarvish]. The problem with your suggestion is the same as in making seemingly responsive NPC:s (string recognition) there's bound to be so much errors that it would never be credible, thus better not to do it at all.

This is just my humble opinion, and if we were to simulate languages, your ideas above seem valid.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-10 22:00:51
In-Reply-To: 2001

I remember that someone here uttered, times ago, that he had made a word generator (dwarvish?) that produced grammatically correct words.. I can't call it to mind.. But in any case I think it is possible (although quite demanding) to simulate spoken language convincingly enough.

Well, I can try to play with my computer and to create some code.. when I have time. ;)

This is just my humble (noble) opinion.

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-09-11 04:08:11
In-Reply-To: 2004

Yes, I made such a word generator aeons ago for the dwarven language I had developed.

However, we can't rely on players to learn a new spoken language in order to play the game, nor can we translate from english to some fantasy language on the fly.

From: origon
Date: 2002-09-23 02:03:51
In-Reply-To: 2009

"...nor can we translate from english to some fantasy language on the fly."

Do you mean because of technical limitations? I do not see them.
I think this system proposed is the best one that has come up this far, both from realism perspecive and that it is possible to know a language well or bad. With a system that gives the message "[unknown language]" instead of any text being shown, you can only know the language or not.

But how would the language skill increase, from talking to people, or from studies?
Having skill increase from talking can encourage people to 'word spam'.
And should it be random for each word if it is understood or not? It would mean that players could say the same this x times in a row and the reciever would get the full message, or do we have a fixed seed, so that the same words are scrambled? This way it does not pay off to repeat the same thing inf. amount of times.

I think the solution is to have the seed, and that you can only gain X amount of skill increase in a language a day from talking to the same person (this way we should block the system abusers a bit (not that we are planning to have such in majik :P ) ). This can be explained with that the new information needs to be processed.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-11 15:41:56
In-Reply-To: 2009

So we just make it to be:

Archantes: [Dwarwish] I'd like to [Dwarwish] when I'm [Dwarwish] [Dwarwish].

Raglan: What did you say? I did not understand it completely.

Archantes: [Dwarwish] I'd like to leave [Dwarwish] I'm [Dwarwish] alive.

Or if someone's Dwarwish skill is zero:

Archantes: [Dwarwish speak]

Olar: What?

I see the problems in on the fly traslation but should books for example be translated to different language?

Or should it be, albeit a bit poorer solution, that spoken text just appears in random (but pregenerated) words. This has the problem that if someone repeated what he just said it would appear in different form. (But who minds)

Like: (For I'd like to leave when I'm still alive)

Archantes: For laejienth like to eolaner zarda'len alive.

Ertac: What did you say?

Archantes: For I'd like to as inefel ien la alive.

Of cource it would be lot more easier not to do a translation system of any kind, but.. You know what I want from this world..

From: raeky
Date: 2002-09-22 04:21:28
In-Reply-To: 2015

the problem i see with this is, what if someone (like i do often) spells a word wrong. it won't be reconized in your dictionary and thus the other player would of never learned it.

Language skill on a specific language needs to be a more like say the skill was 1-100, 100 of complete knowledge of the language. at 1 you will not see anything typed by the person. each skill point you raise (should be raised by more time you spend listening to people speek it) the precent chance of regonizeing a word increeses. For example if your skill level was 23, you have a 23% chance of reconizeing a word in someones speech. The algo would be real simple it breaks the sentance down by words (seperates by spaces) and for each word it then generates a random number 0 to 1. your skill is represented as a decimal value .23. If the random number falls from 0-.23 it will show the word to you, if it is above .23 it will not show it and you likely won't reconize anything the person is saying to you.

If you for example do not speek elvin, and you move to a region where elvin is the primary language, you won't understand jack what people say, but as we humans will quickly pick up a second language when totaly emmersed in it so to would your character quickly learn the new language.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-22 20:40:03
In-Reply-To: 2056

the problem i see with this is, what if someone (like i do often) spells a word wrong.

