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The core of the project is written in English, which is the current lingua franca of the world. If the purpose of the archive is for future scholars to have a c

The core of the project is written in English, which is the current lingua franca of the world. If the purpose of the archive is for future scholars to have a corpus of knowledge from our time, then limiting it to one language maximizes the probability that the entirety of the information stored there will be recoverable. Including texts in Finnish and Hungarian almost ensures that parts of the archive will be lost 1000 years from now. Even if those languages are alive in 1000 years, the likelihood that interpreting period Finnish and Hungarian from 2020 will be possible is far smaller than the likelihood that interpreting period English from 2020 will be possible.

pintxo 6y ago
If readability in 1000s of years of time is the goal, wouldn't you want to add as many (common) languages as possible? And for each book add as many translations of them as possible? That way they will be able to read most/all even if just one language survived - irrespective which one.
- wheels 6y ago
  Languages don't maintain internal mutual comprehensibility over those sorts of time frames. This is what English looked like 1000 years ago: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-eng... The only ones that maintain any significant population that can use them are those that are liturgical languages (e.g. Latin, Hebrew, Classical Greek, Classical Arabic, Sanscrit, ...)
  - pintxo 6y ago
    That would be an interesting task for some scholars: "We have a bunch of technology literature here, could you translate it for us into classical greek?"
- jovial_cavalier 6y ago
  There is a finite amount of space in which to store data. Even if diversity of language is a principle that you adopt while creating this, not every single item in the database can be a Rosetta Stone-style snapshot of the state of human language in 2020.
Bayart 6y ago
Being trained as a historian, the idea of throwing away original texts in favour of translations because they're not in « the right language » is hurting my soul. If a text is lost because it's only written in Hungarian, it means the Hungarian language is lost. And that means not enough texts written in it were kept. See the problem ? Keeping as much linguistic data as possible is beneficial. Intentionally curtailing is criminal.
- ardy42 6y ago
  >> Including texts in Finnish and Hungarian almost ensures that parts of the archive will be lost 1000 years from now. Even if those languages are alive in 1000 years, the likelihood that interpreting period Finnish and Hungarian from 2020 will be possible is far smaller than the likelihood that interpreting period English from 2020 will be possible. > Being trained as a historian, the idea of throwing away original texts in favour of translations because they're not in « the right language » is hurting my soul. > If a text is lost because it's only written in Hungarian, it means the Hungarian language is lost. And that means not enough texts written in it were kept. Yeah, exactly. The GP has it bass ackwards. If you have concerns like the GP about intelligibility, then include both the original and the translation. That way even if Finnish and Hungarian go extinct and the archive is recovered, those parallel texts can be used to recover the Finnish and Hungarian languages themselves. And I'm sure someone who is reading this is questioning the value of even preserving the Finnish and Hungarian languages when you've already captured the "knowledge" in English. All I have to say to that is future linguists will probably be very frustrated with losing two non-Indo-European languages to study, just like we're frustrated that we can't read Etruscan writings anymore.
  - jovial_cavalier 6y ago
    I thought the point of this was to preserve technical knowledge. It's not poetry. You can translate it from language to language and it should all be isomorphic, because there is something measurable and concrete underlying both expressions.
- jovial_cavalier 6y ago

pintxo 6y ago

If readability in 1000s of years of time is the goal, wouldn't you want to add as many (common) languages as possible? And for each book add as many translations of them as possible? That way they will be able to read most/all even if just one language survived - irrespective which one.

wheels 6y ago
Languages don't maintain internal mutual comprehensibility over those sorts of time frames. This is what English looked like 1000 years ago: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-eng... The only ones that maintain any significant population that can use them are those that are liturgical languages (e.g. Latin, Hebrew, Classical Greek, Classical Arabic, Sanscrit, ...)
- pintxo 6y ago
  That would be an interesting task for some scholars: "We have a bunch of technology literature here, could you translate it for us into classical greek?"
jovial_cavalier 6y ago
There is a finite amount of space in which to store data. Even if diversity of language is a principle that you adopt while creating this, not every single item in the database can be a Rosetta Stone-style snapshot of the state of human language in 2020.

Bayart 6y ago

Being trained as a historian, the idea of throwing away original texts in favour of translations because they're not in « the right language » is hurting my soul. If a text is lost because it's only written in Hungarian, it means the Hungarian language is lost. And that means not enough texts written in it were kept. See the problem ? Keeping as much linguistic data as possible is beneficial. Intentionally curtailing is criminal.

ardy42 6y ago
>> Including texts in Finnish and Hungarian almost ensures that parts of the archive will be lost 1000 years from now. Even if those languages are alive in 1000 years, the likelihood that interpreting period Finnish and Hungarian from 2020 will be possible is far smaller than the likelihood that interpreting period English from 2020 will be possible. > Being trained as a historian, the idea of throwing away original texts in favour of translations because they're not in « the right language » is hurting my soul. > If a text is lost because it's only written in Hungarian, it means the Hungarian language is lost. And that means not enough texts written in it were kept. Yeah, exactly. The GP has it bass ackwards. If you have concerns like the GP about intelligibility, then include both the original and the translation. That way even if Finnish and Hungarian go extinct and the archive is recovered, those parallel texts can be used to recover the Finnish and Hungarian languages themselves. And I'm sure someone who is reading this is questioning the value of even preserving the Finnish and Hungarian languages when you've already captured the "knowledge" in English. All I have to say to that is future linguists will probably be very frustrated with losing two non-Indo-European languages to study, just like we're frustrated that we can't read Etruscan writings anymore.
- jovial_cavalier 6y ago
  I thought the point of this was to preserve technical knowledge. It's not poetry. You can translate it from language to language and it should all be isomorphic, because there is something measurable and concrete underlying both expressions.
jovial_cavalier 6y ago