Mormon indicated that the Gold Plates were written in what he termed "reformed Egyptian." And as I've noted before, from what few fragments we have reproducing the characters, it does appear that Joseph Smith was looking at a document making use of something similar to the Egyptian Hieratic--a cursive form of the Ancient Egyptian language.
The largest sample we have of the characters is shown in the photograph below:
It is believed that John Whitmer actually copied these characters, meaning that they are not the characters copied and taken by Martin Harris to Prof. Charles Anthon for him to authenticate. In any event, Jerry D. Grover, Jr., believes he has been able to translate the document set out above. He has published an ebook on this subject, setting out his methods and translation, which you can download for free in a PDF format here. He was also recently interviewed on the Ward Radio podcast where he discussed the same topic (see the video below), and which I watched this weekend.
What Grover realized is that the script copied on the "Caractors" [sic] sheet is a mixture of the Egyptian Hieratic and Demotic scripts, but with dates based on the Mesoamerican method of recording dates. This gives a very concise method of recording--that is, a very information dense method of writing.
The "Caractors" sheet actually appears to copy two different sections from the Gold Plates. The first four lines appear to have been an introduction intended to precede the Book of Mosiah, while the last four lines appear to have been an introduction to Mormon's abridgment. As such, they appear to be from the lost 116 pages.
Obviously the interview has only a very brief explanation his process and methods, although it does go over his translation. Grover's book, on the other hand, runs over 400 pages.
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