No, there would be no dictionary that players learn, the system I propose, translates words (randomly) every time language is spoken. So one can't learn to speak a language realistically by learning new words. Only the skill increases. Therefore there is no problem if one misspells a word, the 'translation' just makes it be a different word.(But no one notices it.)

For example if your skill level was 23, you have a 23% chance of reconizeing a word in someones speech.

That is exactly what I'm saying here. Maybe I did not make it quite clear, but this would be, in any case, the only possible solution to partial understanding of foreign languages.

From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-09-23 01:16:32
In-Reply-To: 2057

so for some races (who mayeb have a higher intelekt) could learn more languages and faster then some with less intelekt? maybe some racs could only learn max 2 or something...

maybe there should be some some max % you can learn in languages so that you cant know every language in the world...

and if you for an example start as an human you whould then have 100% skill in human language? (permanent)

From: raeky
Date: 2002-10-02 16:24:26
In-Reply-To: 2060

some languages could also be far more complex then others... like human languages..

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-23 09:27:02
In-Reply-To: 2061

But how would the language skill increase, from talking to people, or from studies?

Both, I'd say. And yes, there should be limits to what and how much you can learn. Or maybe just make the rate of learning drop fast when the learning process lenghtens too much.

And should it be random for each word if it is understood or not?

IRL, if you repeat what you say enough, maybe someone gets the point eventually.. How about long words being harder to understand or even impossible at low skills.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-10-02 16:27:32
In-Reply-To: 2062

the larger the word the longer it would take to learn.. or something arround there... Low skill you likely will only reconize small words... as you increese the bigger the words the more chance you have of knowing it.. Its random, because i doubt you could track every word a player has ever seen and base a skill on that.

Reasonf or longer words = harder... Its like that in human languages.. You learn the small words much faster, because they are used much more then longer words.

my two cents.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-23 19:20:37
In-Reply-To: 2064

That is the difficulty in language system, and that is the difficulty in many other things in this game.

This is however only my opinion: Maybe we still (if we are able to create one) should have a non-scramble language translation, for it would not only make the game stand out but also create a great atmosphere.

And one point reduces the amount of malpractices. The fact that you should not be able to see what you say in certain fictional language, only in english. So you can't 'learn' how to speak elvish if you are an elf.

From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-09-23 16:34:09
In-Reply-To: 2064

Yeah it could mayeb eb bad if you had a new language couse then you could actualy make a website with all the words... in that case someoen can just check the page for translation... and i hope thats not what we want

From: Yendor
Date: 2002-09-24 02:13:49
In-Reply-To: 2067

Ah. Here's an partial solution : what if the translation wouldn't be a complete scranble (as in) "Tapoin tänään pääkkiksen 3 kertaa." -> "kljtnadlkv sak ekhtkjjakhdfqwrotna,mxnzpq&", but as you said earlier, translating syllable as syllable into something that you would distinguish if someone shouted the same word repeatedly. The trick would be that each character you (or someone else) create would hear it differently. Like if someone was shouting "Great wyrm! Great wyrm!" you'd hear something like "Plop blaah! Plop blaah!" and someone else "Foo Bar! Foo Bar!"
This would stop you remembering what certain words mean between your multiple characters, but still allows you as player to learn that language faster than your character and remembering common sayings like "Selling red pots!"

Of course, numbers would have to be scrambled too.
I'd love to see some person to point at some "Golden broadsword of slay hit points" sold by an merchant. Merchant would say "||||||| |||||||| _ _", the buyer saying to him "||||||| |||||| ||||| _", the merchant shaking his head in disagreement, and the buyer showing him the interlanguage handsign.

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-09-24 08:37:49
In-Reply-To: 2070

Yes, looks like syllable scrambling is the best thing here.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-24 16:25:17
In-Reply-To: 2072

Agree to that.

Only, the whole point is to make sure the the language sounds like something you can recognize to be elvish, Hilosyph language or whatever.

Therefore, I like the idea of scrambling words and making them to sound different to different persons, but we have to make sure that the language spoken sounds to be same language to everyone listening. That's the only requirement. Naturally, this will happen if we just design the translation system and characteristics (from you usually identify the language) of different tongues well enough.

