Are there risks in translating mnemonic phrases?

I just started digging into this whole BIP39 and BIP32 thing. Tried generating some random mnemonic words, but I'm confused about translating them. Like, if Mr. A in China has his words exposed and Mr. B in Germany sees them, what's the risk? Should translation be a concern?

Uhh, that’s kinda missing the point of BIP39. These mnemonics aren’t just simple translations. Each word is tied to a specific index in a language-specific list, so they don't translate directly. If someone tries to translate them, they'll probably just get gibberish.

So you’re saying if Mr. B finds Mr. A's words and thinks he can just translate them, it’s likely gonna fail? Like, checksum issues or something?

Exactly. If an attacker gets their hands on the mnemonic, there’s no need for them to translate it into their own language. Just keep it in the original, that way it works.

To translate legally, you would still need to pick words from a language-specific list. And honestly, it’s not like the words are gonna match up perfectly, even if they exist in both lists.

Right, unless someone finds a collision in the PBKDF2 HMAC-SHA512 process, but that’s practically unlikely. The words themselves are hashed, not their meanings.

If you can’t guess a seed in English, you’re not likely gonna have better luck in, like, Japanese or Mandarin, you know?

And if you're backing up in a different language, just use that official BIP word list. Trying to translate manually could lead to mistakes.

What if Mr. B doesn't even know about those non-English lists? Some wallets don't support all of them. Like, Electrum only covers a handful.

Good point. BIP39 does discourage using anything but English since many wallets just ignore the rest of the languages.

Definitely shouldn’t translate passphrases. Like, one English word could mean multiple things in Chinese, which causes confusion.

Yeah, and updating BIP39 isn’t straightforward either since it doesn’t even have version numbers. That’s why new languages haven't been added.

I’ve noticed Electrum kinda covers you if you import a BIP39 seed, but you’re gonna get an ‘unknown wordlist’ warning. Still generates fine, right?

Yep, to create wallets from seeds, Electrum doesn’t need the wordlist. But it does need it for verification, which is where that warning comes in.

I’m gonna test this out myself just to see how it goes. I mean, I took precautions, but there’s something interesting about this whole idea.

Yeah, keep us posted! I'm curious how it’ll turn out.

I tested with Italian and the addresses still generated correctly. I think I misunderstood how Electrum retrieves those lists.

No worries. Good to know it works with that language too.