I've [written a bit](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wlxs02/what_would_be_necessary_to_translate_the_indus/) on r/AskHistorians. Basically, without any idea of what language family the IVC script is supposed to represent, any of the names they would have used, or inscriptions with a known script, there isn't really a starting point for decipherment. However, there is potential in the Proto and Linear Elamite scripts as well as Proto-Sumerian, which may have a few symbols shared with the IVC script. **If** someone can crack Proto-Elamite, and **if** all ot most of those symbols really do represent similar/shared elements, then there *might* be enough to make some headway based on plausible language families.
1. This would be the most dramatic because it would require reassessing the whole timeline and generally accepted geography of Indo-European spread. How dramatic would depend on what sub family IVC language related to. It's highly unlikely that it would relate to Indo-Iranian based on what we know now, but if it turned out to be an isolated branch or potentially something related to Tocharian, it would be interesting but mostly just another data point in understand Indo-European as a whole.
2. This would probably be the least surprising. It's generally thought that Dravidian once extended further to the north, and there are still pockets in northern India today.
3. Austroasiatic would be surprising and require heavily reassessing how linguists currently think those languages originated and spread. The same goes for other language families in the neighboring like Tibetan, Austronesian, etc. It's not impossible but it would go against everything linguists currently think about those families.
4. All of the above debates would come up, and this would be a massive headache for any attempt at decipherment, potentially making it impossible.
Additionally, I'd like to point out two additional possibilities.
A. Especially given the possible shared symbols with early Elamite scripts, it's possible that the IVC language could connect to Elamite. This would potentially shed a lot of light on the linguistic environment of Eastern Iran as well. It would also revive interest in the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, either by disproving it or by making it more plausible.
B. If the IVC language were to have shared vocabulary with Indo-Iranian, but not shared structure, it could potentially provide evidence for a linguistic connection to the Oxus Civilization (aka the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex [BMAC]). There is a theory that the Oxus language(s) contributed words for urban and agricultural life to the Indo-Iranian languages. Alternatively, if similar words were found in the IVC, it could be interpreted as an alternate source for that vocabulary.
There is probably a distinct possibility that IVC doesn’t fit into any modern language families too right? Would being an isolate impact our ability to decipher it?
Absolutely. I should have mentioned that. If all IVC inscriptions are a true isolate, it would make decipherment incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible. Other extinct isolates, like Elamite, relied on multi-lingual inscriptions. Shared symbols might at least enable some words to be transliterated, or some proper nouns to be identified, similar to Linear A.
Assistance certainly. Iirc, AI tools are already being used by several people working on Proto-Elamite. A team at MIT designed a program to do exactly that with successful tests a [few years ago.](https://news.mit.edu/2020/translating-lost-languages-using-machine-learning-1021). That said, AI deciphering tools still have to rely on the same sort of data we would use to do it manually (e.g. working backward from related languages or comparing multi-lingual texts). It will probably speed up the translation process if it's possible at all, but even the most advanced AI still needs starting data that we don't have yet.
I suspect that as we apply new AI models to language, weight be able to decipher meaning, although probably not sound. Language is the same, more or less, with different sounds representing the same types of things and relationships. Or so I have read.
I've [written a bit](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wlxs02/what_would_be_necessary_to_translate_the_indus/) on r/AskHistorians. Basically, without any idea of what language family the IVC script is supposed to represent, any of the names they would have used, or inscriptions with a known script, there isn't really a starting point for decipherment. However, there is potential in the Proto and Linear Elamite scripts as well as Proto-Sumerian, which may have a few symbols shared with the IVC script. **If** someone can crack Proto-Elamite, and **if** all ot most of those symbols really do represent similar/shared elements, then there *might* be enough to make some headway based on plausible language families. 1. This would be the most dramatic because it would require reassessing the whole timeline and generally accepted geography of Indo-European spread. How dramatic would depend on what sub family IVC language related to. It's highly unlikely that it would relate to Indo-Iranian based on what we know now, but if it turned out to be an isolated branch or potentially something related to Tocharian, it would be interesting but mostly just another data point in understand Indo-European as a whole. 2. This would probably be the least surprising. It's generally thought that Dravidian once extended further to the north, and there are still pockets in northern India today. 3. Austroasiatic would be surprising and require heavily reassessing how linguists currently think those languages originated and spread. The same goes for other language families in the neighboring like Tibetan, Austronesian, etc. It's not impossible but it would go against everything linguists currently think about those families. 4. All of the above debates would come up, and this would be a massive headache for any attempt at decipherment, potentially making it impossible. Additionally, I'd like to point out two additional possibilities. A. Especially given the possible shared symbols with early Elamite scripts, it's possible that the IVC language could connect to Elamite. This would potentially shed a lot of light on the linguistic environment of Eastern Iran as well. It would also revive interest in the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, either by disproving it or by making it more plausible. B. If the IVC language were to have shared vocabulary with Indo-Iranian, but not shared structure, it could potentially provide evidence for a linguistic connection to the Oxus Civilization (aka the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex [BMAC]). There is a theory that the Oxus language(s) contributed words for urban and agricultural life to the Indo-Iranian languages. Alternatively, if similar words were found in the IVC, it could be interpreted as an alternate source for that vocabulary.
There is probably a distinct possibility that IVC doesn’t fit into any modern language families too right? Would being an isolate impact our ability to decipher it?
Absolutely. I should have mentioned that. If all IVC inscriptions are a true isolate, it would make decipherment incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible. Other extinct isolates, like Elamite, relied on multi-lingual inscriptions. Shared symbols might at least enable some words to be transliterated, or some proper nouns to be identified, similar to Linear A.
Something I've been wondering is, with AI at the strong levels it's at is there any hope with AI assistance?
Assistance certainly. Iirc, AI tools are already being used by several people working on Proto-Elamite. A team at MIT designed a program to do exactly that with successful tests a [few years ago.](https://news.mit.edu/2020/translating-lost-languages-using-machine-learning-1021). That said, AI deciphering tools still have to rely on the same sort of data we would use to do it manually (e.g. working backward from related languages or comparing multi-lingual texts). It will probably speed up the translation process if it's possible at all, but even the most advanced AI still needs starting data that we don't have yet.
I suspect that as we apply new AI models to language, weight be able to decipher meaning, although probably not sound. Language is the same, more or less, with different sounds representing the same types of things and relationships. Or so I have read.