And one thing about technical side, just clarify things. Not only all the messages sent by characters should be sent to server in english and after that translated (that's obvious) but also the books and other, written by someone, should be stored in english, and therefore there's no need to translate them back (which is quite impossible) when character with other language comes and tries to read it.

Hmh, this reminds me. If (when) we have books, they'll have to be included to translation system as well. We can't use the different text for everyone in them, for the book have to look identical every time you look at it. And we can't store the content of every book to every character's memory. So, this was truly only a partial solution.

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-09-27 03:59:57
In-Reply-To: 2076

Could we just use simple alphabet transition matrix as it is used when playing cops and robbers (making those exciting secret messages)? Capital letters are just a production of Word – ignore. (hoping the layout turns out nicely)

Orc – elf

A\td
R\tt
Y\th

Orc – man

A\tr
R\tr
Y\tt

Man – orc

R\ty
r \tj
a\ta

Man - elf

J\tj
K\to
E\ty


And so on. One could figure it out given enough time, but maybe that time would already give them enough practice to learn the language anyway. As seen from the example, it doesn’t follow any logic :)

Also we could chance the matrix every now and then to disrupt the efforts of cracking the “code”.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-27 08:55:15
In-Reply-To: 2078

It does follow one simple rule: The length of the words is exactly the same as the lenght of the translated word. So, if you asked someone and got the reply in foreign language, you'd recognize the answers Yes being sje and No being Og. In time you'd realize that the length is always same. That' why we have to translate the words syllable by syllable. (Which creates variation)

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-09-28 04:29:30
In-Reply-To: 2079

that was rather hilarious, in real world you could always nod your head etc simple communication is always possible.

From: darshan
Date: 2002-09-28 09:26:28
In-Reply-To: 2080

No it's not. Nodding of the head is does not a priori mean agreement. There are plenty of cultures on this planet where such a gesture is either interpreted differently or not recognized at all. I can think of very few universally applicable gestures. Pointing with your finger, maybe.

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-09-28 15:40:39
In-Reply-To: 2081

It doesn't take long to understand others bodylanguage. For example for me, here in Taiwan, it was rather difficult to order chicken in the beginning... didn't help tiputanssi or sound imitation, but finally it sorted out. Your interpretation suits to a situation, where results are immediate like - fighter, fighter - friend or foe raise your arm and "charge/come in peace".

If players decide that whenever there is single word with 3 letters, it means yes, likewise they can fix certain codes like long syllable combination short syllable combination to mean yes or no, what's the point then?

Guess the point is just to make refined communication unattainable, without language skills. Nowadays I get my chicken done in various ways and with numerous different spices.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-28 16:25:34
In-Reply-To: 2083

If players decide that whenever there is single word with 3 letters, it means yes.. ..what's the point then?

As you said, people can communicate somehow without a shared language, but why should we make it too easy?

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-09-30 06:57:06
In-Reply-To: 2084

still wanted to say that the way you suggest the algorithms to be used is good and probably faster than some sort of matrix. Just trying to test the idea by stating the obvious...

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-09-30 03:46:55
In-Reply-To: 2084

I don't think that simple letter transformation is an example of too easy communication, especially when game aims to be something else than experience rally.

Would be annoying as hell (not to mention just about impossible) to negotiate contracts and run other academic tasks. These are of course the areas where the advantages of a language set forth.

One thing (doesn't matter if it is sentence, word, syllable or letter translation/formation) that we can do is to make the languages have a "race sound". When an orc writes "hi my name is Krach" human or elf might have just lots of gibberish like "rg rg rkfr rk Krrgh"

even it goes letter by letter, it's not too easy as you imply.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-11-27 11:37:15
In-Reply-To: 2089

The method descript is very easy to implement. String replacement of various combinations of words/letters to other combinations of letters/symbols is easy to do, and would be very difficult to manually translate.

