As a tangent on this, it'd be such an interesting experiment to see how far one could go in deciphering/understanding a new language and attempting to write a n

As a tangent on this, it'd be such an interesting experiment to see how far one could go in deciphering/understanding a new language and attempting to write a new book in that language based on the content of a single, probably fairly long, book. It feels like it should be theoretically possible, but I doubt it's ever been tried. Maybe something like understanding aincent languages from limited, fragmented sources is the closest natural experiment we have in practice to have tested it, but it's hardly the same as a full, substantial text in a consistent style.