The whole concept is if your an Elf and can't speek/read a lick of orcish, you'll have great trouble communicating with the orc. Although an orc and elf would likely try to kill eachother on sight. :P

As time goes on and your living in an area where you have contact with other languages you're knowledge of that laguage will increese. The spoken form is learned much faster then written.

I would imagine you could learn a new language VERY quickly in a matter of weeks if you had someone to teach you, (they knew your language and the other language your learning.) If you had to learn it without a teacher it could take months, and some written languages years to learn without a teacher.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-09-30 10:28:20
In-Reply-To: 2089

Well, I'm not sure it being faster, but I'd still say that if we choose between these two, I would recommend the syllable translation.

The matrix system has really nothing making it preferable, as far as I see it.

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-09-30 17:04:04
In-Reply-To: 2091

being bit flegmatic and saying that I don't care which you use as long as you choose either. Players will have more interesting things to do than figure out some language translations.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-10-01 10:44:54
In-Reply-To: 2100

If we want to hide the message completely, we can just put there [Unidentified words]. The goal here is not to make such thing, but a system that would create illusion of people really speaking different languages in different cultures.

Yes, it creates better possibilities for cheating but as said, I hope people have better things to do than trying to decrypt the code.

Possibly let the character to learn to speak the language might be an option..

From: origon
Date: 2002-10-01 12:22:25
In-Reply-To: 2105

Learning to read the language takes time any way, if they want to figure out the fake language, or study the language in game.
We just have to hint to the players how they are meant to learn languages, it would not work well if someone would start speaking this strange language.
Ah, that brings up something else, if they learn to decrypt the language, they can still not speak it.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-11-27 11:48:42
In-Reply-To: 2105

like it was said the goal is to mask the english version with something that visually looks like another language, not just a random string of encrypted characters.

You can substitute strings/words with things that would make it next to impossible to decypher without haveing a "key" or a document with the same message writtein in two languages.

From: darshan
Date: 2002-10-01 20:18:33
In-Reply-To: 2106

If I may ask... has any computer game ever managed a functional language system?

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-10-01 22:24:45
In-Reply-To: 2108

I admit I can't remember any. In other words, there might, or there might not be any.

From: Atratus
Date: 2002-10-04 05:18:26
In-Reply-To: 2115

This looks clever, indeed. It has great chances of working.

I think the inventor should write it in the worldbook, for he is the one who hath greater understanding.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-11-27 11:53:04
In-Reply-To: 2115

this is the best method described so far. But i think that each language should have its own font character sets, that way we are not just limited to the english letters. And it would make the texts look much more authentic and visually appealing.

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-10-06 18:15:16
In-Reply-To: 2115

Just as a side-note, Majik 4 had exactly this kind of system, except it worked with letters instead of syllables...

From: darshan
Date: 2002-10-02 18:53:39
In-Reply-To: 2115

Right. A note: one scramble pattern should have a chance of appearing for several different letters - eg. phu replacing a. This to make brute force translations impossible.

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-10-04 03:55:34
In-Reply-To: 2115

good draft. now, who is the galant person to write this in the worldbook?

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-10-03 13:50:36
In-Reply-To: 2116

Agree to both.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-10-04 13:39:47
In-Reply-To: 2127

I can try to get some time, and write something ASAP.

From: darshan
Date: 2002-10-06 20:14:49
In-Reply-To: 2156

..although the outputs were rather amusing, iirc something to the tune of "Who are you" -> "xxxxhhhwiwwwiirerhgrho wowwwaaajgjgreo yuiixkjggoppu".

From: hook
Date: 2003-01-06 13:52:09
In-Reply-To: 2160

yuiixkjggoppu, oh yuiixkjggoppu, how I miss you.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-11-27 11:56:47
In-Reply-To: 2588

and i don't like the idea of randomness in the translation. The same text should always appear the same, so there is some small remote chance to learn it. But with the right rules for changeing the text to the different languages it would be very next to impossible to figure out how to translate it.

Things can be very complex, some written languages might not use vowels, some might have a very high precentage of unique symbols for words and even whole phrases... they can be very complex and still not be random. It wouldn't visually look nice to look at a document, then put it away then look at it again, and the text look completely different.